Where do all the good shows disapear to from time to time?

The American model of tv (with some exceptions) is that for a full season of 20–24 episodes, you don’t do a run all at once. Instead of showing all 24 episodes week after week, and only filling up 24 weeks, they show 24 episodes spaced out over something like 38 weeks. This allows them to take more time and shoot closer to airing dates. Shows start in the end up September, and run through May, with certain agreed-upon breaks. So shows will have new episodes from September-November, then after Sweeps in November they go off the air until they air a couple more episodes, one will be a Christmas episode, and then off the air for January until February Sweeps. Then a short break again, and then new episodes till May. Course, it’s up to each show to decide their own schedule, but this is a basic plan.

There are other shows that break this mold, namely cable shows. They do either a 13 episode run back-to-back once a year, or a 14–20 episode run broken into two halves that run at opposite times of the year. This model has proved to be very successful, as not only can cable companies give people the summer entertainment they so desire, but many movie stars can do a 13 episode season without quitting their movie career (but not a 20–24 episode season), so you get bigger names in cable shows.

There’s this place in the Romulan Neutral Zone where things such as good TV shows and left socks go to lay in a stinking heap, waiting to be discovered by roaming Hrundigan forces. The second Hrundigan fleet then flings them through hyperspace via the same vortex that brought them there, bringing them to a screaming, bloody halt on the shores of Diazepam, where they wait for a TV executive to wander across them and stub their toe.
And that, son, is how babies are made.

They went away for summer. They be back before the Fall rating season.