this applies to a lot of shows: american dad, spongebob squarepants, family guy, futurama…
frasier, the sopranos, married with children, the simpsons, apparently respect original broadcast date. Hope I’m not wrong.
It’s tiring: for example I find season 3 that covers years 2003 to 2006 and season 4 including episodes from years 2004 to 2008. Sometimes there are ‘spaces’ of several months within the same season (episode 3 was released in May 2012 and the next one, miraculously, in December 2012). Why don’t they package episodes following the logic order of years?
Who had this stupid idea and why?
Because the networks did not respect the production seasons when broadcasting. Production seasons are designedbby show creators to be a cohesive whole, with an order. It makes sense to go back to this when releasing DVDs and not stick with random broadcast seasons.
Example: Fox screwed over Firefly’s broadcast order.