Consider, if you will, that a trusted confidante of yours wants to introduce you to someone new. At first, you may be reluctant: perhaps you have enough friends; perhaps, even, this new person sounds a lot like someone you already know. But you keep hearing how great they are, how much you’ll love them, how completely blown away you’ll be. Others weigh in on the subject, seemingly disinterested yet knowledgeable souls who tell you that this new person is your kind of person, that you’d really be missing out if you didn’t at least meet them for coffee. So, finally, after everyone has been going on about it for weeks, you finally succumb to the many blandishments and meet this much-heralded stranger for the first time.

And after a bit, you really start to like this new acquaintance of yours. It isn’t too long before you call them friend. You become interested in their life and their loves, you get invested in their happiness, you really care about their trials and their triumphs. And then, just as you feel you’re starting to get really close, just as a bond is formed and a trust circle is enclosed, your new best friend just up and disappears from your life for weeks, even months at a time.

Are you still their friend?

Or, to continue the analogy, consider someone you’ve known for a while--years even. They’ve been good to you, and you like them ever so. You’ve stuck with them through the good times and the bad (sometimes very bad), you’ve given them your time and your devotion and even your forgiveness, and you have expected nothing but a little courtesy in return. Then they suddenly go off the deep end, make promises on which they don’t deliver, make you crazy and frustrated, hurt you with their selfish disregard for your feelings, until you finally just get tired of all their bullshit and take the ultimate step in severing all ties: delete them from your Facebook.

Right?

That’s just how it is with TV shows that go on hiatus. (Yes, we finally got there, people!)

TV shows lose viewers for three main reasons: poor quality, timeslot changes, and mid-season hiatuses (I’ll ask again – hiati?). Occasionally, all three of those circumstances will apply (hello, Heroes), but often all it takes is the dratted last item on that saddening, infuriating list.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the mid-season hiatus sucks. It sucks in every conceivable way, from sucking the intensity out of a thrilling narrative to sucking the interest out of the casual viewer. (Well… okay, it sucks in every conceivable way but the literal one.) And it’s all very well to act as a network apologist, to give reasons like revenue and retooling and revitalizing the fanbase, but no matter what the justification, there can be no justification.

Because…

1. A hiatus can give a sinking ship the opportunity to, well, sink.

FlashForward came back last month from its much-touted stint in rehab with an awesome double episode that almost nobody watched. Why would they? ABC certainly hasn’t made it Must See TV. Taking it off the air for four months did nothing to make anyone want to watch it more. It’s going to take a miracle to save FlashForward, and considering the excellent caliber of the episodes since its return, this is clearly a case of the mid-season hiatus sinking, not saving, this metaphor.

V, meanwhile, may have taken a lengthy time off for its own bout of detox, but why did go to air in the first place? ABC declared, in September, that the show would only be offering up four episodes before heading off to Promises (for, what, Scott Wolf-addiction?), and V didn’t even premiere till November. So ABC already knew there was trouble in Visitor City (they were the ones who fired half the production staff and demanded the rewrites), and yet they still showed us the fruits of what they considered dubious labors anyway. They could hardly be surprised by the low ratings. Seriously, if the network that airs it can’t commit to even a half-season of a show, then why should we?

2. A hiatus can make one forget when the damn thing is on.

DVRs are a miracle invention. They, along with iPods and the Wii Fit balance board, convince me beyond all doubt that our society is enjoying the fruits of recovered alien technology. But DVRs are a double-edged sword when it comes to TV viewership. On the one hand, yes, they will happily tape those things that you ask of them, with nary a word of complaint (unlike your much put-upon parents or roommate). On the other hand, those things that they tape will often be watched with a thumb on the remote’s Fast Forward button, to skip past all those pesky advertisements. Advertisements for, say, the mid-season return of some show you once watched so faithfully. Some show that has subsequently changed timeslot, or that your DVR has completely forgotten about during its long absence. And so when days or even weeks later someone asks you what you think of the latest Fringe episode and you had no idea it was even back on, how likely is this hypothetical you going to be to tune in now? I’ll tell you: not very.

3. A hiatus creates a vacuum in which new interests can flourish.

Absence, despite the cliché, rarely makes the heart grow fonder. Out of sight, out of mind is far more apropos of, well, people, and in the case of television shows (especially troubled, uneven, depressing little shows -- yes, I’m talking to you, Stargate Universe), a mid-season hiatus can lead its viewership to realize, hey, I don’t need this frustrating nonsense! I’ve got important laundry I could be doing, taxes I could be filing, MTV reality shows I could be watching!

The fact is, we television viewers are creatures of habit. We watch The Simpsons because that’s what we do on a Sunday night, not necessarily because it’s essential to our being (anymore). And when our habit is broken, when the show we were expecting is no longer so there, we will often move on to something else and never look back.

Hey, we’re fickle. That’s hardly news.

4. A hiatus can kill momentum.

The networks know not what they do. They have these tremendous talents at their disposal, these creators and writers and producers who build up elaborate storylines with killer intricacies which they weave into the fabric of their universes, and which we then weave into our lives. The excitement is palpable, breath-taking and immediate, as they amp us up to a heightened state of interest and awareness that has us craving the next episode… and then, BAM! Hiatus, leaving that craving unsatisfied for weeks, even months at a time. Is it any wonder that the mid-season return of every show ever has lower ratings than before it took a break? One can only sustain a feverish state of suspense for so long before one is forced to quit, cold turkey. The networks are like drug dealers, getting us hooked on the high and then withholding the good stuff to drive up demand.

Should it surprise them that we get over our dependence with the help of a 12 Step Program… or, at least, a rival television program?

5. A hiatus is better than cancelation, but can easily lead to it.

The parable of Firefly is an argument against the mid-season hiatus if ever there was one. It barely made it to mid-season itself, but has sold so well on DVD that it illustrates the point very effectively: it takes time for any show to build an audience. And when that audience is built, it likes things to unfold in a consistent, timely and efficient manner.

Why watch a show on TV if you know that all it’s going to do is vex you with its programming vagaries? Since you know that it’s likely to be released in a box set in a few months anyway – and if not, there’s always the download alternative (whether legal or otherwise) -- you’ll be able to watch every episode at your leisure. Why, therefore, put yourself at the mercy of revenue-hungry network execs, constantly being tormented with reruns and pre-emptings and at least one hiatus, when you can simply wait and see it all at once? Or perhaps come to the conclusion that it’s not worth seeing at all?

The mid-season hiatus is just one more nail in the coffin of broadcast TV. It is one more reason people have not to watch these shows as they air, instead of waiting till they’re available in a more-preferred, less-interrupted format.

And that is so, so sad. It is a vicious cycle. People don’t watch good TV shows because the breaks are so annoying. Then people get annoyed because there are no good TV shows. This is not the fault of these anonymous people. It is the fault of the networks. It is the fault of the bean counters and the ratings calculators who are, as a whole, thoroughly misguided as to what the people actually want. It’s the fault (at least, in part) of the damned mid-season hiatus.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the mid-season hiatus sucks.