‘American Crime’ Was Network TV’s Best Drama, But ABC Will Only Let You Stream Half Of It

Two weeks ago, ABC aired the final episode of the second season of American Crime. For several reasons having nothing to do with the show’s quality, it is very likely to be the last episode of the series. The show’s ratings may not have improved over the course of the second season, but if you spent any time near social media or read any TV critics, you know just how much the season energized the people who were watching it.

As a limited series with an anthology approach similar to that of the American Horror Story franchise, American Crime kept the same cast (with some additions) as the first season, but this time set them up as different characters in a different story. This year, a boy-on-boy sexual assault at a high-school party was the entry point for a story about identity, consent, privilege, privacy, guns, drugs, responsibility, and trauma. The show kept a deep commitment to telling every side to the story, painting to every corner of the canvass in a way that felt respectful of both the characters and the TV audience. The season was ambitious (one episode featured interstitials of real-life victims of bullying or school violence) and marvelously well-acted, and if there’s any justice, there will be a boatload of Emmy nominations awaiting the cast this summer.

The nature of the season, with each successive episode building on and complicating the one before it, made it one of this year’s biggest word-of-mouth beneficiaries. This was exactly the kind of show that people would have been able to binge over a weekend in order to catch up to what everybody was talking about. Only that wasn’t entirely possible. The show’s primary outlet for free streaming, Hulu, only offered (and only continues to offer) the five most recent episodes. If you wanted to catch up on the whole season, you had to go to Amazon Video or iTunes and pay for the episodes.

This continues to be a point of frustration in streaming models. Netflix and Amazon originals aren’t necessarily the most bingeable shows because of their content. They’re the most bingeable because of their availability. New episodes available now. And while the TV networks seem to agree that it’s foolish to eschew streaming options entirely, they’ve instead committed to a halfway-there strategy that doesn’t seem to benefit anyone. Shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead stream all their old episodes on Netflix, but if you want to watch anything from this most recent season, you’re out of luck. With other shows, it’s the exact opposite. Shows as stylistically disparate as American Crime and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills stream only their five most recent episodes on Hulu. And in the case of the Real Housewives, you can still be thwarted if you don’t subscribe to one of Hulu’s approved cable providers.

Network TV is still trying to keep itself relevant, and you can see where they wouldn’t want to give away the farm to streaming. But American Crime‘s low ratings certainly weren’t helped by witholding episodes from Hulu. Instead, it was just one more obstacle for viewers looking to catch up to the series.

Recently, ABC fired their entertainment president, Paul Lee, who was a champion of American Crime from the get-go. With Lee gone, the outlook for a season 3 is grim. Here’s hoping that at some point, viewers who missed out on that stellar season of television will be able to stream the whole thing and see what they were missing.