brw:

Hetbait kind of goes harder than queerbait sometimes. Queerbait you understand that the creators very rarely could do it even if they wanted to so implication and suggestion was better and safer than being explicit. Hetbait though there’s no such justifiable reason they just want to fuck with you.

This was the norm back when TV shows were episodic and they could not significantly change anyone’s life in an episode without changing it back to the status quo by the end

The “justifiable reason” was that TV networks reserved the right to air the show in whatever order they damn well pleased and so the show runners had to write it so that it would more-or-less make sense in any order

this can be blamed for soooo many stupid tropes and it’s awful and i love it