Why do they have episodes at all?

Why do books have chapters?

But actual multiple episodes is a technical artefact of broadcast TV. If they wanted 'chapters' for Netflix productions they could do that without actually breaking them up into separate files on Netflix.

What's the difference between episodes and chapters? I mean to say, I think they're already what you want, just with different names. The seasons are the books, and the episodes are the chapters.

The only thing I can think of that's really different is opening/closing credits, but given that I pretty much never binge-watch anything (and apparently most of my friends on Facebook don't either), those serve a useful purpose for me, in that they help set the mood and make it so I don't have to wait a few weeks to figure out who played that street vendor that showed up one time in chapter^Wepisode 3.

Yes it was the repeated opening titles and credits I really meant.

That and the gentle recaps they often have built in. In the UK when we air US TV shows they often seem really weird because when there would be an advert break in the US parts of the story and sometimes even lines are repeated by the actors to help you get back into it. Sometimes you get a cliffhanger line, a sort of a second's pause, and then the cliffhanger line repeated in a different tone! Where we don't have advert breaks this comes across as bizarre until you think the US would put an advert there, and you get the same kind of thing but across episodes on Netflix.

I believe with Netflix (I almost never binge on Netflix, so this is sort of vague, sorry) doesn't it skip the opening credits if you continue on to the next? I know Amazon Prime Video does this, but that's only because I haven't figured out how to turn off autoplay for the next episode on that service.

Well that probably just makes the artificial lull in action and reiteration of the plot more obvious.