I have to ask: what does mean "cookie cutter format" in this context? I assume few/short season.

cookie cutter format means that they all conform to one of a limited number of molds.

ie, this is your teen learns about sex movie, this is your young man discover super power movie, this is your boy meets girl movie, etc.

I'm not sure if it's a fair criticism, since Netflix seems to have the same amount of variety as non-Netflix cinema has, but hey, everyone is entitled to an opinion.

It's that exactly. Every netflix exclusive has this weird formula of pandering to a target audience. Then putting a twist ending at the end of every season whether it needs one or not.

Very few netflix exclusives break out of that and when you find one that does, it just so happens they picked it up from somewhere else!

But yeah, 8/mo, hard to complain. The shows they are throwing out are still good as are the hollywood movies/shows :)