User blog comment:Thailog/Ep. 201 "Happy New Year!" discussion/@comment-47881-20120429132830

I think the bad timing of the several hiatuses are to blame for the negative reactions. Usually there's a break between seasons, and time skips are not that uncommon. The problem here is that we didn't have a cathartic period to assimilate all that happened in the last three/four episodes, which was a lot. So I guess it feels odd to have all of that going on and them BAM, 5 years have passed, so the mole thing and all the secrets getting out of the bag no longer matter for the new present... If we had had a period to process all of that, the skip might not have come off so abrupt. We would have associated the season break and waiting period with the idea that time also passed in the universe.