Batman Beyond - Correct viewing order?
 

What order do you prefer to watch this series in? Or cartoons in general? By air date or by production order?

I've been watching Batman Beyond by air date and haven't really noticed anything wrong until early on in season 2; characters having already met, stuff like that.
You can view the show's air dates and production orders HERE.

The Wikia says that "Countdown" is the last episode of season 3 in production order, but still says that "Unmasked" is the series finale even though it puts it as episode 8 in production order.

The air dates are the order in which the episodes appear on the DVD releases.

So basically, I'm a little confused. Which order should I go with? I hate when this happens. One of the worst cases is probably X-Men: The Animated Series. The viewing order for that show is an absolute mess.

Viewing it in the production order is probably the best route.

This is a very good question I usually just watch shows in viewing order, never even thought about production order.

I am curious to know which order do you guys usually use???

That's what I thought, but the season 3 finale is what's bugging me.

I take you mean air date order. :P

I just watch whatever order the dvds are in. And I place Return of The Joker at the end.

Yeah, I'm doing that last too.

Whatever order makes the most sense or has the correct continuity which is usually the production order but there are times where the air date order actually makes more sense than production order since that's how they planned it. For most shows it usually isn't a big problem, they either have no continuity, the continuity makes it easy to fit the episodes together or something like that. For other ones a simple google search will reveal the information, heck most of the times when I watch the show I just browse the wiki page and there they explain the correct viewing order. I don't remember having any problems with BB or X-Men but I'm sure I used the correct viewing order. I believe for BB the real last episode is the generic one but people like to place "unmasked" as the series finale because it's a better episode that also gives as close of closure that S3 could give to BB but the real last episode is the other one but it doesn't really matter since there's no continuity in either episode to make it impossible.

There only big problem I've encountered with a show is the original TMNT cartoon, since there is so little continuity it's difficult to know when each episode actually takes place but there's small things that are introduced in one episode and later used which normally you don't take into account. We tried to have a "correct episode order" thread here in the drome years ago but it was sadly abandoned midway through S3.

The thing is, I've already done several Google searches for BB and nowhere gives me a definitive order. Every episode guide gives the air date orders, then there's the wikia's confusing production order for season 3. :tconfuse:
Production order seems to make more sense for the first 2 seasons. Season 3 seems to make more sense in air date order for some reason. I think I'll stick to air date order for that season then. Thanks for your help.