Fix Reversed TV Show Order In Interleaved Collections

Hey there, fellow media enthusiasts! Have you ever meticulously organized your favorite TV shows into a collection, only to find them displayed in a bewildering, reversed order in Plex? It's a common frustration, especially when you're using multiple sources and the Interleaved combine mode. You'd expect your most trending or newest shows to proudly sit at the top, but instead, they're buried at the bottom. Don't worry, you're not alone in this, and there's a way to understand and potentially fix this quirky behavior. Let's dive into why this happens and what you can do about it.

Understanding the Interleaved Combine Mode and Its Quirks

When you set up a collection in Plex, especially one that pulls content from multiple sources, you have different ways to combine them. The Interleaved combine mode is designed to create a more balanced mix of content from each source. The idea behind interleaving is to take the first item from Source A, then the first from Source B, then the second from Source A, the second from Source B, and so on. This should theoretically result in a collection where the order of items within each source is preserved relative to the other items from that same source, and the overall collection feels like a curated blend. However, as many users have discovered, this isn't always what happens in practice when viewing your collection within the Plex interface. The intended order seems to get flipped, causing the items you'd expect to see first to appear last. This can be particularly annoying when you've spent time carefully ordering your shows based on what's trending or what you want to watch next. The very mechanism that's supposed to help you present your content logically ends up working against you, creating a jumbled display that requires a second look to find what you're after.

Why Does the TV Show Order Get Reversed?

This reversed TV show order issue in Plex, specifically when dealing with multiple sources and the Interleaved combine mode, often boils down to how Plex processes and displays collection data. While the Interleaved setting dictates the initial logic of how items are added to the collection's internal list, the final display in the Plex user interface might be subject to different sorting rules or rendering priorities. Think of it like this: the Interleaved mode might be building the collection's backbone correctly, but then the Plex UI decides to sort that backbone in reverse based on a default setting or a conflicting metadata parameter. It's not necessarily that the collection is wrongly constructed, but rather that its presentation is being overridden. This can be influenced by various factors, including the order in which the sources themselves are listed, the metadata associated with each TV show (like release date, popularity scores, or even a manually set rating), and how Plex's algorithms prioritize these elements for display. The system might be interpreting the