I've been thinking about alternative archetypes for depicting grief in an episodic format, and both that come to mind are Buffy, specifically: a) Put a lot of the grief offscreen/over a season break, like lead the lead-up to season 5, because it can be extended and messy there, and addressing it on-screen later shows that the process can be long/out of the Correct Order I bitched about above. b) Delay the confrontation/"breakthrough" episode in a way that makes it clear that everything up to that has been grief, and don't allow the episode to resolve the grief so much as acknowledge and embody it, like in "Once More, with Feeling."

Buffy absolutely had poorly-handled character deaths of various forms and also used a) less successfully in the breaks between seasons 2 and 3—this may surprise you, but the show wasn't perfect—but I find that my thoughts keep coming back to it as I reference fictional frameworks for my own grief.

Anyway, thank you for the commiseration/validation. <3