First thing I did was click Browse->TV->Popular. List of shows. Click on a Show. Right under episodes to the right there is a drop-down with the list of available episodes.
I am not saying its perfect, but is it nearly as bad as you are making it out to be?
I am not seeing that. Let's take the top TV show that I see on the Popular page right now that you mention - http://new.hulu.com/grimm. The drop down says "All Seasons (24 episodes)". It's a filter for the horizontal slide show viewer to limit it to only season 1 or season 2. There's no list of episodes. There's also a sort order drop down with default "air date", although air dates are not shown nor listed, it's just to select that as the sorting order. Do you mean some other drop down?
I am not saying its perfect, but is it nearly as bad as you are making it out to be?