I’ve haven’t read the books, so forgive me if I’ve interpreted this wrong, but The Ultimatum from the book version of The Deal would only have worked if Off Campus had a 10 episode season.
They literally did not have enough time to show everything they needed to display in order to make the relationships between both the team and the romantic couples impactful, while also making Phil Graham as much of an asshole as the narrative requires, unless we wanted him to be so cartoonishly evil it couldn’t be ignored.
There’s only so much you can fit into eight episodes without making some hard decisions about what can be cut and what can’t