special episode not showing in "next up"

[chenks]

I don't think it is a bug.  I'm assuming what you're describing was a design choice to make the specials functionality work with the existing queueing system.  It allows specials with "airs before/after" to be queued appropriately, and specials without it to be watched whenever.  Without that setting enabled, I don't believe any queueing of specials occurs regardless if they have "airs before/after" set.  And that is how it is supposed to be.

it's a poor design decision then and makes absolutely no sense.

enabling that setting, whilst allowing the special to appear in "next up" also, incorrectly, lists the episode inside a season that it doesn't belong to.
this result is the episode appearing "twice" within the tv show, once inside the "specials" season (which is correct), and once inside an actual season (which is incorrect).

in my specific example, with this setting enabled, i have season 0 epsiode 221 correctly appearing in the "specials" season but also appearing in "season 18" which i doesn't belong in, but the only way to get the episode to show up in "next up" is to enable that settings.

all the "next up" queue needs to do is check the air date of all the unwatched episodes after the most recent watched episode and display that, what season it is should be irrelevant.

it's maybe not common in the US, but in the UK it is and those "specials" episode often play an important role in the timeline of a TV show. you could have special episodes inbetween multiple seasons but they aren't specifically part of a season.

this is something that plex doesn't have an issue with.