That's almost $50 for an entire series. What's the average amount of time someone would spend watching TV series per night? An episode of this, an episode of that, 3 or 4 times a week. Suddenly you're spending vastly more than cable.
That's more than a modern box set will cost you, e.g. Boardwalk Empire, just released is selling for $40 on Amazon.
Yet they spent $5million per episode, that's a lot of views to just break even, plus the server hosting costs and vendor marketplace cut to make.
The whole thing is overly complex, per item rental is too complicated, a fractured marketplace makes subscriptions poor, the time drip model that studios and channels used to use is dying, but they won't let it go.
I think it'll be 5 to 10 years before we finally see a decent resolution to this where actually paying is less hassle than piracy.