I mean, I personally didn't like it (though not because it was a sidestep, I was perfectly cool with that), but also Ted Lasso S2 was a case where two extra episodes ended up being ordered on top of the main batch. You can clearly tell that Beard's episode and the Christmas (one of my favourites) episode are those two, they're both perfectly lovely but are completely disconnected to the main plot - I have nothing ultimately against how they work but it's a bit of a different context.

Separately, my answer to this thread's question is it does really depend on how you do it and it's on a per-show basis on if it works.