I have this:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :serials
  has_many :sites, :through => :series
end

class Serial < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :site
  has_many :episodes
end

class Site < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :serials
  has_many :users, :through => :serials
end

class Episode < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :serial
end

I would like to do some operations on User.serials.episodes but I know this would mean all sorts of clever tricks. I could in theory just put all the episode data into serial (denormalize) and then group_by Site when needed.

If I have a lot of episodes that I need to query on would this be a bad idea?

thanks