Podcasts stop playing on Watch Series 4

At the gym, I can't get a podcast episode to play all the way through. I'm using my Watch series 4 (cellular connection) without an iOS device, and, yes, I have subscribed to the podcast on my phone (the only podcast I subscribe to). So the podcast episode should just play, but it keeps stopping, as if the watch has run out of buffering space.

Also, the Watch does not play podcasts in order -- especially if the podcast has multiple seasons or "bonus episodes" that I don't want to hear (special episodes featuring listeners asking questions--no thanks). Is there a way to eliminate old or bonus episodes that I NEVER want to listen to? Seems like the Podcasts app wants to force me to listen to everything in some weird abstract order, and then when I choose my own order (to skip the extraneous content/season 1 episodes), the episode I need has not been loaded onto the watch.

I really need a way to manually choose which episodes appear on my watch -- to eliminate the stuff I don't care about.