Anime Flashbacks

I love Naruto. Lately, however, it seems that half of the Shippuden episodes are just flashbacks. The flashbacks are very recent too (as recent as the last episode or twenty frames ago), and not about something that occurred 20-3o episodes before. Are the producers/writers doing this so those new to the series can catch up, or they don't have anything to show? I thought the fillers before the time skip to the Shippuden episodes were bad. But these flashbacks are even worse.