Arcs sont Triomphe

I think it's the security blanket. The show decides, early on, what kind of audience it's trying to attract and what expectations to create. If they were making a different show the audience would have different expectations. So the show decides, out of the gate, what to be, and that creates the expectation. If Breaking Bad started devolving into lots of little gangster-of-the-week conflicts, people would flip out after, like, two or three of them.

I think a lot of this has to do with the age of the medium, too. At first it's just cool to have little mini-movies at home, and you just want to unwind, so something light and easy and even a little predictable is nice and comforting. It might not even occur to many people that it can or should be more. That's why we have movies, isn't it? But over time, some shows take chances and eventually we all realized that TV shows can tell those kinds of stories, too. And in fact, there are some stories you can only effectively tell with TV shows.

Frankly, I think hour-long dramas are effectively 21st century novels. In fact, that's something that should have made its way into the essay, because a lot of classic novels (Crime and Punishment, Great Expectations, The Three Musketeers) were published in installments, just like episodes. But now we read them all at once, which is basically the same thing as ploughing through an entire season of a TV show in a day or two. Both were made to be doled out, but eventually end up consumed straight through.

Just read a terrific article, by the way, about binge TV viewing that's somewhat related to all this: Binge Viewing: TV's Lost Weekends. Quote:

Well worth reading the whole thing. I think we're headed for a mini-backlash, in that people will realize that the shows you most want to consume quickly benefit just a tiny bit from delaying that gratification. But not too much. Spreading them out over years causes you to lose quite a bit; you miss the full arc of the serialized shows. I think there are very clear enhancements to be had in watching the show much faster than it's produced, but probably not in chunks of 9 or 10 episodes, either.

Just saw your link on FB about this. Heading over to read it now!

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verry nice

Good article, thank you.

Thanks for reading. Glad you enjoyed it.

Very interesting essay Yoda. The article you linked to was good too. I've certainly suffered series binge remorse - it's like stuffing your face with a whole chocolate fudge cake! I enjoyed both The Wire and Sopranos much more for seeing them once a week, and going back to X Files , now that was the highlight of me and sons tv week. Now tho, I watched the last two series of Mad Men over the course of a week, and musing on it later I think although you get caught up in the storyline you don't appreciate the nuances so much.

A very good read. And it's true, characters have to be developed now otherwise audiences are left disappointed and angered. Maybe comic book adaptations had a part to play on the big screen but in my personal opinion, the real catalysts of change came from tv, mainly HBO. The Sopranos and The Wire two major stand outs and then shows like Lost.

Came across a similar article by Peter Suderman: