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.
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.