In defense of long TV seasons and case-of-the-week episodes

[CivCube]

We're getting a lot more TV series then we did in the past. More cable channels are getting into original production, more online series are popping up from Netflix and Hulu, and some purely web series are beginning to pop up in serious form.

Most of these shows are using HBO's format of 10-13 episodes. With a (theoretically) higher budget per episode, TV can now look more cinematic and feel like a cohesive story, worthy of binging from beginning to end. TV shows are becoming the new book you can't put down. We now have a populace trained to this format. As you look across online discussions of TV, you'll find a common complaint that an episode that had a closed-ended story to be "pointless" because it didn't advance the season or even the series arc.

I can't blame people for wanting these to be really long movies. We have stuff to do. A case-of-the-week episode often feels like the writers spinning while they wait for the budget for the real story. It also reflects a popular disdain for episodic storytelling, where each 40 minutes is a complete story instead of a chapter.

Yet we are missing a lot by dismissing 90s-style television, with its 22-24 episode seasons and a healthy mix of one-shot episodes and Big Arc stories. We also diminish the writer's room, a storytelling device unique to televison. It's a team of storytellers that has to withstand a gauntlet of outside challenges from networks, production studios, and ongoing audience response. Inside this fascinating pressure-cooker, long-form stories are created that, if treated well, last for years.

One-shots, when done well, explore a smaller corner of the show's world that a series arc can't do. When done really well, we get to elaborate a bit more of the show's overall themes in specific scenarios, which in turn creates better writing for later episodes. Smaller characters also get better development with one-shots. Like Xander in Buffy's "The Zeppo", we have the chance to see a memorable story from a character who might not get as much of the spotlight normally.

You get to see the characters interact with each other in different ways in different kinds of episodes. With streamlined arcs, characters are often tied to the plot development. They don't have as much time to step out of their plot-assigned roles. While the stories might have good initial thematic arcs, I'm not convinced you're going to get as memorable characters. Compare that to a random episode where the characters have to act within a new frame of story, and you get to see the characters act out in a new way.

You need to have bad episodes alongside the good ones if you want a well-developed show. In contrast to a film release, a TV season is not a finished product. Even on Netflix, there is always room by the end of the season for a show to develop, to get better at what it is about. While a half-season is a better option for some shows, it's not a one-size-fits-all. In fact, it can cut out ideas for certain shows out of the conversation. Can you imagine Star Trek as a 13-episode order, with no room to do one-shots? It would defeat the purpose of the Enterprise's mission!

Longer seasons also give a show a better chance to create its own identity. It will often add on unexpectedly popular elements from certain episodes. Buffy's Anya was supposed to be a one-off until the writers brought her back as a character. Unlikely you could do that with the modern show format.

Let's bring support for the case of the week back. Let's have the cast of your favorite show go on random procedural excursions. With good writing, it doesn't have to feel like CBS Show: New Orleans.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The Star Trek show that was best at developing its 2nd and even 3rd-tier characters is Deep Space Nine. We even know about the personal life of Vic Fontaine, a holographic character! This would never have happened if Star Trek had been a 10-13-episode/season show. The whole thing would have been nothing but one boring themed season after another, with nothing else for the people who find Klingon and Dominion/Founder soap operas utterly boring.


Star Trek Continues (fan film series) has an objective of producing 13 fan films/episodes to finish the final two years of Kirk's first five-year mission. This is currently an iffy thing now, since CBS is suing one fan film project (Axanar) and has issued a very strong suggestion that Horizon's new film should "cease and desist."

 

[CivCube]

And if a series is so streamlined as to be boring, it might as well be a two-hour movie to begin with. Tight writing is always something to strive for, and having a mandated number of episodes does you no favors...IF you also have no room to explore other avenues in the same season.

Ideally, all TV writers' rooms would be given the choice on how many episodes they go. But there's something kind of cool about the 22-episode season's promise of a wide land to wander.

 

[warpus]

Yet we are missing a lot by dismissing 90s-style television, with its 22-24 episode seasons and a healthy mix of one-shot episodes and Big Arc stories.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but 24 episodes a season is far too many for me. 12 episodes is just about right.

Aren't most comedies/sitcoms/etc. still followng the 24 episode a year formula btw?

The problem for me with the 24 eps a season deal is that a lot of the episodes end up being filler. They have to work hard on getting so much content out each year, so instead of focusing on making sure that the whole story makes sense, or whatever, they instead spend enough time crunching hard to meet deadlines, bust out badly thought out scripts, etc.

If Star Trek TNG only had 12 episodes a season, you bet that all those filler episodes would be gone, and that each season would be a long, far more interesting arc. "But what about character-defining episodes?" you might say? Well, we'd get those too, there's more than enough room. If breaking bad can do such a great job developing characters with 12 episodes a season, so can other shows. I don't think people quite realize how much filler ends up in 24 episode long seasons.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I think the overall problem is that competition is destructive to diversity.

For example, a few of those short-running programs (long movies) get extraordinarily popular, and then almost everyone else abandons old formats and adopt the new to stay competitive.

You find this phenomenon in most business-things

 

[EgonSpengler]

Longer seasons also give a show a better chance to create its own identity. It will often add on unexpectedly popular elements from certain episodes. Buffy's Anya was supposed to be a one-off until the writers brought her back as a character. Unlikely you could do that with the modern show format.

Just today I was listening to a podcast with Janel Moloney and she said that her character Donna Moss on The West Wing was initially meant to be only a small, supporting role. She said that if Aaron Sorkin had written more than an episode or two in advance, she'd be in the hospitality business today. She was working as a restaurant hostess through episodes 1-3 of that show, because it wasn't until episode 4 that she was officially made a regular. I think her name first appears in the show's opening credits with episode 5.

Anyway, I'm very much in favor of variety in television, as I am in all things. I watch and enjoy 22-episode shows, 6-episode shows, 13-episode shows, 10-episode shows. Some are serial, some are episodic, some are a blend. Some focus on characters, some on story. Some feature an ensemble cast, some have a small core of characters, or even a duo. I like watching some once a week for months, some I blaze through like a frenzied addict.

 

[CivCube]

Oh hey, an article that agrees with me!

http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/prestige-tv-why-are-we-sure-it-looks-like-a-10-hour-movie.html

Luke Cage and Iron Fist have turned out to be really egregious examples of unnecessary narrative decompression. It's more of a shame that with shows like Jessica Jones, they could have taken the time to explore more of the world and the characters with 22 weekly episodes.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I agree that Jessica Jones and of the first half of Luke Cage could have supported some more self-contained stories. There were episodes of both shows that were clearly trying to fill out the 13-episode length while maintaining the ongoing story that just didn't work. Most people's response has been "make the show shorter", and I agree that the story should dictate the length. But both of those shows had characters and premises that, I think, lend themselves naturally to some self-contained, 1-episode stories. The "X-factor" is of course whether the writers could do both while maintaining their quality. I'd rather have a great, 4-episode series than a merely watchable 22-episode series. For many years, Americans have been watching British crime dramas for the former - we had Prime Suspect and Law & Order simultaneously from 1991, for example.

 

[Disgustipated]

For a series like Star Trek I'm perfectly happy with the 22 episode seasons. Not all of it was filler. I found something to enjoy in nearly every episode. The only TNG episode that was cringe worthy was the one with the addicting video game they picked up from Riza and Wesley Crusher saves everyone. Although I wasn't a big fan of the Ferengi episodes on DS9, but I wasn't a big fan of the Ferengi characters (other than Quark) in general. I can generally find something to enjoy in every episode.

It really works great on a series like Law and Order. You can just flip on the TV, if an episode of Law and Order comes on, you can watch it without caring what season it came from. They are all the same. I say that in a mostly good way. It has its advantages that way. You can always count on a quality episode even if it gets very formulatic. You at least know what you are getting. It's a great show to pick up on just flipping through the channels. I'd say Law and Order is THE flip through channels show. It can sometimes be on like 2 or 3 different channels.

Of course I don't have cable any more, so I don't flip through the channels anymore. Things like Netflix is where serialized TV shows really shine. And I love these shows just as much if not more than the aforementioned episodic form. The bad thing is it's hard not to binge watch them, and hard to stop watching. These type of shows you can't really just pick up watching somewhere in the middle. You really do have to start from the beginning. These aren't the type of shows you can just flip through the channels and start watching (unless perhaps you've already seen the entire series). I just finished 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, and you certainly can't pick up watching that from the middle. It's not the greatest show, but I will watch anything that is controversial (it's why I watched Nymphomaniac and anti christ after all).

TLDR: I like both for different reasons.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Binge-watching... yikes. I remember several summers ago when I binge-watched three and a half YEARS of General Hospital on YouTube. I got tired of not understanding all the references and winks/nods on the then-current episodes, so decided to catch up. I managed most of it... and then the episodes got taken down. So now I have to watch every day to keep up (soaps aren't as slow as they used to be).

I've binge-watched some series on Netflix more than once (several times for Downton Abbey, whenever they added a new season) and I just recently did the first two seasons of Outlander... twice. The third season is coming later this year. On YouTube somebody posted years' worth of Bonanza, so that's enough to keep me entertained (still have quite a bit to go).

My current TV obsession is The Handmaid's Tale. It's 10 episodes, and at first you'd think that this is way more time than necessary to adapt the novel. And yeah, they're up to episode 7 (6 in Canada) and still haven't touched a couple of the major parts of the novel. The plan is to do more than one season, so they're really expanding on things.

Oddly enough, I haven't bothered watching much Star Trek on Netflix. It's been years - over a decade in some cases - since I last saw the show, yet I don't have any urgent need to see it. Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time on a Star Trek forum, read a lot of fanfic, and enjoy some good fan films.

 

[CivCube]

I find myself binging more when the episodes are discretely separate from each other. I can go entire seasons and not realize it when that happens.

When it's serialized, I often have to take breaks. There are often too many filler scenes that don't go anywhere interesting. Of course, it all depends on quality writing--the format isn't the culprit, it's the received knowledge and assumptions about formats that are the problem.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Just had a thought about your Star Trek watching: When you get around to the fan films, I recommend that you watch "Turnabout Intruder" (the TOS episode) right before "Pilgrim of Eternity" (the first Star Trek Continues fan film). The transition is almost seamless between the two.

Ditto "Mirror, Mirror" and "Fairest of Them All". "Lolani" is a standalone episode that isn't connected to any specific TOS episode.

 

[EgonSpengler]

So I've been watching Lucifer on Hulu, and was reminded of a Linda Holmes article, "Five Shows They Will Never Stop Making." Four of the shows she describes don't hit any particularly strong notes for me, but "The Adventures of Mr. Superabilities and Detective Ladyskeptic" nails me right between the eyes.

This is a drama series in which a sometimes mysterious, often super-confident but emotionally messy man who is oddly gifted in some way teams up with a more intellectual, buttoned-up, unconvinced woman who has had to prove her toughness and competence and is not prepared to take any guff from this guy or be impressed by his derring-do. She is not always a detective. She is very good at what she does also, but what she does is way more boring. "This isn't a game, Superabilities!" she says at some point, right before he pulls a rose out from behind her ear. She tears up and says, "My dad used to do that." Eventually, they will become allies. They may or may not kiss. At some point, they will have to go undercover and she will have to wear a fancy dress.

Castle; Elementary; The Mentalist; last year's short-lived Limitless. I think for me it hearkens back to Moonlighting, but probably more people remember The X-Files. I often have one of them in my rotation of shows. The man in these shows is a walking id, a fantasy of arrested development and perpetual adolescence being rewarded because he's just so gosh-darned brilliant. The woman is the ego, always attractive (because, hey, it's television), but she's not a manic pixie dream girl, and their relationship can be platonic. (If you're wondering, the super-ego isn't always personified in these shows, but can exist in the form of a supporting character who is a boss or authority figure of some kind.) Anyway, Lucifer isn't a bad iteration of this show. I like the cast, and the supernatural twist isn't one I remember seeing before, although I might be forgetting something.