MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[The Old Mixer]

Bob Newhart was also well-regarded, wasn't it? More so by critics than Happy Days, I'd have to imagine.

As for TV shows breaking out of episodic formulas...for much of TIH's run, Dallas was on two hours later on the same channel...weekly nighttime soap. I believe that was something of a new shiny in TV land at the time.

 

[Skipper]

Dallas was on two hours later on the same channel...weekly nighttime soap. I believe that was something of a new shiny in TV land at the time.

I know that Dallas premiered in the 1978, but I believe it is considered, thematically and aesthetically, a 80's tv show.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Which decade one wants to assign it to for simplicity isn't really important...we're talking about shows in relation to TIH, and Dallas was a contemporary of TIH for nearly all of the latter's run...and more specifically, both shows were in their second seasons at the point that we're reviewing.

 

[Christopher]

As for TV shows breaking out of episodic formulas...for much of TIH's run, Dallas was on two hours later on the same channel...weekly nighttime soap. I believe that was something of a new shiny in TV land at the time.

Well, in terms of taking something that had been common in daytime programming for decades (and on radio before then) and transposing it to prime time, yes. It was the first step in the evolution of prime-time drama toward greater serialization, a process that took a bigger step when Hill Street Blues came along and applied serialization to something less soapy. And of course Dallas pioneered the season-finale cliffhanger with "Who Shot J.R.?"

 

[Harvey]

Well, in terms of taking something that had been common in daytime programming for decades (and on radio before then) and transposing it to prime time, yes. It was the first step in the evolution of prime-time drama toward greater serialization, a process that took a bigger step when Hill Street Blues came along and applied serialization to something less soapy. And of course Dallas pioneered the season-finale cliffhanger with "Who Shot J.R.?"

What about prime time serials from the '60s like Peyton Place or Ben Casey? Dallas was influential, but it wasn't first.

 

[Christopher]

What about prime time serials from the '60s like Peyton Place or Ben Casey? Dallas was influential, but it wasn't first.

Ah, good point. Still, I think shows like that had been in decline for a while, though I could be wrong.

And there was a TV-nostalgia blog I used to follow (still archived, but dormant since 2012) that pointed out that in the '50s and '60s, it was the anthologies that were the classy shows while soaps were considered trashy and lowbrow in comparison, so purely episodic storytelling was considered more sophisticated than serialization, the complete opposite of the modern perception. That's why there were so many continuing series that tried for an anthology-like flavor, such as Hulk or other Fugitive-style shows, or such as Mission: Impossible or Quantum Leap where the lead characters actually adopted different identities every week. Although I think by the '80s, audiences and writers had started to get tired of the lack of consequences and continuity in episodic television and so that started to change. Now we've gone so far in the other direction that sometimes I think we need to backtrack a bit; too many shows use serialization as an excuse to put less effort into making the individual episodes complete and fulfilling in their own right.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think that the big difference with modern-style serialization involving short cable (or streaming service) seasons is that each season plays like a book telling a coherent story, with the individual episodes being chapters. Which is a very different animal from daytime soap / comic strip serialization that would have been derided as lowbrow in ages past, in which keeping stories and situations churning on endlessly took precedence over telling satisfying long-term stories.

Modern cable/streaming shows are an example of serialization in service to the story; daytime soaps are stories in service to serialization.

 

[Skipper]

There are modern tv show designed only for binge-watching. A friend of mine, for lack of free time, is trying to watch an episode of Daredevil every one or two week. Well, he told me that is an impossibile task. Every time he has to rewatch some bits of previously episodes to keep up (Netflix series don't have a recap sequence).

 

[Christopher]

Yes, all that is true, but even on weekly network shows, it's become harder for an individual episode to be something special in its own right because it's usually just a fragment of a larger whole. Like Supergirl's adaptation of the classic comic story "For the Man Who Has Everything" was pretty disappointing, because it had so many other ongoing storylines it had to address that the actual adaptation was rather cursory. I think there can be a better balance between the parts and the whole. For instance, Babylon 5 essentially pioneered the modern model of having each season be a complete, novelistic story arc that came to a climax in the season finale, yet each individual episode (or 2-parter, occasionally) focused on a specific piece of the storyline and told a complete tale within one episode. The stories in those episodes added up to a larger whole, advancing the narrative and having lasting effect on the status quo, but they also worked as full, self-contained stories in their own right. I feel that something like that, a balance of episodic and serial storytelling, is better than going too far in one direction or the other.


Speaking of Netflix and shows designed for binge-watching, what I find a bit paradoxical is that Netflix shows always have full-length opening title sequences -- indeed, significantly longer title sequences than were normal in the past even when such things were standard. I'd think that if one wanted to binge-watch a show, having to see the same opening sequence over and over once an hour would get tiresome. I wonder if the reason they do it is more technical than creative -- depending on one's system speed, the image quality can start out low and take a while to clear up, so maybe the long title sequences are meant to give the file a chance to load. Although that wouldn't explain title sequences that come after a teaser.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I wouldn't hold up the CW shows as an example of high-quality storytelling on an episodic or serial level. They're trying to straddle the line and doing neither terribly well. There are shows that do much more with less episodes. The Marvel Netflix shows would be examples of this that I know you're familiar with.

 

[Christopher]

I wouldn't hold up the CW shows as an example of high-quality storytelling on an episodic or serial level. They're trying to straddle the line and doing neither terribly well.

Supergirl was a CBS show in its first season.

 

[Harvey]

Speaking of Netflix and shows designed for binge-watching, what I find a bit paradoxical is that Netflix shows always have full-length opening title sequences -- indeed, significantly longer title sequences than were normal in the past even when such things were standard. I'd think that if one wanted to binge-watch a show, having to see the same opening sequence over and over once an hour would get tiresome. I wonder if the reason they do it is more technical than creative -- depending on one's system speed, the image quality can start out low and take a while to clear up, so maybe the long title sequences are meant to give the file a chance to load. Although that wouldn't explain title sequences that come after a teaser.

Netflix owns little of it's "original" content outright -- it's basically a network, not a studio. The studios that actually produce the content have to think about exploitation in syndication down the road (not to mention more immediate exploitation in any territories that Netflix doesn't control the rights for, as well as home video). Add to that the often contractual nature of billing and credits, and I'm not surprised that Netflix hasn't dropped main title sequences completely.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Supergirl was a CBS show in its first season.

I was generalizing about a group of related shows...you know what I was talking about.

 

[Christopher]

Netflix owns little of it's "original" content outright -- it's basically a network, not a studio. The studios that actually produce the content have to think about exploitation in syndication down the road (not to mention more immediate exploitation in any territories that Netflix doesn't control the rights for, as well as home video). Add to that the often contractual nature of billing and credits, and I'm not surprised that Netflix hasn't dropped main title sequences completely.

Even so, the Netflix original shows I've seen do tend to have more extended title sequences than shows on other outlets. I believe Sense8's was a full two minutes, though I haven't timed the others. That's why I wondered if there was a technical reason for it specific to the medium. Admittedly, though, the only live-action Netflix originals I've seen to date have been Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Marco Polo, and Sense8. But even Voltron: Legendary Defender has a 50-second title sequence (55 if you add the "A Netflix Original Series" card at the start), and that's fairly substantial for 23-minute episodes. Although Dreamworks Dragons: Race to the Edge has a 30-second title sequence, which is more typical, though longer than most network animated shows' title sequences these days.

Then again, Powers was also for a streaming service, and its title sequence was rather short. I don't seem to have watched any Hulu Originals, so I can't say what they do.

I was generalizing about a group of related shows...you know what I was talking about.

And I disagree with it. I feel Supergirl was better-written than its sibling shows on The CW. In fact, I'm kind of worried about whether the move to The CW will lead to a reduction in quality.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Supergirl is much closer in quality and style to its cousin shows that originated on the CW than it is to the short-season cable/streaming series that I was holding up as strong examples of serialization being used to tell a finite and coherent story.

 

[Christopher]

^Supergirl is much closer in quality and style to its cousin shows that originated on the CW than it is to the short-season cable/streaming series that I was holding up as strong examples of serialization being used to tell a finite and coherent story.

Which is still beside my point, because I'm not talking about whether entire serialized seasons can be good -- I'm talking about whether it's still possible for a single individual episode to be a complete, satisfying story in its own right rather than just one chapter in something bigger. Whether it's still possible for one installment out of a season to really stand out as something exceptional, like Hulk's "Married" or "Mystery Man" or Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever" or "The Inner Light." I suppose there have been some cases of serialized shows managing to have single standout episodes, like Bryan Fuller's "Company Man" in season 1 of Heroes, but that episode stood out specifically because it broke from the usual pattern of covering a bunch of parallel, largely unrelated subplots and instead devoted the whole hour to a single story thread.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Don't blame me for following your tangent.

Again...Supergirl isn't even the type of show that I was talking about, so how it handled a one-episode story is irrelevant in my book.

Look at the Netflix shows...are there individual episodes that stood out to you as telling a strong single-episode story within the larger season-long storyline?

Sure, purely episodic TV has its virtues. What I was attempting to do was address the difference between old-style daily soap serialization and current short-season cable/streaming serialization. Purely episodic shows are a third animal entirely.

 

[Christopher]

Don't blame me for following your tangent.

You followed the wrong part of it and completely missed the point. The tangent was yours.

Again...Supergirl isn't even the type of show that I was talking about, so how it handled a one-episode story is irrelevant in my book.

Yes, it's exactly the type of show we're talking about, because I'm not talking about quality, I'm talking about structure. I'm talking about the practice of structuring a television show in such a way that a single episode tells pieces of multiple parallel story threads rather than a single start-to-finish plot with maybe one or two smaller subplots. That is a structure that is followed just as much by Daredevil as by Supergirl, so their relative quality is completely irrelevant to the question I'm asking.

Sure, purely episodic TV has its virtues. What I was attempting to do was address the difference between old-style daily soap serialization and current short-season cable/streaming serialization. Purely episodic shows are a third animal entirely.

And that's not what I'm trying to talk about. I am trying to discuss whether we've gone so far toward serialization that we've lost the benefits of strong episodic stories.

 

[Skipper]

And that's not what I'm trying to talk about. I am trying to discuss whether we've gone so far toward serialization that we've lost the benefits of strong episodic stories.

Well, there a lot of procedurals that follow the episodic formula, right?

 

[The Old Mixer]

You followed the wrong part of it and completely missed the point. The tangent was yours.

The tangent that I'm talking about started when you quibbled over what network Supergirl's first season was on. This is the part where even trying to have a reasonable discussion becomes too flabbergasting to continue.

Yes, it's exactly the type of show we're talking about, because I'm not talking about quality, I'm talking about structure. I'm talking about the practice of structuring a television show in such a way that a single episode tells pieces of multiple parallel story threads rather than a single start-to-finish plot with maybe one or two smaller subplots. That is a structure that is followed just as much by Daredevil as by Supergirl, so their relative quality is completely irrelevant to the question I'm asking.

They're not at all the same type of show to my eye. Supergirl is a full-season (had a shortened season last time because it started late) network show that's superficially dabbling in serialized ongoing storylines...it doesn't even come close to a 10-to-13-episode, fully-serialized cable/streaming show. If you can't see or acknowledge the difference in format and storytelling style between a show like Supergirl or The Flash and a show like Daredevil and Jessica Jones, then we simply don't have enough common ground to continue this. We're not even speaking the same language.

FWIW, of all of the full-season network superhero shows that I'm following, in my estimation, only Agents of SHIELD comes close to the short-season cable model, and that's because it's been effectively splitting its seasons into tighter half-season story arcs the past couple of years.

And that's not what I'm trying to talk about. I am trying to discuss whether we've gone so far toward serialization that we've lost the benefits of strong episodic stories.

No storytelling style is going to survive being handled in a piss-poor manner. That's what Supergirl did. A better-crafted show could have given you a better adaptation of "For the Man Who Has Everything" within a serialized series framework.