Futurama has had a good run with the episodic format. But almost all the examples of really good TV I can think of are serialized. This might be because the best writers migrate to cable, where audiences expect serialization, or it might be that the episodic format squelches true creativity by imposing a too-restrictive formula.
I'd say it's the former. There were plenty of great TV writers in the '50s and '60s who favored anthologies and episodic series. But these days, serialization is popular so most of the best writers are doing serials.
And again, it's a huge mistake to define it as a matter of two non-overlapping opposites.
Most episodic shows have some serialized arcs, and
most serials have a somewhat episodic structure. Look at the show I just finished watching a few minutes ago,
Fringe. It's very much driven by its overall saga, the continuing drama of the characters from week to week and the overarching cosmic conflict that's behind everything that happens, but it's still structured as a case-of-the-week series, where the individual cases investigated week by week are usually consequences of the larger problem. Or look at something like
House, which is a traditional "client-based" format where each episode is driven by a different guest character and his or her problems, but those episodic plots serve to reflect on the main characters' ongoing development and often prompt decisions that affect the larger arc. Or
Eureka or
White Collar, where every episode focuses on a different problem to be solved, but there's the usual ongoing character development from week to week, and each broadcast season has an overall story arc that simmers underneath most of the season and comes to a head in the finale.
So most shows these days work on both an episodic level and a serial level. It's just a question of which side the balance tends toward. I can hardly think of any current shows that are
purely episodic with no serialized elements. Most of the
Law & Order shows came pretty close, but even they often had developing threads, like in
L&O: Los Angeles where the death of the original lead cop and the transition of Alfred Molina's character from prosecutor to detective had ramifications that were followed up on in subsequent episodes. You just don't find anything today like, say,
Mission: Impossible, where the team could pull a scam that involved exposing their faces on global television one week and yet still be totally anonymous the next week because every episode completely ignored what had come before. That could work in the era before home video and the Internet, but today audiences have a more big-picture view of the shows they watch, and so continuity is more obligatory. So pretty much all episodic shows have serial aspects.
And while there's a nonzero number of pure serials -- shows where all the storylines are running in parallel over multiple episodes, like
Heroes or
Lost -- I daresay the majority of serialized shows still take a semi-episodic, problem-of-the-week approach like
Fringe or
Battlestar Galactica, where each episode has its own self-contained sub-story that either runs alongside the ongoing arcs or serves as a component of them. Because that's a format that makes sense for weekly television, or really for any installment-driven format. It's good to have each installment be a complete thing of its own on at least one level, rather than just being a fragment with no resolution.
So talking about this as if there were some sort of sharp divide between episodic and serial shows -- it's a fantasy. It's got nothing to do with how television storytelling actually works today. Virtually all shows blend episodic and serial aspects; they just differ in the balance. And that's why it's absurd to say that serial storytelling is better than episodic storytelling. That's like saying that flour is better than butter, or that violins are better than trumpets. They're both ingredients in a recipe, and there are a lot of different ways to combine them.
