I mis-remembered. It was Great Lakes Avengers. But still close by.
Spoilers Hawkeye -Discussion Thread
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I mis-remembered. It was Great Lakes Avengers. But still close by.
TV shows only had seasons that long because it was financially beneficial to the network. It was easy to program a weekly schedule if you knew you had this show for half the year to air new episodes and sell advertising based on that schedule. Then once you got to syndication the magic number was '100 episodes' in order to sell the show's syndication rights.
In the new streaming of today that is completely irrelevant. It makes more sense to tighten it down and if you have a show using practical or CG effects it makes even more sense to keep the count lower. As to 'secondary character exploration' they'll probably end up on their own show or part of another show if Disney+'s handling of the Mandalorian character is any example to judge by
I mean we know Echo is getting a show. Fisk will probably be a part of that or something else inside the MCU and Yelena is obviously being planned to go forward as part of the MCU.
Maybe the LARPers will end up on Damage Control or something lol.
In the new streaming of today that is completely irrelevant. It makes more sense to tighten it down and if you have a show using practical or CG effects it makes even more sense to keep the count lower. As to 'secondary character exploration' they'll probably end up on their own show or part of another show if Disney+'s handling of the Mandalorian character is any example to judge by
I mean we know Echo is getting a show. Fisk will probably be a part of that or something else inside the MCU and Yelena is obviously being planned to go forward as part of the MCU.
Maybe the LARPers will end up on Damage Control or something lol.
TV shows originally had long seasons because there were no reruns. On radio, a show had to do new episodes year-round, and that was true of early TV as well. The norm was to do a series for about 9 months' worth, between 35 and 40 episodes, and then do a different fill-in series in the summer. Even in the early '60s, it was still common for a season to be 30-some episodes long.
Once networks figured out that reruns could get decent ratings, they reduced the number of episodes per year. I saw it claimed once that Star Trek was part of the reason for this, because its syndication package was smaller than usual, yet its reruns still got good ratings even on repeat viewings. Although the trend to shorter seasons began in the mid-60s, so I'm not sure that holds up. Anyway, shows in the '70s tended to have seasons in the 25-30 range, and 26 episodes, half a year, was pretty standardized by the '80s (although with midseason reruns so that those 26 episodes were spread out over a traditional 9-month season). Then in the '90s, the standard went down to 22, to the point where the Trek shows were just about the only ones still doing 26-episode seasons.
It would be more fun if the X-Men were based in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
No - he was an assasian for SHIELD (if they needed someone removed from the field). This is confirmed as in this very series he tells the story he was sent to kill Natasha Romanov (the Black Widow); but didn't take that shot because 'she looked like she wanted out'; and he was right, and that's how she came to eventually work for SHIELD herself and develop and working and a friendship with Clint as they were effectively in the exact same line of work.
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It would be more fun if the X-Men were based in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
Heh, I get that.
I meant all of the Disney+ shows, not just Hawkeye.
This is pretty standard for all action heroes, it's the kind of thing you just have to overlook.
The only reason I talked about her going to LA was because it follows her arc from the comics, which eventually had her split off from Clint and set herself up as a PI in LA, and then become a member of the West Coast Avengers.
I think a big part of the cut in seasons' episode counts was more shows doing one arc all season. When season long arcs started becoming the norm, a lot of shows seemed to struggle to keep their stories going for 20+ episodes.
According to the Marvel Wiki they were based out of Detroit and Milwaukee at different points.
That's the value of having the arc just be a background element that occasionally comes to the fore, rather than the sole, single plotline. Lower Decks' Pakled arc in season 2 is an example. Discovery is doing something kind of like that this season -- while every episode's plot has been a reaction to the overarching threat, that threat is just hovering in the background so that the individual stories are pretty episodic. It's a good way of striking a balance between episodic and serial plotting. (I strongly suspect that DSC season 2 was meant to work that way as well, given the "search for seven signals" treasure-hunt plot and the way the first few episodes in that arc were pretty self-contained, just using the signals as a catalyst. But after the showrunners were canned a few episodes in, it got more serialized.)
Meh. Once the super heroes and super villains start popping up with the frequency we've gotten to in the MCU, who can keep track? Especially when you're a little kid hellbent on your super hero training.
Yeah, that is a nice way to give us an arc with some more stand alone elements. The way NCIS used to do their arcs, and Bones did theirs, kind of bugs me, they would just randomly throw in a handful of arc episodes over the course of a multiple seasons. The worst part is they wouldn't do any kind of recaps, so I'd spend the majority of the episodes trying to remember what the hell happened in the last arc episode, which aired about a dozen episodes back. NCIS doesn't drag their arcs out as long, and actually does recaps now, so it's a lot easier to follow their arcs now.
I agree with your sentiment, but the idea of a "filler" episode wasn't really there in the sense that you are thinking of. The way it used to be was that even with a season long arc, most episodes were stand alone in the they were a self-contained story that only sometimes contained elements that furthered the season arc. I like the idea of a season that contains more than just the main story--one that has some stand alone episodes. Even if those episodes don't move the main arc along they do exactly what you are saying which is to further develop the character, and be entertaining. Where Netflix's Marvel series missed the mark was to try to have all the episodes focus on the main story whereas it would have been a stronger move to have a third or more of the episodes as self-contained stories that developed the characters.
EDIT: I didn't realize this idea had already been brought forward.
It's a very old debate, and people still cling the the misconception that a "filler" episode is anything that doesn't move the meta-plot-arc further along the track. That always seemed to me like such a narrow, asinine viewpoint as it typically by definition excludes any and all character focused stories. To me those are the MOST important parts of an arc structure precisely because an arc isn't (or rather shouldn't be) about some arbitrary big bad being defeated, but how the characters grow and change (or indeed, regress) in the process.
A filler episode is an episode that is just there to eat up time on a schedule. It's "filling" out the episode order, and nothing more. No larger plot, no world building, no lore drops, no character insight or progression. It may or may not be entertaining regardless as this label should not be considered a value judgment, but that's just what it is. As such, in reality there are almost NEVER true filler episodes in modern serialised shows. There's usually *something* there.
Side note that isn't about anything major or even that significant that isn't in the trailer, but I'll put it in spoiler tags just on general principle: -
Another random thing that have occurred to me while re-watching the previous episodes; -
Was the Stane Tower thing a weird sideways acknowledgment of the Jeff Bridges/Coen Brothers' 'True Grit' connection? (That also had Steinfeld acting opposite Thanos himself, incidentally . . . AND that rando Asgardian actor playing Loki now that I think about it!)
A filler episode is an episode that is just there to eat up time on a schedule. It's "filling" out the episode order, and nothing more. No larger plot, no world building, no lore drops, no character insight or progression. It may or may not be entertaining regardless as this label should not be considered a value judgment, but that's just what it is. As such, in reality there are almost NEVER true filler episodes in modern serialised shows. There's usually *something* there.
Side note that isn't about anything major or even that significant that isn't in the trailer, but I'll put it in spoiler tags just on general principle: -
I don't know why it literally just not occurred to me, but I'm fairly certain the end of NWH is going to coincide with Hawkeye. Yelena mentioned wanting to go see "the new improved Statue of Liberty" so it can be assumed that the fight hasn't happened there yet, plus by the end of the movie it's clearly Christmas time. I doubt it'll be addressed directly, it's just neat to have two Marvel stories explicitly take place side by side like this. I know AoS also kinda did it with both Thor 2 & Winter Soldier, but this feels MUCH tighter, especially because of you-know-who.
Another random thing that have occurred to me while re-watching the previous episodes; -
Was the Stane Tower thing a weird sideways acknowledgment of the Jeff Bridges/Coen Brothers' 'True Grit' connection? (That also had Steinfeld acting opposite Thanos himself, incidentally . . . AND that rando Asgardian actor playing Loki now that I think about it!)
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I loved SG1 because it had many stand alone episodes that still continued to build on the world and refer to previous episodes. Learning Curve was a stand alone episode, but it introduced naquadah generators. Spirits was a standalone episode, but it introduced Trinium, but also showed the pressure from elsewhere in the government to get stuff done (see also Enigma, Bane etc), and Show and Tell referred to the episode too.
Arcs were run over years, not a season, they came up and down as time went on -- look at say Apophis, he was in the background throughout, but he cropped up in several key episodes. Maybourne arcs and character growth , Jacob Carter, Tealc's family, etc. Sometimes the arcs overlapped, sometimes they didn't. Characters that worked well were continued, characters that didn't (Anise) were dropped. You end up with a tapestry of episodes referring to previous ones, of characters who change as time goes on, of technology that's introduced and that continues to be used. Most of DS9 was similar.
Arcs were run over years, not a season, they came up and down as time went on -- look at say Apophis, he was in the background throughout, but he cropped up in several key episodes. Maybourne arcs and character growth , Jacob Carter, Tealc's family, etc. Sometimes the arcs overlapped, sometimes they didn't. Characters that worked well were continued, characters that didn't (Anise) were dropped. You end up with a tapestry of episodes referring to previous ones, of characters who change as time goes on, of technology that's introduced and that continues to be used. Most of DS9 was similar.
One other way some shows handle arcs, which I like, is where we have a standalone A plot, but then we have a B plot that ties back into the arc, Discovery is kind of doing that this season, and the first episode of The Witcher's second season was kind of like that, the Geralt/Ciri plot was fairly standalone, but then the other storylines tied into the arc more.
My least favorite approach is when they have episodic cases-of-the-week, but every one of them coincidentally resonates with exactly what the main characters are going through in their ongoing arc that particular week. Lucifer was particularly blatant about it (but then, it was blatant about everything). Fringe did it so much that the characters literally commented on it and mused that it might reflect some kind of cosmic resonance. It's not only very contrived and coincidental, but it tends to make the main characters come off as self-absorbed, less interested in how they can help solve others' problems than in how others' problems can help them work out their own issues.
Roswell was probably a SHIELD base. We might already have seen it in Captain Marvel, unless my memory is skipping beats again.
According to the MCU Wiki, the only time Roswell has appeared is in the Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week comic.
I don't mind if that happens occasionally, but when they do it every single episode, it does get kind of annoying.
What we saw in Captain Marvel was Project Pegasus, the same facility that we saw get blown up in the first scene of The Avengers.
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I'm glad the MCU hasn't used Roswell. I'm so sick of Roswell. When I was a kid in the '70s, and gullible enough to be into UFOs, Roswell was not part of the lore; it had been just one of many incidents in the mass hysteria immediately following the Kenneth Arnold "flying disc" sightings of 1947, the reaction of an American populace conditioned in WWII to watch the skies for enemy aircraft and craving a focus for that free-floating hypervigilance. But the incident was quickly forgotten once it turned out to be just parts of a weather balloon, just one more false alarm out of many. So the UFO lore that formed over the next three decades was about all sorts of other things, including the Bermuda Triangle and the Nazca lines and hidden North Pole bases and just a wide variety of nonsense. (Note that Close Encounters of the Third Kind, designed to be a thorough overview of the UFO lore of its day, contains not one word about Roswell.)
But some UFO "researcher" dredged up the story and published a book about it around 1980, and its popularity was probably boosted by its resemblance to the plot of the contemporaneous movie Hangar 18 (which is often misremembered as being about Roswell). And then it later got popularized further by things like The X-Files and the Roswell High books and the TV series based on them, not to mention DS9's "Little Green Men" and Futurama's "Roswell That Ends Well." And by the late '90s, this one story had taken over the entirety of the UFO mythos. Practically every single damn UFO story of the past 20-25 years has been Roswell this and Area 51 that, and maybe the odd dose of crop circles here and there, and UFO lore today is just so much more boring as a result. It's always been stupid, but it used to have some actual creativity to it.
But some UFO "researcher" dredged up the story and published a book about it around 1980, and its popularity was probably boosted by its resemblance to the plot of the contemporaneous movie Hangar 18 (which is often misremembered as being about Roswell). And then it later got popularized further by things like The X-Files and the Roswell High books and the TV series based on them, not to mention DS9's "Little Green Men" and Futurama's "Roswell That Ends Well." And by the late '90s, this one story had taken over the entirety of the UFO mythos. Practically every single damn UFO story of the past 20-25 years has been Roswell this and Area 51 that, and maybe the odd dose of crop circles here and there, and UFO lore today is just so much more boring as a result. It's always been stupid, but it used to have some actual creativity to it.
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