Many years ago, there was little carry-over from one episode to another. In fact, the joke was that if Little Timmy broke a leg by next week’s episode he no longer had a cast.
Nowadays however many shows have narrative arcs that extend over many episodes. Do you think this is due to the popularity of DVRs and streaming services? In the 70s for example showrunners couldn’t count on viewers seeing all episodes – if you had a social engagement on the night your favorite show aired, you missed your show.
Even given that most people can assure they won’t miss an episode of a show, it seems to me that shows are written with the idea that many viewers will binge-watch. That is, even with a “Previously On” blurb, the presumption is that you’ve seen the previous episodes recently enough that you remember what happened and don’t need to be reminded of some important plot elements.
Maybe it’s because I’m probably 30 years older than the target audience, but I found that I had to binge-watch Mr. Robot to have a clue on what was going on.
Undoubtedly. I was watching a documentary about ST: Deep Space 9. They talked about how the producers were hesitant to write story arcs that lasted several episodes. Because what happens is people miss a few episodes then they lose all interest because they don’t know what’s going on.
That’s why DS9 gained in popularity once streaming became a thing. I believe they said DS9 went from being the worst rated Star Trek to the top rated Star Trek after streaming happened.
That’s what I discovered with Mad Men. When it was in its original run and was getting massive praise I attempted to start watching it. The problem was I was trying to start in the middle of season 3 or 4, and I had no idea what was going on, and didn’t keep watching. Later when I got Netflix I gave it another chance, and found I enjoyed it much more when I was able to start watching the series from the beginning.
It can’t be entirely because of DVR’s and streaming - the DVR was introduced in 1999 and Netflix didn’t introduce streaming until 2007 but there were prime-time dramas* with story arcs as far back as the '80s and '90s. I recently re-watched LA Law (1986-1994) on a streaming service, and every season had missing episodes**. And although that show did have a “case of the week” , I was still a bit lost when there were missing episodes because there were multiple arcs and the “case of the week” was only one of them.
The change might have had something to do with VCRs, which became popular sometime in the '80s.
* I specify prime-time because soap operas have always had them.
I’ve noticed with many bingeable shows these days, they seem to be written with a mini-cliffhanger at the end of each episode to draw you into the next one. The new Reacher on Prime video is a good example. A couple nights I was only going to watch one ep and I ended up watching 2 or 3.
Excellent question - I have thought the same thing myself. In addition to more coherent plot arcs, the “mini cliff hanger” @solost mentions also seems common.
I would also add that shows seem to be much more complex - something related to but not necessarily identical to the more detailed/longer lasting plot arcs.
I love it - I used to find TV boring for the most part. Some of that was no doubt due to lesser overall quality in most older productions, but I also find that on-demand TV improves the experience so much when, like me, your memory sucks (especially when I’m tired and may fall asleep mid-episode since I only watch TV at night). I can re-watch something I missed or forgot, and keep watching more before I forget the thread.
Another thing that is great for us old folks is subtitles. Now I “hear” every word that is said, and that enhances my appreciation as well.
So much this! There’s so many episodes of shows where nothing happens until the last couple mins. I’ve learned to force myself to turn off a show mid-episode if I’m getting bored, and get on with my life. Otherwise if I get to the end it means a whole 'nother hour (or 6) of binge-ing.
We were pretty early getting a VCR – 1981 IIRC. But unless it was an absolutely crucial episode we had to miss, we rarely recorded a show we liked. It was too much a PITA. I can’t imagine binge-watching a show on VCR, since you’d likely have to keep swapping tapes around.
As to soap operas having story arcs, I was reminded of my MIL who worked full-time and had her “story” she liked. If she had a day off, she’d watch. She always said it felt like she’d hardly missed anything in the weeks she hadn’t seen it.
I would think that streaming in general has had a much, much bigger effect rather than binging. Like with streaming, shows can be written for audiences which would normally be too small for a traditional TV network show. This allows a streaming platform to have a variety of shows that each appeal to a small demographic. Broadcast shows have to attract a major audience to generate enough ad revenue, so they tend to be more broadly written. But streaming can have a show that appeals to a very small market, like model train hobbyists, that wouldn’t be profitable on broadcast TV. There may be differences in a streaming show that is designed to be released once-a-week versus all at once, but I think that pales in comparison to the changes that come from having the show be streaming in the first place. I’m not sure if there’s really any difference in the writers room of a streaming show depending on whether it’s planned to be bingeable or not.
Oh, I didn’t mean that VCR’s had anything to do with binge-watching , just that VCR’s probably were involved in the switch from self-contained episodes to those containing arcs. You might have rarely recorded an episode you had to miss but it was possible to do so and it hadn’t been before.
The biggest change I’ve noticed is that seasons are shorter and there are vastly fewer filler episodes.
Twenty years ago, shows with 22-26 episodes to fill often had a season-long plot arc, but there’d be tons of “story of the week” shows that spent just a minute or two (or nothing) on anything relating to it. The rest was gone or irrelevant at the end of the hour. Now those shows are just 8-10 episodes long and much more focused.
The classic example of that being The X-Files, which was divided between the “mythology” episodes and the “monster of the week” episodes. Ironically enough, a lot of people (me included) said that they enjoyed the monster of the week episodes more, in part because the mythology ended up being so convoluted and confusing.
One problem with season long arcs in shows with a 26 episode season is, it’s hard to keep up the energy. If you can’t do the great big confrontation with the bad guy until episode 26, you often end up spinning your wheels a lot, and somewhere around episodes 12-15, it starts to become a bit of a slog. I found that with some of the later seasons of Buffy, where you know the apocalyptic battle is coming at the end of the season, but we’ve got to waste a lot of time on other stuff before we get there. Usually the season would start off exciting, as we were introduced to the new baddie, then get kind of dull and repetitive in the middle, and finally ramp up again in the last two or three episodes.
Compact seasons of 6, 8, or even 12 episodes don’t have to do nearly as much work to fill out their time.
Yeah, the 26-episode season was based around production schedules and airing schedules and definitely not the creative constraints of “how much time do we want to spend resolving a major plot” and shows that weren’t purely episodic clearly suffered for it. You can’t just leave things hanging for 15 episodes in the middle, but you also can’t really make serious progress on the season arc in that time, because there’s only so much that can happen. Stories generally have a 3-act or a 5-act structure. An 18-act story is borderline incomprehensible (or repetitive) and a 5-episode act is boring.
I’m not sure how much of this is due to binge-watching specifically (i.e. watching multiple episodes in one sitting, and/or going through them much more often than once a week), and how much is due simply to more people being able to watch every episode in order (thanks to VCRs and DVRs and streaming and etc.)
For what it’s worth, shows that were originally broadcast on network TV didn’t just have to remind viewers what happened last week; they also sometimes remind viewers what happened before the commercial break.
I think that’s a pretty big factor. In Ye Olde Days of broadcast TV, there was big money in syndication. And that meant there was a heavy emphasis on self-contained episodes, so that viewers watching it in syndicated re-runs could drop in and out of the series at any time. That meant syndicators could freely run episodes in any order, and move them around the daily broadcast schedule. and rotate series on and off the air entirely.
On the other hand…I personally didn’t care much for Babylon 5 when I watched the first-run episodes. But then TNT started re-running them, in order, every weekday. And I enjoyed the series a lot more. Watching the episodes so close together really kept the plotlines fresh in my mind, and being able to see complex plot-arcs play out in only a week of real-time viewing, instead of over a couple of months was a very different viewing experience.
I find binge watching difficult. I have a tough time sitting through a 2 hour movie in a movie theater…my attention span is shot. So sometimes I’ll stream free on Pluto or Tubi and I kinda like the little breaks to use the toilet or grab a soda, like in the old days.
On the other hand years ago, I was interested in “Gold Rush,” a program about unemployed guys heading up to Alaska, hoping to hit it big. It got frustrating because there was so much regurgitation that I actually sat with pen and paper. It began with a recap of last time, so that wasn’t new material. Then it previewed the bit coming up after the commercials. After commercials the new part started. Before the next commercials, it previewed what was coming up after the break; I wouldn’t count that, because we’re going to see it again (in a form that isn’t cut up snippets) so I would be counting it twice. After the next break it reviewed where’d we left off (doesn’t count because we already saw it). At the end of it all, figuring in commercials, there was something along the lines of 20 minutes of the hour that had new material.
In part, I think they were trying to pick up even people who tuned in late. But I also think they were doling it out with an eye dropper to maximize profits or whatever. That got brutal and that was one of the reasons I gave up on it.
Now we have Discovery+. There’s that “space” for a commercial break but we paid to skip it. It’s not nearly as redundant as “Gold Rush” was, either.
I think binge watching can also be watching the show over several days or weeks. It doesn’t have to be in one, long sitting. It might be similar to how you read a book. You may take a break from time to time, but you generally are only reading that book. You’re not reading 5 books at the same time. It can be the same with binging. If you watch 1 or 2 episodes on a daily basis until you finish the show, I would still consider that binging. The show would have that long, consistent feel even if it took you a few weeks to watch the whole thing by just watching 1 or 2 episodes a night.
I suppose. I’ve posted elsewhere that I miss the old days where you got one episode per week and you digested that, anticipated what might happen next, and so on. I guess I could go back to “allowing” myself one episode per week. It’s funny how some shows wait till they’re complete to drop 100% of the episodes.