Shows that work better WITHOUT continuity

Cafe Society
21

There are a lot of good responses. I agree that the classic sitcom can’t stand much continuity, given that it’s inherently more gag-driven than character-driven, a modern commedia dell’arte form with broad “types” getting into contrived circumstances. Putting that concept into a world where actions have consequences and characters exist from week to week with no reset button would turn it from silly comedy into the psychodrama of deeply damaged individuals trying to function in a world very unlike our own.

This I disagree with: TOS would have worked better with more continuity, because the core characters were strong enough to stand it. Kirk, Spock, and Bones could have been developed, and they could have been improved by that development, in contrast to the classic sitcom characters whose characterization was so gag-driven they flat-out wouldn’t work if they were developed.

Plus, the lack of continuity forces, as you say, a cookie-cutter approach to episode writing, where every episode is mostly similar and there is no chance of dramatic tension because the audience knows how everything must end.

Finally, forgetting every new thing from episode to episode makes writing more boring: No new elements can be introduced, no new solutions can be tried, just transporter, phaser, photon torpedo, shield, and maybe a few one-offs specific to that episode. It, again, forces lazy writing.

I agree the “X-Files” was terrible with its mythology, but I don’t think the sins of Chris Carter mean it wouldn’t have worked better as a pure monster of the week show. In other words, an “X-Files” without the myth arc it had would have been better, but an “X-Files” with a good myth arc would have been even better than that.

I also agree that DS9 was a good show, and a good show concept, but I still long for the “five-year mission”-style Trek with DS9-style continuity. Voyager should have been that, but instead we got Warp 10 salamanders.

I’m fully in favor of anthology shows. Some of my favorite shows are pure anthology shows, such as the original “Twilight Zone” and selected episodes of the 1980s revival and the original “The Outer Limits” and selected episodes of its revival and even cheesy favorites like “Tales From The Darkside”; they’re the short story compilations of the TV world.

22

I agree that Doctor Who would be better moving back to a more episodic format and toning down the big complicated story arcs, especially since they tend to leave so many plot holes in the end.

The first Doctor in his first episode deliberately kidnaps Barbara and Ian to keep them from telling other people about him and his granddaughter, and is stopped from killing a friendly wounded caveman who is slowing them down by his companions. The Dalek Invasion of Earth involves the Daleks ruthlessly occupying the Earth and shows life under an oppressive, violent alien regime, and ends with the Doctor abandoning his only family. The Second doctor ended his run by being forced to regenerate (ie executed) by the Time Lords. The Fourth Doctor had Genesis of the Daleks, who’s opening scene of soldiers being machine-gunned caused great controversy and who’s Nazi-based antagonists are anything but light hearted. The Fifth doctor had an absurd number of high body count episodes, and an episode where his young companion Ace gets brutally killed. The Sixth doctor opened his regeneration by trying to strangle his companion. Seven was a manipulative schemer who the other doctors don’t seem to like.

I don’t know how you can characterize Doctor Who as light-hearted fantasy, some episodes do that but a lot are just plain brutal, with dark themes on an individual or world-destroying level.

23

Louie has done some interesting things with the episodic sitcom genre. A character may be played by different actors (with completely different personalities) in different episodes. Or the same actor may appear in multiple roles in different episodes. Part of the undertone of surrealism that’s humming under the surface of the show.

Louis CK (star and creator) did start writing longer story arcs in later seasons; some worked (the Louie-auditions-for-the-Late-Show storyline) and others … not so much.

24

I think this illustrates a key point: if you’re going to have a story arc, plan it all out before you start filming any episodes. You can’t make it up as you go along but writers keep trying to.

25

I’m not so sure about this. Cheers, for example, was a classic sitcom, and it was certainly episodic, but it had some continuity to it: there were characters whose relationships with each other evolved over the course of one or more seasons.

And traditional episodic TV series (whether sitcoms or dramas) are the series of short stories featuring recurring characters (the way Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories worked, for example). I like this approach, because when I have a spare half an hour or an hour, I can be entertained with a complete, self-contained story; but there’s some familiarity already in place: the world and its recurring characters are already established, so the storytellers can spend that time actually telling this week’s story. I’m certainly not saying that’s the only way to do a TV series, but I wouldn’t want episodic TV to die away.

That said, to answer the thread title’s question, the kinds of shows that work best without any continuity (so that the episodes can be watched in essentially any order) would include shows that don’t make any pretense of sticking to reality (i.e. cartoons like South Park), and shows where each episode focuses on a different job done or case solved by the main characters (many mystery/detective shows work this way, but a SF show like Star Trek could too).

26

Good example. I’d add that while family sitcoms tend to be pretty episodic, if children play a major role then a show that runs for more than a few years is going to have to deal with them growing up. The major exception would be animated family sitcoms like The Simpsons, where Maggie can be a baby forever. If it were a live action show, she’d be pushing 30 by now and her pacifier shtick would just be weird.

27

Just as with “X Files,” I think “Supernatural” is better when the Winchesters are battling vampires, ghosts, werewolves, etc., and weaker when there’s a season-long plot.

28

Poignantly demonstrated by the Thermians in Galaxy Quest, who suffered along with the castaways in their helpless situation.

29

Erm, I think you mean Adric?

30

People decry “monster of the week” episodes in a lot of shows, but I rather like them. I don’t mind a little continuity thrown in with it, but I like being able to just watch a show. I think most shows that have them are better because of it.

And I do agree that South Park is better without continuity. It led to them not being able to actually joke about current things. If they could have mixed the two, it could still work. But they seemed to have trouble doing so. And the parts with continuity weren’t as funny–since they were tied to things that seemed funny at the beginning of the season.

So far, the best episodes were the first episodes of the continuity seasons, where the ideas were fresh.

31

I think we should distinguish also between arc-shows that have individual plots, but also have an over-arching story independent (or connected) to the individual story (like X-files) and “mini-movie” shows, where each individual episode is only a part of the longer story, such as Murder in the First. With shows like that, there’s no point in watching any one episode without the rest, because that is like coming into the middle of a two hour theatrical movie and watching 10 minutes.

Also, look at the difference between Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which had a series of independent “MotW” stories, and Night Stalker, which took Kolchak and put him in a mytharc universe battle of good and evil (and failed to make a coherent or even interesting story).

32

Adric was killed, but not brutally, nor soon enough.

33

I think crime dramas work best without continuity. NCIS and Law and Order in particular are two shows where I prefer a case of the week to the longer arc episodes.

X-files, as plenty of people have already mentioned, could have had a better story arc, but it just got ridiculous at the end. If a few people are running a secret government cabal to keep knowledge of aliens away from the public, that’s a conspiracy. By the end of the last season it seems like it was the exact opposite, with everybody in the whole world against a small handful of good guys. At that point it ceased to be even remotely believable, much less entertaining.

34

OTOH, no plan survives contact with the enemy. In Babylon 5, for example, originally Talia Winters was supposed to have Lyta’s arc, but the actress quit. Sinclair was originally supposed to be the only “The One”, but he got ill and couldn’t handle full seasons, so Sheridan took some of his story and the ‘all three of you are The One’ thing came up to cover it. The Minbari civil war was supposed to take place in S5, but they weren’t sure they would get a S5, so they compressed S4 and that story to fit it in, then didn’t have much to do for S5. Ivonava was supposed to be the captain in S5 but got another job when it looked like S5 wouldn’t happen, so they wrote in a new captain. General Hauge was supposed to be a recurring character, but the actor chose to do Star Wars so he was killed offscreen.

You do need an overall plan of some sort, but there’s a lot that will change from the initial version to the final.

And on the Doctor Who one, yes it was Adric not Ace that I was thinking of.

35

One thing I liked about Law and Order is that the episodes would stand alone, but there was continuity going on in the background. Characters would remember their old interactions, and sometimes an old character or case would turn up again in the current one. You didn’t need to have the history to get the current episode, but it was nice for anyone following along.

36

Supernatural’s been on so long that it went from a tight, planned story arc with monsters of the week in-between, to messy story arcs that seemingly have no goal at all. As I understand it, seasons 1-5 were created by producer Eric Kripke with a plan in mind, but ever since he left they just seem to be winging it. And it’s still going and going…

37

The Closer. I really loved the individual cases (enough to watch every ep, in spite of problems), but I didn’t find Chief Johnson’s personal life terribly entertaining, and the more serious it was, the less entertaining I found it. I understood that the whole “Shootin’ Newton” arc was a commentary on a real life problem, but I didn’t think it was well-written, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. After a while, I started DVRing those eps so I could fast-forward through the Shootin’ Newton stuff. I also was not interested in her wedding, or her relationship with her parents. I thought Kyra Sedgwick communicated the character beautifully, so that I pretty much could have guessed what her relationship with her parents would be like without needing so much of their presence.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

38

Yeah. I really liked not knowing too much about the character’s home lives, and being expected to fill in those details based on conversational clues, and the characterizations. I’m glad, for examples, there were no protracted scenes with Lenny fighting with his ex-wives. That really would have detracted from his character for no purpose. It may have been good drama in the moment, but it would have contributed nothing to the story.

It’s also why the show lasted so long. They could replace characters easily. And that is realistic. People do come and go in the jobs they have on that show. By contrast, it’s completely unrealistic that Olivia Benson stayed at SVU as a detective as long as she did, or that she got her promotions conveniently when the squad needed new leadership, and so she stayed where she is. But because the show is so much about her character, as opposed to being about the SVU squad, it probably would fail without her. Unfortunately, it may also fail with her as the Benson well runs dry.

I think I saw the writing on the wall for L&O: TOS when the arc about Van Buren’s cancer started. The very intimate story seemed to be there to build to a big finish, with an emotional final episode, which it did.

39

The SVU episodes that involve Benson are the ones that I had in mind, particularly the William Lewis story arc. I think the show would have been better without those episodes.

40

And I’m exactly the opposite. I watched The Closer as a “romance with detective interruptions” as Dorothy Sayers says of my favorite book. In fact, IIRC, when I first started watching the show I was binge-watching on Amazon, and watched only those episodes that had some kind of development in the romantic storyline. Only much later did I go back and pick up the non-romance episodes that I had skipped.

My example of a show that works better without continuity is Quantum Leap. The few times they added some continuity, like the evil leaper, I thought it distracted from the premise. I started watching the new show Timeless, which has a related premise, but gave up because of the ongoing story arc that I found confusing and distracting. I’d prefer just to have the characters going back and visiting the different time periods without the big story arc (although of course I wouldn’t mind the inclusion of a romantic story arc).