I’ve noticed that in TV criticism circles two ideas really have a hold on TV reviewers.
–Serialized drama (where shows have plot arcs over several episodes or seasons) is inherently better than episodic drama (where plots are neatly resolved by the end of the hour).
–Single camera comedies with no laugh track (like The Office or 30 Rock) are inherently superior to three camera sitcoms, whether with a live audience or canned laughter.
Where did these two ideas pop up and why? Are they correct? How do critics reconcile these ideas with the classic episodic dramas and three camera sitcoms?
IMO…
There are good examples of non-arc dramas and three-camera sitcoms, and there are poor examples. I loved Max Headroom when it was on, and those stories were resolved in an hour. I loved Twin Peaks and Lost, and those were long arcs. NCIS usually resolves the cases in single episodes, but there have been some interesting arcs.
I’m a fan of single-camera shoots. That might be because I have a single DV camera, a single ‘silent’ super-16 camera, and a single ‘silent’ regular 16mm camera. (NB: ‘Silent’ means the camera is silent so that it can be used while recording sound.) There has been neither the need nor the budget for multiple cameras on the films I’ve worked on.
I think the critics see ‘older’ methods of telling a story as outdated. They like the new, shiny things. So they see single-camera sitcoms as more ‘cinematic’ than three-camera ones, and they like longer stories nowadays more than they like episodes that wrap everything up.
There is more opportunity for emotional investment in serialized dramas than there is in episodic drama.
The Larry Sanders Show created the single-camera snobbery by being a pioneer that was also the best of the genre, still to this day. (ETA: It premiered almost 20 years ago, so I don’t think the idea that they’re revered because they’re shiny and new holds water.)
I’ve never seen that. In general, there is a preference for one-camera comedies, but that has nothing to do with the style and everything to do with the quality (though one-camera gives a chance to do a much greater variety of jokes – quick cuts and many locations; three-camera is limited to one location per scene).
Modern TV dramas all have story arcs to some degree or another. Audiences expect them (and like them).
I think in the first case, it’s because serialized drama is still comparatively rare. Networks don’t want serialized dramas, for the most part. They want dramas (and sitcoms) that can be played in syndication and in any order. They also want shows that new viewers can watch and follow, even if they’re watching the eighth episode of season 6. For a long time, only cable networks would take a chance on serial dramas, but that also means the shows would have better production values because they’d have more money, plus they weren’t creating 22 episodes per/season, so they had more time to work on crafting the stories. And they didn’t have pressure from the network to dumb things down, or get told they would need to change something halfway through the season that could totally fuck up what plan the producer might have had. So the serial drama goes hand-in-hand with other policies that promote quality television, and thus, critics prefer it over episodic drama.
It was a revelation when it debuted in 1992 on HBO.
IFC started running the entire series this month, which is fantastic because the complete run hasn’t been available since the show ended in 98. The DVDs --which didn’t come out for years and years – only had “selected favorite episodes.” IFC is now showing three episodes per week, debuting at 11pm ET Monday through Wednesday and replayed throughout the week.
Unfortunately, they’re running them in shuffled order. I have no idea why, as it actually takes effort to shuffle something properly. They’ve gone through 12 of the 13 episodes from the first season so far, and Monday is the last one from season one. (Episode 9. Fuckers!)
If you like the format of single-camera sitcoms, I suggest giving it a shot starting this Tuesday. Tuesday and Wednesday are the first two episodes of season 2, so maybe they’ll do the rest in order.
Serialized vs. episodic drama goes back to a definite point – the 1960s drama The Fugitive. The last few episodes of the show were a definite story arc. Richard Kimball found out where the one-armed man was, tracked him down, got a confession (overheard by Lt. Girard) and ended up getting his wrongful conviction reversed. The End.
The audience loved it. Unfortunately, it completely destroyed the show’s value as a rerun and in syndication. No one would watch it again, they knew Kimball would escape whatever trap he was in, and would eventually win.
Some years later, Dallas and Dynasty came along, and proved that audiences would watch a serial drama week after week, if the story lines were compelling and the show had high production values. Unfortunately, both shows were also miserable failures in syndication.
Meanwhile, you’ll notice that Bonanza and Gunsmoke, which are pretty much the epitome of episodic drama, are STILL in syndication a half-century after the episodes first aired.
And so the critics decided. Serial dramas provide better storylines and more character development, but the industry keeps them down because they aren’t as profitable as episodic dramas.
Why are novels generally preferred to short stories? Why are plays considered great works, but skits are not? Why do museums show more oil paintings than drawings and watercolors?
In every case, the answer is the same. Although great examples of each art form can certainly be found, and some individuals become known as creative geniuses for sketches and short stories, the “greater” art forms simply allow more scope for the artist to develop a creative vision. A wider range of effects can be produced with oils than with watercolors or pen and ink. Long novels can develop characters and themes more fully and can create more complicated and involving plots.
Serialized dramas are to episodic dramas what episodic dramas are to short stories. That’s almost exactly what they are. A serialized drama tells a single long story that allows characters to develop and change and plots to grow and become intricate. A serialized show can still have episodes or subplots that stand alone, but an episodic series is more limited in how much it can break from a formula. When shows run for a long time and lots of episodes are produced, the episodic form becomes even more restrictive: There are only so many good stories that can be told about a given set of characters. The fact that every story must be told in exactly the same amount of time and that the same set of characters must maintain more or less the same set of relationships in the same settings and situations becomes increasingly artificial and restrictive.
WRT comedies, there are two factors. Single camera shows are more expensive and take more time to produce than three-camera shows, so networks will only do them if the show is seen as noticeably better than a three-camera show that could fill the same slot. Also, single camera shows are much more flexible as a medium. Single camera shows can be shot anywhere, and can be done both on set and on location or any combination thereof. They are done with multiple takes, which allows for the actors and directors to try different things, and each shot is set up and blocked exactly the way the director chooses with whatever camera angles, lighting and movement they can come up with.
Multiple camera shows can pretty much only be done on a special sound stage, which limits the number of settings. The cameras are placed in fixed positions to generate maximal coverage, which limits the placement and movement of the actors. The lighting has to be flat and even so that the scene can be shot from every angle at once. The whole reason for the set-up is to do as few takes as possible, which limits the possibility of experimentation. And having an audience or a laugh track means that there is an expectation that every scene of every episode will result in a laugh (or similar audience reaction), which limits the scope and theme of the show.
The thing is, serialized anything is inherently inferior because, if you miss the first episode, you will forever be completely lost. Well, except that you can probably find it illegally online, but I believe the networks are trying to keep you from doing that.
The best work both episodically and serially.
Oh, and short story writing takes a lot more talent than novel writing. you’d think people would be snubbing the latter because the former need more talent.
It’s not about what takes more talent. It’s harder to perform ballet while blindfolded, but that doesn’t make it better.
The point is that you can tell more kinds of stories with a longer format.
And saying that serialized is worse because you might miss the first episode is like saying that magazines are superior to novels because you like coated stock.
A thing to remember is that serialized TV has its origins in soap opera (yes, Mad Men or Breaking Bad are partially soap operas, not to mention something like True Blood that just is a soap opera), while episodic TV has its origins in anthology – many episodic TV shows are basically anthologies with recurring characters investigating murders or fighting different bad guys.
Originally, episodic shows were seen as not merely easier to syndicate, but classier, because they were more similar to the high-class anthology drama of the '50s. In an episodic show, people can change and suffer consequences – but, only the guest characters, the ones who won’t be there next week. That’s why people who wrote TV dramas used to be told that the real protagonists of any episode were the guest characters, because it really was an anthology series and the murder suspects, bad guys, etc. were the interesting characters.
But anthology TV has more or less disappeared, so it’s an aesthetic that is not as common as it used to be. And audiences have come to focus more on the main characters and where they’re going, and focus less on the individual stories or guest characters. It takes a bit of a leap for critics and audiences alike to understand the disguised-anthology concept and the idea that the most important characters are the guests, so the criteria for judging this kind of show are not as clear as they used to be.
With sitcoms there’s a bunch going on but there are, I think, two things:
a) It used to be that single-camera shows, like MAS*H, had laugh tracks added. So critics, who hated laugh tracks, had a reason for championing multiple-camera sitcoms with their real live laughter. Once single-camera comedies dropped the laugh track, critics turned their ire on any recorded laughter, and became increasingly unable to understand the artistic reason for doing comedy in front of an audience.
b) Critics tend to be very hung up on realism – they like shows with a lot of realistic details and a lush look. The live-audience sitcom is deliberately artificial: sets that look like sets, an audience reacting to the material, a very presentational, theatrical style. Many critics get caught in the trap of thinking that this departure from realism is a flaw, instead of a valid artistic choice.
The more movie-like a TV show gets, the higher the apparent quality.
Serialised story arcs let you play out a more involving storyline that doesn’t need all its loose ends tied up in 42 minutes (sans ads). Single camera sitcoms let you play with camera angles, editing, and locations in ways you can’t in a studio-based three camera setup.
Cinematic = Good
I hear your comments, but I’m not totally buying your arguments. Sure, movies do allow you more development of character than a single TV episode. But there are lots of great movies that really don’t have much development of character. And there are tons of episodic TV shows in which the characters do significantly change over the years.
As far as three camera sitcoms, true a lot of them are beholden to the laugh track and easy punchline. Then again, as anyone who’s seen a Norman Lear sitcom can tell you, they can also deal with very dark issues. If anything a ton of the single camera sitcoms seem to be so heavy on irony that they stint on emotionally involving characters. Garry Shandling and 30 Rock may be very well done, but they’ll never involve me the way All in the Family or Cheers do.
Plus I have two theories. 1)A lot of TV critics in the past almost seemed embarassed by the medium. Now that many TV shows are adopting cinematic devices, it reduces the inferiority complex they had with movies
2)Serialized drama has finally given TV the outsider cachet obscure movies and music have long had. When episodic TV dominated in the Big Three’s glory days, millions of people could watch a single episode and have a pretty good idea what was going on. In contrast a single episode of say “Mad Men” is going to seem pretty boring if you don’t know the overall arc of the show. If you then say “I saw Mad Men and it wasn’t very enjoyable”, someone can rightfully say “you don’t know the whole story and that’s why you didn’t get it.” You really have to do your homework on some serialized shows and that’s work many people just don’t want to do.
Serialized dramas are not necessarily better, but they have greater potential, since you can tell longer, more complex stories.
As has been noted, a major disadvantage to serial shows is that you kinda have to watch from the beginning and not miss any episodes (and not forget what happened from one episode to the next). Modern innovations like VCRs, DVRs, and TV series released on DVD make it easier to do this.
But because of this “you have to watch every week” thing they have going on, serial shows, on the average, tend to be written for dedicated fans, as opposed to episodic shows that can be aimed at the casual viewer.
One WAG: Nowadays, people spend less time watching live, communal entertainment (like stage plays), which is the experience the three-camera sitcom attempts to recreate, and more time watching technically sophisticated cinematic entertainment.
Incidentally, I wonder to what degree the DVD aftermarket has changed this. Anecdotally, people seem much more likely to buy/“get into” the strongly serialized dramas on DVD.
I’m having trouble with the whole camera thing. Can someone explain how less cameras could ever be better (except for budget)?
With just one camera, the camera follows the action around. With multiple cameras, the action must be staged in front of the camera. This means that using a single camera gives the actors (and director) much more freedom in how they stage shots, lending a more authentic feel.
Friday Night Lights took this technique to an extreme with great effect. There was no blocking, no marks for the actors to hit. The actors just did their scenes however and wherever felt most natural while the camera guy captured whatever he could.
Single camera setup vs
Multiple camera setup
(And, thanks to the latter article, I just learned something I didn’t know before: that it’s because of Robin Williams that “three-camera sitcoms” today typically use four cameras.)