Recently I was watching a Tivo/Netflix enhanced Arrested Development marathon/rental. (I didn’t watch it when it was on TV).
It occurred to me, that this series is one of those that really rewards loyal viewers. At least 50% of the jokes and plot points only make sense for those who have watched the entire series.
So what other series of any genre or medium have more than typical reward in terms of continuity minutia for loyal viewers/readers/audience?
Star Trek, all of it, until 2009, at least.
The Wire would make very little sense if you just saw a random episode - I watched all five seasons back-to-back on DVD, and I was still confused a lot of the time. It definitely rewards viewers who keep up with what’s going on and it makes no effort to engage those who don’t.
Firefly.
In the very first episode, when they land at Persephone and Kaylee complains that they should get a new compression coil because if the one they have fails, Serenity will be left floating in space.
Which is exactly what happens in episode 8.
Jack Benny, in radio, was huge on this. It wasn’t uncommon for him to start a joke on one week and finish the joke on the next week.
Just about any soap opera (though the plotting is so slow that you can pick up in the middle and get the gist of it).
Most modern superhero comic books (though you have to know the current retcon).
Babylon 5.
Mad Men has been good for reintroducing plot points and characters without much explanation, seasons after they first appeared. I had heard that last season was supposed to be a partial “reboot” to allow new audiences to pick the show up without knowing the whole series(*) but I didn’t really see that play out as such and they kept relating back to events from season 1 and 2 with only a brief “previously on Mad Men” clip in the intro to give any hint what was going on.
Buffy (and Angel as an extension) were big on this. A throwaway comment in a later season often referred to some event in an earlier season, and characters who were on the periphery could eventually become major plot drivers.
How I Met Your Mother has a lot of references to earlier shows too. In fact a good portion of what goes on makes little sense without being familiar with what happened before. Anyone just watching the show for the first time would be confused about why some people eating a submarine sandwich in a flashback scene can make regular viewers laugh out loud.
Actually, the original series didn’t feature much continuity beyond the basic setting and premise, and TNG only did so occasionally. It wasn’t until DS9 that the stories became continuity-heavy.
Arrested Development is definitely the king of this. They not only call-back to old jokes, but call-forward to things that won’t be funny until re-watching the show(just notice that “From Hello” is written on the banana stand when it is fished out of the water).