Serialized Television Has Become a Disease

[Melinda Halliwell]

If Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman continue doing Sherlock that is.

[Tim]

If Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman continue doing Sherlock that is.

That's true.  Those two fine actors have made the roles their own.


Funny thing, even sitcoms can be serialized these days.  Look at the Ross and Rachel storyline on Friends, for example.  That carried on throughout much of the series (and they did get together for good at the end).

Compare that to Gilligan's Island, which was made in the 1960's.  There were no continuing romantic storylines.  Creator Sherwood Schwartz wanted to pair off Gilligan with Mary Ann and the Professor with Ginger, but the CBS suits wouldn't let him.   Creator/producers had a lot less creative control in those days.

[Melinda Halliwell]

That just shows you how times have changed and what issues are showcased now on TV compared to back then.

Martin and Benedict could very well continue doing Sherlock alongside their film careers schedules providing till the BBC cancels that and doesn't order anymore storylines same as Jared and Jensen on Supernatural or just say they've had enough one day and decide to leave making the BBC end Sherlock anyway seeing as I think they wouldn't get new actors to play the leads otherwise being linked to the Martin and Ben.

[Tim]

That just shows you how times have changed and what issues are showcased now on TV compared to back then.

Yep, things have changed in the last fifty years.

I don't know about Britain, but in North America, it was in the 1980's that serialization of Prime Time shows started.  You can thank Dallas and Dynasty for that.  They started it all.

[Squad 51]

For me, everything changed after the Wall came down. So many channels back then and very differently from our two GDR channels. Yes, we had some freedom already but compared to nowadays, it was simple and easy. Some American shows ran in the evening programme but never Prime Time which was reserved for big shows. Now all series run either Prime Time or very late in the night programme, because of violence or whatsoever. Very strange!

[Tim]

Some American shows ran in the evening programme

They aired American shows in the GDR?  I woudn't have thought they would have allowed that.

[Squad 51]

But only in the 1980ies! How else would I love "North & South" with James Read and Patrick Swayze so much? Because the first time I saw it was still in GDR times.

[Tim]

The issues we've had with the Charmed reboot falls under this category. 

They felt they had to jump right into  a serialized storyline from the get go.  Compare that to Season One of the original series, which were mostly stand alone episodes. 

[BettyNewbie]

Interesting how Reboot Charmed has suddenly made this article relevant again.

At New York Comic Con, during the Star Trek: Discovery panel, Alex Kurtzman said something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. He said that you couldn’t do “City on the Edge of Forever” now, because Kirk would have to spend a whole season mourning Edith Keeler.

Instantly, something in me rebelled. “But ‘City on the Edge of Forever’ is perfect the way it is!” I thought. “City of the Edge of Forever” is rightly considered a classic: an episode where an out of his mind McCoy travels back in time and saves a woman’s life. In following him, Kirk falls for the woman, named Edith Keeler, only to discover that if she doesn’t die, all of history is changed for the worse. So, he has to go back in time again and let her die. As a self-contained story, it does everything that it needs to do. There’s a part of me that feels that focusing on the aftermath for any significant period of time would dilute the effectiveness of the episode. And while it would be more realistic for Kirk to spend more time devastated, the point of the episode—sacrifice for the common good—would be lost because it would instead have to focus on a completely different point, namely the effect of trauma on Kirk. We’d be sacrificing one truth for another.

For one reason or another, I’ve been thinking a lot about Star Trek lately. Most of the time, the various Star Trek shows told self-contained stories along the lines of “the crew arrives at a planet/meets a new person, and a story unfolds from there.” There were overarching themes or stories, yes, but a lot of the value of those shows was in seeing a crew we knew encounter something we didn’t. You can watch a lot of Star Trek episodes without knowing a ton about the show and still understand what it’s trying to convey. And that’s true even of episodes late into the series’ runs. You can watch the Voyager season six episode “Blink of an Eye,” about the Voyager visiting a planet where time moves quickly and generations try to understand what the new object in their sky is, and you can grasp instantly that it’s a story about how a routine thing in your life can have a profound effect on someone else’s without having to know everything in the history of the show. Meanwhile, I can’t imagine recommending a single episode from the last season of The Walking Dead in the same manner.

The X-Files likewise split its time between episodes that dealt with large, overarching plots and “monster of the week” episodes. And while the big mythology episodes were satisfying for fans, you wouldn’t recommend one of those for someone who just wanted to a taste of the show. You’d recommend “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” or “Home,” depending on that person’s tastes.

And that’s the other thing lost with the push to serialization: variety. The connective tissue was the characters we knew and loved. The seasons had a lot of tonal shifts but no one really complained that it wasn’t “realistic.” It was all fine because of course Mulder and Scully’s whole lives weren’t just chasing down a conspiracy, or light-hearted romps, or terrifying encounters with monsters. Hell, their lives weren’t even all shown to us. Stuff clearly happened between episodes. A lot of the time, now, episodes flow directly from the end of one to the beginning of the next, creating an effect that’s more like a 13-hour movie, where everything is continuous.

The original Charmed had several fantastic standalone episodes in its first two seasons -- "Dead Man Dating," "That 70s Episode," "Morality Bites," "P3 H20," "Murphy's Luck," "Chick Flick," and many more. While some of these episodes may have featured ongoing character development for the sisters or continued an ongoing B-plot (like Piper/Leo/Dan), none of them were part of a large, ongoing storyline.

And, none of these episodes would've worked if they were. The unique storylines that made them so enjoyable and infinitely rewatchable would've had to be molded to fit the story arc, and their tonal differences would've been completely lost for the sake of consistency. Episodes would start blending together and simply become part of a larger whole.

Maybe, the "Monster of the Week" format isn't so bad, after all.

[Tim]

And yet that same Alex Kurtzman willing partnered up with the CBS Swindlers to make STD, which is more serialized than ever!  What a hypocrite!

However, the point is clear.  Someone just wanting to sample the original Charmed could easily drop in during the first two seasons, without having to know a lot of what came before.   Yes, if they picked Wicca Envy, it would help to know who Rex and Hannah are, but it's not a necessity, as Rex explains it all himself, after the sisters break Prue out of the prison. 

However, someone would have a hard time doing the same thing with the reboot.  For the most part, watching an episode meant dealing with backstory dating back to the start of the season.  

The original Charmed never did serialization well, and, unfortunately, the reboot is making the same mistakes in that regard.   As I said, it's a shame that they  skipped the Connie era and went right into the Kernus one.

[Melinda Halliwell]

For the first time viewer of original Charmed, the pilot is the best obviously because it sets the tone of the show, introduces the sisters, and explains their heritage as told by Phoebe.

Avid viewers might point out 'That '70s' episode also as another start point introducing Patty and Grams.

There were a couple of episodes past season two like 'All Halliwell's Eve' which people who haven't seen Charmed could watch and get what the show was about still.

Myself personally I liked the stand-alone season 1 & 2 episodes plus a few others like 'All Halliwell's Eve' and 'The Good The Bad And The Cursed' over the seralized storylines because I liked how the sisters were written by people who knew them best portraying them how they should've been before Kernus ruined them incidentally.

[Tim]

Exactly.  Season One of the original Charmed was not serialized like Season One of the reboot is. 

SPN also has this problem.  It's gotten so serialized that they have to stick these annoying Then recaps at the start of every bloody episode.  I find myself saying, "Yes, yes, I know all this.  Can we get on with it, please?" 

Anyone new coming into SPN now will be totally lost.

[BettyNewbie]

I'm starting to wonder if some TV premises just aren't made to be serialized.

The original idea behind Charmed was always about three powerful witch sisters who were destined to save innocents from evildoers. It's a premise that easily lends itself to "Monster of the Week" storylines, but tends to get stretched thin in a serialized format. It's probably not a coincidence that both the original show and the reboot drifted away from innocent-saving towards family and romance drama as they became more serialized.

[Tim]

And the new Nancy Drew show has fallen into this trap.  We're several episodes in, and Nancy still hasn't solved the murder that happened in the pilot! 

Don't get me wrong, I like the show, but Nancy Drew was never meant to be serialized.   This is more a Murder She Wrote style show (you know that, by the end, Jessica would solve the case).  MSW episodes were stand alone, as such a show should be.

[Jean]

Not all shows need to be serialized. But most of the younger crowd seems to like it, and I constantly see people bitch online about filler and standalone episodes.

But, it is easier to jump into a show that isn't so serialized and has your stand-alone/case/monster etc. episodes of the week. And if you dislike a serialized story-arc, it makes re-watching a season hard, at least it is easier to re-watch all your favorite standalone episodes of a series. I've found a number of shows, I've started to watch in the last decade, some of the story-arcs are so bad, it makes re-watching a pain.

Nothing wrong with those, I find myself enjoying the standalone episodes more than the serialized episodes, like Charmed, especially with the Cafe re-watch, and getting into S2 now, I'm so in love with the series so far.

Maybe, I'm just part of an older generation that grew up with shows not being so serialized. I just miss the days where a series entertains me for an hour a week.