Praise Episodic Television


LizzyChrome's avatar
Modern TV shows are written for bingers: that is, people who watch entire seasons of a show in one weekend, each episode in order. Gone are the days when each episode of a show would be written as its own stand-alone story.

Now I will admit, episodic shows *can* be good. "Game of Thrones" is an example. But, the reason "Game of Thrones" is so good is because it's based on a book series. The story is already planned out. In most cases, the writers are just making the shows up as they go along, and the result is massive plot holes, massively stupid plot-twists, sup-plot arcs that go nowhere, and other problems. "Once Upon a Time" lost my interest for precisely that reason.

As it happens, I don't get HBO, Netflix, or mainstream TV channels. I only get local channels (no cable), and whatever shows I can find on DVD at the local library. The result is that I watch a lot of older shows. Since I get MeTV, I watch a lot of "Hogan's Heroes," "Columbo," "Wonder Woman," etc. And I also have my old "Star Trek: Voyager" DVDs.

And I find I like these older shows a lot better. You can pop in any episode, or catch whatever episode is being shown on TV, and understand what's going. Even better, shows like this have episodes that you want to re-watch. I can't think of a specific, individual episode of "Boardwalk Empire," "Once Upon a Time," or "Battlestar Galactica" that I would want to re-watch over and over, because no one story is contained to one episode; they flow into each other so much, that if you want to revisit a certain story, you basically have to re-watch the whole series. 

So I made this thread, to praise shows that don't take themselves too seriously, that don't demand their viewers watch them religiously, and that actually leave you wanting to come back for more. 
Comments5
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3wyl's avatar
Praise! I treat the big bang theory like that. :B
rosa-arcoiris's avatar
I still watch SpongeBob....
rockstar1009's avatar
And that is why I never got hooked on anime. :dummy:

Well, not until I started downloading entire series. Anime is horrible to watch on TV. Between the inconsistent airing schedules and the miss-one-episode-and-you're-fucked effect... yeah I'd always rather have been watching something episodic like Johnny Quest anyhow.
LizzyChrome's avatar
I had that problem with Trigun.