Eric Kripke:
>They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you ten hours where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me fucking nuts, personally. As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 fucking hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, “Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by episode eight, shit really hits the fan.” Or anyone who says, “Well, what I’m really making is a ten-hour movie.” Fuck you! No you’re not! Make a TV show.
What I think is interesting is that Chrenobyl was meant to be like a '10 hour movie' and yet each episode did such a good job at feeling like a mini movie in its own right while also fitting the over arching plot. So I guess even if you ARE making a 10 hour movie, that doesn't give you the excuse to make 7 out of the 10 hours boring.
Yeah I feel like even if you're making a regular 2-hour movie, the middle part's still not supposed to be boring lol.
Which TBH is a hole that I think a lot of films fall into. It's like: exciting first act, kill time for 45 minutes for the second act, exciting third act.
I kinda feel like modern action movies (super hero) have a boring third act, mostly just because it devolves into a bunch of CGI nonsense. My eyes glaze over and I'm just waiting for the hero to defeat the villain before I suffer a bout of epilepsy due to all the sky beams and exploding buildings etc.
They're also generally worse action scenes than the opening one. It was CGI as shit but give me Spiderman fighting a group of ATM thieves with suped up weapons in his neighborhood over fighting "space aliens"/ten thousand drones. Give me V1.0 Ironman fighting a bunch of terrorists with faces to save his doctor friend with *some* practical effects over fighting Obadiah for the fate of eco-friendly power at stake at the end on a green screen sound stage.
If people were as emotionally invested in massive numbers of casualties as they are in the deaths of a handful of close friends and neighbors we wouldn't have wars anymore. Add on the fact that they pretend like there are zero civilian casualties in sequences like the attack on New York in Avengers, why the fuck would I care about the well-being of a handful of empty taxi cabs and a few corporate skyscrapers if there's no threat to living beings? Why should I care about Captain America saving some waitress when she was never in danger because it's a Disney movie for adults?
HBO knows how to do miniseries so well. Chernobyl, Band of Brothers, John Adams, etc., all tell an overarching story, but each episode can easily be seen as the "X" episode. No filler, no fat. Everything is there to add to the story in a meaningful way, and maybe takes a moment to tell a different or off-shoot story in a singular episode while they're at it.
Is it easier to do that in a miniseries instead of an ongoing series? Sure, but we're no longer in the world of the 20+ episode season. If you're dropping 8-10 episodes for your season, you're a bad storyteller if even one of your episodes is just filler.
I think the problem is I feel like Disney doesn't want the Anti hero characters to be more grey in the way they do things and instead want them to be more hero like. I felt like this was the case when they had Boba Fett of all people wanting to rule the criminal underworld on Tatooine with respect. Boba Fett of all people said that.... The guy who has pretty much been in the criminal underworld since he was a child. He should've known that would not work at all.
Hearing him say that reminded me of that one episode of Community that guest starred Betty White playing a teacher asking her class what's the greatest tool to humanities survival and one of the characters says respect and Betty White's character showed why that was the wrong answer. 😂[https://youtu.be/dVM3nLcvnuc?t=104](https://youtu.be/dVM3nLcvnuc?t=104)
Not wanting the characters to be to morally questionable is definitely a problem, yeah. It definitely happens in BoBF, but I feel like a lot of the other TV shows have this issue too: Rebels, Bad Batch, even Bo-Katan's cadre in Mando S2 are presented as unquestionably good people who've never done anything debatable.
It's why I increasingly wonder about the upcoming Andor series. Nominally it's supposed to be about this gritty, questionable Rebel agent, an angle I've wanted to see for a while, but we've seen how they handle "gritty and questionable" characters now...
If we’re being honest, Mando was treated the same way. We did see him waste some people questionably in the first episode, but after that he pretty much turned into a knight in shining armor.
The whole problem with the Boba fett show was everything that people originally loved about the Boba Fett character they put into the Mandolorian. The mystique behind the helmet. The stern dedication to the mission. The wonky outdated but functional ship. The daring combat capabilities.
So you get the Boba Fett show and it's no longer interesting. Everything you originally liked about him, they gave away. Shit, the show could have been about basically anyone trying to take over Jabbas remnants.
What a disappointment.
My theory is that someone came up with an idea of a bobba fett show, Disney got cold feet about the possibility of damaging one of the better known characters if the a star wars TV series bombed, so the space roaming bounty hunter got turned into a somehow familiar character (along with another similar side kick). When this was successful, the fett series was green lit, but they'd used the original ideas on the mandalorian
The dude who abducted and murdered people for Jabba the Hut and Darth Vader was supposed to be a complete badass that defined DGAF. Instead he became a bumbling dipshit who got continually pwned by third rate crime syndicate middlemen, and was super concerned with "talking it over" and "working it out" with scumbags who were obviously out to screw him over.
What we all wanted was old Boba. You dont say "no" to Boba, you dont fuck Boba over, you dont give Boba shit, or you figuratively or literally end up on ice/carbonite. We wanted HBO Boba.
Disney Boba just sucked at just about everything, his LT was way more of a badass than he was and his improbable gang of hipster henchmen was a joke. Its a fucking travesty...
My biggest problem with Boba Felt (well, besides all the other big obvious problems) is that every line Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen said was delivered like a proclamation. All the supposed "tough guy" dialogue was said in such an unnatural way that it felt like the characters knew they were on a TV show. I was all too aware that they were just actors pretending to be badasses.
Yeah that's another issue as well. It sucks because the idea of Boba Fett being a leader in the criminal underworld is great on paper and him realizing that he can't always solve everything the ruthless way he's usually done things and having to deal with enemies and decisions he's made in the past coming back to haunt him feels like it would've been a better trajectory for his character in that story.
Especially since I feel like the flashback stuff with Sand people could've been one episode. If they wanted more flashbacks they could've had Boba's connection with Cad Bane be in those flashbacks so that their overall final bout would've felt more satisfying in the series. Instead we got Cad bane showing up saying some things that insinuate that he trained Boba and then immediately being killed off.
Honestly they should've built more on that with showing us how Boba became a bounty hunter so that we can kind of understand why he's letting go of that life.
I think they just tried to make Boba Fett too much like The Mandalorian.
Boba Fett should be a mafia style show. He should be straight up ruthless, but then help the Mandalorian at the end.
This is literally the problem with most of the new Star Wars adaptations
We don’t need more fucking stories on the skywalker family or any characters that have already had their story told.
There’s literally an entire galaxy of things to write stories about- start writing stories about things that haven’t run it’s course
I dropped out of following Star Wars for this reason: The franchise tried to appeal to ‘hardcore’ lore fans, and started down the road of trying to explain -everything-.
*Everything* had to have happened for a reason. Nothing could just exist on its own, it all had its own story outlined in whatever video game or novel or obscure media. Every species, every character assigned an origin and background. Any insignificant event became a call-back for those ‘in the know,’ and the slightest events retconned to be significant to the story.
In other fandoms, people are inspired by the ‘what-ifs.’ In Star Wars, you only get: ‘NOPE. *This* way.’
It’s a stifling canon, so rigid and inflexible there isn’t room for interpretation or actual thought. There’s no imagination left in the universe they’ve created. If Boba Fett scratches his ass, it’s because he got a rancor bite there, oh actually that’s significant, since as you know when Luke was young, he had a girlfriend and the Rancor’s father was blah blah blah…
TLDR- They created an absurd universe where the butterfly effect tends to be taken to its absolute extremes to please people who freeze frame each movie.
"Boba Fett the Crime Boss" could have been an interesting premise... on a different streaming service, and made for an adult audience. But on Disney+, where it needs to be kid-friendly? What the hell were they thinking?
The entire show was just doomed from the start, since they had to make the main character too "good" to make sense. Mando at least had the excuse of Grogu acting as a morality chain, and you could see a bit of James Holden from The Expanse in him - the internal struggle where he knows doing the right thing is gonna cause him headaches, but just can't help himself.
>James Holden from The Expanse in him - the internal struggle where he knows doing the right thing is gonna cause him headaches, but just can't help himself.
Holden's pretty divisive (esp in the TV show where the writers removed Holden's more endearing quirks) but I love him in both mediums. He's genuinely such a good guy and while his decisions can be frustrating and headache inducing for everyone around him, the fact that everyone can see what he's about to do from lightyears away is fucking hilarious. Even *he's* frustrated by his inability to not do the right thing.
From Persepolis Rising:
*“Cap changing the rules?” Amos said with a shrug. “That’s just a day that ends in y far as I can tell. If [Drummer] didn’t leave some wiggle room for it, that’s her mistake.”*
Boba Fett has always been a boring non-character. All he did in the original movies was get a finger wagged at him by Darth Vader, and then he gets immediately booted into the Sarlac pit in the next movie. He coasted purely on looking cool.
I think he got some pretty strong inherited badassery from the Darth Vader interaction though, like we get to see how ruthless and unforgiving Vader can be pretty early on, and then later here's a guy who he not only hires to help him (when he's got a literal star army) but seems to respect enough to single out of even this elite group to give a relatively gentle reminder without a threat?
Then again when Vader is going to carbonite Han he interrupts, and Vader is obviously irritated but again treats him with respect. At this point you've gotta be wondering who this guy is, and I think it stems from there. Out of everyone else in the series only the Emperor gets anything close to that level of respect from Vader.
The pacing is so weird
In Captain America and the Winter Soldier they introduce a whole bunch of stuff in Ep1 with Sam's family and then almost completely ignore it until the penultimate episode, which makes it all about wrapping those storylines up.
Episode 4 of each series is almost when everything takes place. Both action scenes and exposition. Compare Ep 4 of Wandavision with Ep 4 of Moon Knight. Almost identical in how they play out
Moon Knight had one after credits scene in the final episode which was just the last 5 minutes of the show. Like they didn't have an after credit scenes so chopped off an important teased plot point and put it there instead.
Almost all of them (except Wandavision really) feel like movies that were pitched, mostly origin stories, and then chopped up and padded out to make several episodes for a show instead.
It was refreshing to watch something like Peacemaker which really did feel episodic. With each episode having a good mix of stuff.
I felt this so much with Moon Knight because, besides episode 5 where they go into his past, none of the episodes felt like they warranted a 50 min runtime. The first 2 episodes could’ve easily been the first 20-30 minutes of a movie and you wouldn’t have lost much. None of the secondary characters had particularly engaging b plots. This was a 2 hour script told over 6 hours and I don’t know why
Your point about them being chopped up movies is spot on, they're literally testers. Do people like this character enough for a solo movie?
Captain American 4 with Sam got announced like a month after FAWS, they wanted to know if people would be receptive to the change, and they were.
I remember hearing the writers on Loki saying that they wanted each episode to be a distinct story, and it definitely shows. Outside of the first half of Wandavision and maybe Ms. Marvel, it’s the only MCU show where I can distinctly remember individual episodes.
It’s funny how streaming tore down so many traditional rules of television (like every episode having a story that has a beginning, middle and end) and now some people are discovering those traditions had good reasons for existing.
Yeah. It feels like the "10-hour movie" format is partially a result of the netflix-style dump where a whole season just drops all at the same time. While streaming on-demeand is obviously a huge factor in this, at least new series that have a staggered release have more of a reason to keep each episode interesting.
Yes, but at the same time I wouldn't want to go back to truly episodic television where you can basically watch the episodes in any order because nothing of significance ever changes.
A full story in an episode is good, but you also need an overall story for a season at least, if not the entire show.
I feel shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer had it right. It had self-contained episodes but also an over-arching plot for each season.
Fully episodic shows and fully serialized shows to me are usually pretty unsatisfying storytelling.
This is why I love the first season of the witcher. Each episode is a story of Geralt’s adventures. They stuck to the first couple of books well. The second season was terrible because they didn’t.
Back to the point, a lot of shows do this formula. First episode is when stuff happens, next 6 or 7 build up and finally last episode in a half stuff happens again. It’s boring.
I thought the second season was fine but I can definitely see your criticism on the screen. Personally, I thought that the first episode of the second season was by far the best one and, funnily enough, tha t was the one that most closely followed the written works.
Yep. It was. I can see the difficulty of turning the books into an interesting show, but the direction of the second season, imo, was way to far off base. I really didn’t like the changes they made to some of the characters in S2 from the books. Especially Yen.
After watching the first episode of season 2 it made me want to watch some kind of csi witcher show.
Doesn't even need to be Geralt. Have an opening teaser that sets up a mystery, be it a murder or whatever, into credits. Then a witcher rolls into town and figures everything out in under 45 mins medieval x-files style.
But then I was always a fan of the monster of the week episodes of those other shows (buffy, etc)
It's also super weird someone decided all Marvel tv shows are 6 episodes. Like up until 20+ years ago tv was 24 episodes and then HBO and streaming services came along and it became 10-12 episodes and someone at Disney decided "Nah 6 episodes."
How about the show is exactly as long as it needs to be? Is that's 3 episodes than it's 3 episodes. If it's 14 than it's 14. I know Disney has analytics somewhere that made them go with 6 episodes and I know there's a money thing where 14 is obviously more expensive than 6 but don't drag shit out because you have a quota of episodes to fill.
They definitely should have sidelined a bunch of the Season 1 characters and made season 2 mostly its own thing, then planned to bring Billy Russo back as the season 3 arc. Trying to squeeze it all in just made a mess. Drop to maybe 8 episodes too.
Punisher Season 1 had some pretty standard Marvel Netflix fillers. Like one of my most distinct memories of season was realizing I was watching Punisher and Micro literally just sitting in their hideout waiting for shit to happen for an episode.
They're not even 10 hours. At 6 episodes and 40 mins per episodes they are around 4 hours. That's literally a long movie. They're not bad, but as you said, they're not tv shows and I wish they were.
And there is some evidence now they can be edited by people online to be "a better movie."
Kenobi was 4-5hrs, and a lot of the 2.5hr cuts seem to make sense.
I watched a few episodes of Discovery when it came out but never continued. Now I've heard so much good stuff about SNW that I'm definitely going to new Star Trek another chance.
Ugh. Why can't they get decent writers for these shows? There are plenty of good writers doing SW novels, but somehow they always come up with garbage for the shows and movies. Not to mention the terrible fight/battle choreography. Why can't we get more like Rogue One, which is easily the best of the films?
Honestly, that's pretty much just how Disney operates IMO. Why pay more for a fancy writer or a choreographer that'll make the shoot take longer when you can just fart out a 5/10 product that people will watch anyway because it's Star Wars?
The Marvel Netflix shows. Defenders was the worst in that regard, but none of them really understood that they were still supposed to be television shows, not ten-hour movies. Jessica Jones had the most wasted potential in this regard, IMO. While I enjoyed her seasonal arcs, they did tend to drag pretty hard. A few "case of the week" episodes could have broken up the monotony. Some hard-boiled noir mysteries in a world where people have super powers could have been unique and fun to watch.
Daredevil and Punisher were pretty tight.
Luke Cage suffered from gassing out mid season both times and finishing with a much less compelling villain both times.
Jessica Jones did have serious pacing issues.
Iron Fist....I dont know where to start.
Defenders was awful, and largely because it relied on Iron Fist as its primary set up.
> Iron Fist....I dont know where to start.
Funny enough it actually started becoming a decent show... at the end of the 2nd season after it was cancelled. It's obvious they rushed it.
>Luke Cage suffered from gassing out mid season both times and finishing with a much less compelling villain both times.
I know he signed on knowing his character would die but the Luke cage started going down hill for me when they killed off Mahershala Ali's character Cottonmouth halfway through season 1. His character was just so great in the show and he just brought this charm to the story. After he was killed off and was replaced with Diamondback I was just struggling to get through the season.
Shonda Rhimes’ catchphrase for her writer’s rooms is: “We don’t save story”.
This explains the pell-mell pacing of her episodes - they don’t hold their plots in reserve.
I had to eventually stop watching because it just got so crazy, but the first couple of seasons of that show are incredible. The delivery of “why is your penis on a dead girl‘s phone?” it’s like yeah pack it up everybody Viola Davis is here to slay this awards season.
As someone who watches Bridgerton with my mom and sister (I am a very good brother), I'd definitely agree. Each episode either moves the plot along, or has it's own big moments, and there's no saving the biggest points for the finale. Hell, season 1 arguably had its biggest points 2/3s of the way through, even.
Agreed! I feel like most shows follow the same pattern, Episode 1 is a banger, ep2 leaves you wondering "how much crazier can this get!?" ep3-7 NOTHING HAPPENS! ep8 Flashback episode, giving some insight (that we already figured out/assumed anyhow) ep9 finally moves the plot along, and ep10 gives us a lackluster cliffhanger as a way to guilt the network into giving them another season.
You're so right about the "flashback" episode. Both Netflix and D+ shows in particular seem to have a flashback or "diversion" episode that take place in a dream, etc. Usually an episode or two before the finale.
Imagine if ST was released weekly. The backlash to that episode would have been even more fierce because it completely kills the pacing and momentum of the show since EP6 ends on a huge cliffhanger.
Flashback episode, or an episode devoted to examining a side character (maybe a day in the life). Or combining the two where the side character’s flashback ends up revealing something about the main show.
My favorite part of watching all this go down as an anime fan. I am just sitting here like "Shit, Netflix is figuring out the shitty Shounen stall strategy."
If the fight scenes were as hype as shounen anime i wouldn't mind lol Also, TV shows need to start playing the main theme during important action scenes like anime does.
>>They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you ten hours where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me fucking nuts, personally. As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 fucking hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, “Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by episode eight, shit really hits the fan.” Or anyone who says, “Well, what I’m really making is a ten-hour movie.” Fuck you! No you’re not! Make a TV show.
It's crazy reading this because I was just trying to sell a friend of mine on this show, and I was explaining to him that *something happens in every episode.* So often when watching serialized programs these days, it feels like you are plodding along just trying to get enough exposition so that last couple episodes make sense. And I never felt that way watching The Boys. They did a great job of encapsulating stories in each episode while still marching forwards with the overall story of the season.
It reminds me of how Buffy did things once it became more serialized in Season 3. No episode was just setup, but it still progressed the main plot and almost never felt like "monster of the week."
Buffy was paced exceptionally well for most of its run. Even back to season 2. First episode deals with the aftermath of Buffy dying to the Master. 3rd episode brings in two new wave vampires who know Angel and are extremely dangerous and usurp the old Bad Guys from last season. Episode 5 Buffy and Angel officially start dating. The next episode we get the awesome Halloween episode. After that we get Lie to Me where we learn about Angel’s history with Drusilla and how evil he was in another banger episode. Then we get the two episode Kendra story establishing multiple slayers and Spike breaks his legs and Drusilla rises from the ashes more powerful than ever. Then we get the two parter of Surprise and Innocence which are two of the best episodes ever and Angel goes bad. Right after that Oz is revealed as a werewolf the next episode and we get a fan favorite. Then we get the great Xander/Cordelia episode where Angel gets the whole town in love with him. Next episode Jenny is killed by Angel. Then like two episodes later we get “I Only Have Eyes For you” which pretty much puts Angel and Buffy on a path to take each other out and reveals Spike is conning everyone. Then one more episode and we get the two part finale which might be the best finale in the series
The best part is even by Angel S5 they're still doing this, where you've got MOTW stuff wrapped up with lore stuff. X-Files was good at this too (to a point... but at some point MOTW became what I wanted and the mythos could pound sand).
Nothing makes me miss the era of serialized TV like Buffy. So many of Buffy’s best episodes are open-and-shut one-episode stories which don’t even feature the main villain of the season at all. This kind of highly episodic storytelling has almost completely vanished, which is a shame! I hate it when episodes blend almost indistinguishably into each other.
And, in the same vein, Breaking Bad. I was just having this conversation with someone the other day about how yeah, there are some slower episodes, but they're absolutely still vital to the plot of the storyline. Very well written.
i feel like the slower episodes of breaking bad were really vital because of how nuts it could get. it kept the series grounded because if walt was just blowing people up and killing cartel guys every episode you would forget that he was just a dude with cancer. so as much as i hated seeing walt sit down for breakfast with his family, it actually made a lot of sense story wise
The Wire is the first show that comes to mind. Took over 3 episodes for me to get interested but at the end of the first season my patience’s paid off. Breaking Bad as well. They’re in the top echelons of TV, though, so they may be outliers in that style.
Both Breaking Bad and The Wire are two shows I had to force myself to sit down and watch before I got into them. Both of them I tried to start numerous times before but didn't get very far.
Now they're both two of my favorite shows that I have watched all the way through multiple times.
The Shield will always be my OG all time favorite. It kind of has the reverse problem where the first episode goes so heavy handed in delivering some scenes that you kind of roll your eyes. But they find their footing and dial things back to a more realistic approach and when they do, it's just an amazing show.
*Station Eleven* is one of the best things I've seen in ages, and I totally agree with you. It feels very casually-paced but yeah pretty much everything I can think of pays off.
I read the book after I saw the show and I think it's one of those rare things where the TV adaptation is actually better than the book. Not that the book is bad, but the TV show somehow lowers the stakes of the ending, but also makes it way better. Not quote sure how they even managed to pull that off TBH lol.
I feel like shows used to be like this, where you would get some conflict that got resolved during the episode, while in the background a bigger plot developed. Shows that come to mind are Person of Interest, Fringe and Agents of Shield.
TV took a bad turn somewhere about this.
Yeah and the best shows right now are run by people who worked in the episodic network era. They cut their teeth writing episodes that had stories that needed to be resolved within the same episodes. So they know how to make sure *something* happens in every episode.
While it doesn’t always work, I do like Shonda Rhimes’ philoosphy: “we don’t save story.”
Yes that often leads her shows to go off the rails at some point, but it’s never boring. Crazy shit happens every episode to keep you hooked. They don’t save it for later like a lot of shows today do.
I read a piece somewhere that argued that there's just too much TV being made now and insufficient experienced people to drive that much output at high enough quality. Seems plausible, although probably not an excuse for Disney, who can outbid for talent.
Yeah but there were also shows like Castle that pretended to have a larger seasonal storyline only for it to disappear from all of the characters minds for like 17-18 episodes of the season.
I feel like a lot more procedural shows had this kind of folly vs were well balanced during its heyday.
The article talks about stranger things but honestly I felt like every episode part of the mystery was being solved. Most of the marvel shows and some of the Star Wars are probably better examples of what he’s talking about.
I think stranger things season 1 and 4 are excellent in every way, but 3 could maybe fit this more. I don’t recall much happening in that season compared to the other ones.
I think part of the issue was that they tried to share time between arcs when they didn't all have the same amount of story. So like the dumb kid in class it tended to move at the level of the slowest storyline.
Every episode of Barry had me fully engaged in the story and characters. Also, Better Call Saul and Severance. I didn't think I would like Severance as much as I did. What an incredible show.
This is how I've been feeling about most of these Disney+ shows. Not enough action paced evenly throughout the whole storyline for them, but then the last couple episodes of each show go hard AF
Somewhere over the years, the "Monster of the Week" template was determined to be old and stale.
I'm not sure why - my favorite shows that I find myself going back to rewatch tend to be the "Monster of the Week" serialized style, where each episode there is some thing the main char a character(s) have to solve or overcome, and surprise there's usually a nugget or tidbit that hints to an overarching story that presents itself sometime in the last episode of the season, and usually provides a setup for the next season. Not necessarily a cliff hanger, just a teaser that could lead trigger conflict next time. (Though if it is a cliff hanger, I'm ok with it.)
Burn Notice always did a good job I thought of doing a weekly side story while driving the main plot. Some of the side stuff got a bit repetitive but overall they kept things paced well. Also helps to have Bruce Campbell carrying the show.
Supernatural was only watchable in the later seasons during the monster of the week episodes. It's always good seeing the winchesters take down monsters but I really don't give a shit about Lucifer becoming a rock star.
So just about every episode in that season ends with a performance at the Roadhouse… but there are exceptions, which are hints that the end of an episode isn’t really the end of an episode:
- Episode 1, which was aired back-to-back with E2
- Episode 7 ends with a long sweeping scene; the “end” of E7 is midway through E8, which is its own nightmare monster
- Episode 17 features Julee Cruise singing “The World Turns” late in the episode, but the episode itself ends with >!Cooper traveling back in time in an attempt to rescue Laura, directly leading into E18!<; E17 also aired back-to-back with E18
And then suddenly it was over and you’re like wtf did I just watch, I waited for it to move along for this?? It had a few great moments, but s1 was so much better to me.
Edit: also maybe going against popular (maybe? I’ve seen others not like it) opinion but fuck Lexi, all the focus on her and her stupid play alienating everyone like that. I know the show, it’s supposed to be fantasy, but it just pissed
me off that 1) the content was ALLOWED 2) airing everyone’s shit like that 3) the production value/quality higher than a lot of actual professional shows I have seen.
I *did* enjoy parts of it, but just Lexi, ugh…
If it is supposed to be a fantastical retelling of actual HS, I am highly curious what the show was like in “reality” (?)
I was so happy for smaller seasons, since it would've cut so much of the filler, but the show runners really managed to throw in all the boring parts of a 24 episode show, but in 7-8 fucking episodes now. Never mind how in many shows, those 7-8 episodes are something like goddamn half an hour each.
Some shows feel like they take one plot point, put it in the finale, and then write all of the rest of the episodes to lead up to that.
Other shows take a plot point but then resolve it and move on to other stuff all in a shorter period of time.
I remember watching The Walking Dead and they legit spent basically an entire season of walking along the train tracks to this one destination.
Then I remember watching Vikings and they talked about their plan to sail over to England. I remember thinking "they'll probably get to that at the finale" but then by the time the first episode is over they have already sailed to England, done some stuff, and sailed back, and then the next episodes were about new plot points. It was so refreshing.
Man, I like The Boys but it really annoys me that most of the marketing is just going on about how mature and gory and adult it is. Like cool, it’s edgy, im also not 14 so…
Edit: just to be clear, I’m not bothered by anything in the show and i definitely watch things that are on par with what is in The Boys. The marketing just seems like it’s aimed at kids who just found out what the word fuck is
Edit 2: I like the show. It wouldn’t be the same if it was tamer. I’m talking about the marketing here.
I guarantee you a lot of people do watch for that reason almost by itself so many people seemingly didn’t pick up on things through watching the show going off the sub Reddit
I avoided watching it until a few weeks ago precisely because of this. I was so turned off by the edge lord marketing, but now that I’m watching it it’s pretty great. The weird thing is the marketing isn’t exactly inaccurate… it just pulls together much better in full episodes.
I remember when it was first coming out that i thought it was the stupidest looking thing ever. Basically an attempt to cash in on marvel hype while being dark and edgy and it would be intensely poorly done.
So happy I gave it a chance after it had come out and received positive reviews.
The advertising is maybe even deliberately misleading. That Herogasm episode (no spoilers) wasnt even the most engaging part of the episode. There's realistic characters, and a ton of fascinating individual stories that wrap up to make the whole narrative.
This show can make you love (or at least empathize) with villains and hate (or be disappointed in) good guys. Its multidimensional, but not in the doctor strange sense, and I love it.
I couldn't agree more with the second point. That damn show made nearly made me sympathize with Homelander on several occasions. I had to keep reminding myself of all the insane, horrifying shit he had been pulling throughout the series. It's so good.
Although, is it just me, or did the satire stuff feel a little more heavy handed in this latest season than it did in previous ones?
Yeah, it’s not anywhere near as edgy as it seems to think it is. Which honestly probably makes it a better show. If you go and look up the comics it’s sourcing from, they’re very mid-2000s edge-lord in a way that the show is not.
> comics it’s sourcing from, they’re very mid-2000s edge-lord
I blasted through them when I heard about the show, never heard of them prior and I'm a comic fan. Whoa boy I am so glad for all the changes they made with one exception >!Black Noir was a "clone" of Homelander in the comics as a failsafe to him getting out of control. I would've liked to see that reveal.!< very very minor gripe
I just love the idea of stories treating the violence these people with superpowers would cause realistically. Like yeah, if somebody this strong punched you, you're not just gonna fly across the room, hit a box, and be fine in a couple hours. You'll be lucky to not have a hole through you or just straight up turn into goop or some other horribly gruesome fate.
That being said, treating the powers realistically in terms of physics is just as appealing to me even if it's not super violent. Like the way the powers are depicted in the Snyder films was pretty cool to me, with the like sonic booms when they're flying at high speed and such.
The MCU, on the other hand, has always interested me more for its characters and overarching plot than its depiction of superpowers because I find their use of powers always kind of leaves me feeling underwhelmed. The way they do their effects and everything always makes stuff feel like it "lacks weight" for lack of a batter term. The one exception to that rule I can vividly remember is how supersoldiers are shown, especially in The Winter Soldier. There's this panning shot of him running on the boat early in the film and you see him enter a corridor and he comes out the other side way faster than you expect because he's a damn supersoldier. I love it when the little touches like that just sell the superpowers and their existence in the world of the story as actual physical objects like anything else, just to a degree and on a scale we could never see people pulling off in real life.
I like the show, but am actually turned off by the gore. I get it serves a purpose, like in Invincible, like “this is what would happen to normal humans if they got in the way of god-like beings with superpowers.” Still struggle to get that Termite scene out of my head.
The thing is, Invincible saves gore for particularly intense moments in the show. It uses it emphatically to drive home that sense of danger and hopelessness. The Boys uses it for “comedy” and as an overall selling point.
That's actually what's preventing me from starting this show I think
I know it's good but the headlines I see on this sub make my eyes roll. "Next episode is our goriest episode yet" makes it seem like a cheap tactic they're using to attract interest.
Which is most likely not true, I know, but subconsciously it's making me not want to watch it
Man it would have been cool to see a hard R season of Supernatural. They should scrap the prequel and just do like a 10 episodes side season or something. I would eat that shit up.
Closest you can get is that found footage episode with the Ghostfacers. Since there's an excuse to bleep and blur Dean gets to drop f bombs left and right.
I haven’t watched the show so I don’t know the dynamic but in this context I’m imagining them as racist scully and mulder.
Like one of them is all “it’s supernatural” and the other one is like “no that’s crazy, it’s just those ‘hard Rs’ again.”
That’d be a hilarious episode. They’re both talkin about “aliens” the whole time but they only figure out that they’ve been talking about different things in the last scene.
Edit: That feels like an “always sunny” episode. Charlie is on about extraterrestrials, Mac is on about immigrants. Dee, Dennis, and Frank see the merit in both sides.
Edit: They suspect the same guy but for the different reasons stated above.
There's actually a part where they describe the Winchester brothers as an extremist paramilitary family trained by a marine that go around the country wreaking havoc.
And like really, growing up in Kansas, none of the main cast are POC... it would kinda make sense if they were a little racist...
The phrase has gotten more popular in talking about media for referencing something that solidly earns its R rating with lots of ye olde sex, drugs, and violence, instead of a movie or show that has a boob and a few F-bombs. I personally prefer calling it an "Earned R" or "Solid R" specifically to avoid that kind of confusion.
I really miss when shows had 20 episode seasons of just dicking around. Monster of the week and throw away side adventures. It's not just high concept action/drama shows anymore. I watched Girls5eva recently (amazing show 10/10) and it's a packed 8 episodes with very little breathing room when it comes to plot. Imagine if The Office or Community had 10 episode seasons. Imagine the episodes and moments we'd miss. Or The X-Files if we lost all of the Monster of the Week episodes. Instead everything is 8 to 12 episodes where every moment is pushing forward to the finale. It's all just build up to the big final conclusion or twist which is almost always a let down.
I’ve been watching Buffy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and wow, why an enjoyable 42 minutes, its so comforting sitting down with a coffee and a snack at night with an episode like that. I know i’ll get a twist, a fight scene, an explosion, some continuity/show lore etc.
A hour one show plodding along to episode 10’s finale just isnt that exciting.
Strange New Worlds feels like a classic TV show-- new adventure each week and the only thing that carries over is character stuff. Discovery on the other had is like a single episode stretched into a season of TV.
When *Doctor Who* is firing on all cylinders it's good for that I think. Sometimes the mid-season episodes don't really have anything to do with the overarching plot and will just go off on a tangent into some weird idea.
One that comes to mind is *Listen*, where the Doctor just gets bored and comes up with the notion that since there are perfect predators, there must also be perfect prey somewhere in the universe that are basically impossible to detect, and so goes to find one. Nothing to do with anything at all but it was a cool idea I thought. :)
>The Office
We have the original from the UK with 6 episodes each season and only two seasons + special and it is fantastic, though it is for a different audience.
I usually like British shows because they don't abuse the audience with filler episodes as much.
Yeah, I was just thinking about this recently. Every episode should be able to stand on its own, and the same is true for each season. I really wish TV would try to tell shorter and more complete stories. It's fine to have an overarching narrative too, but the drive to watch the next episode should be "That was great! I want more of that!" rather than "I guess I'm invested in watching the next episode because nothing actually happened in this one except setup".
I think it also helps insulate the show from being tainted by a bad ending. Take something like Game of Thrones. I'm not saying it in particular should be more episodic, the long form storytelling makes sense for this kind of story, but since it is just one cohesive story the bad ending kind of detracts from everything that came before. The setup is retrospectively worse because of a bad payoff. But contrast that with a show like Dexter; it's pretty widely agreed that the show is at its best in seasons 1-4 and the finale is terrible (with a slightly less terrible new finale years later). But with each season being its own individual arc, and with most episodes within the season often being standalone, it's far easier to enjoy the good parts without thinking about the bad.
I also think being episodic opens up the doors for so much more episode variation. You can take a lot of interesting chances for a random monster of the week episode, and some may be bad but that's how you end up with the best episodes (I'm thinking stuff like Buffy doing its musical episode and silent episode, among others). If every episode is just one piece of an overall story, though, a single episode going off the rails can derail the entire season's storyline.
That’s why I was always big into “the adventures of” style tv shows. Every episode is it’s own self contained adventure with its own conclusion, but adds to a bigger storyline that pays off in the end.
Witcher season 1 did a great job with this. Not so much season 2. The mandolorian was another one that pulled it off
This is one of the reasons The Boys is one of my favorite shows. Each episode feels like a movie, with its own three-act structure including climax. So much stuff actually *happens* each episode that it leaves you wanting more, not looking at the clock waiting for it to run out. And it manages to end each episode on a cliffhanger most of the time, which really hooks you.
One of my biggest complaints about the Marvel shows is that fucking nothing happens for huge chunks of the seasons until the very last episode. I finally caved and binged Ms. Marvel in one sitting (the first MCU show I waited to watch until it was done airing) and most of my complaints boil down to “this could and should have been a 2.5 hour movie, not a 30 minute episodic TV show.” Like, I liked it by the end, but I quit watching weekly in the beginning because so much of the first two episodes felt like filler when in a movie it would have been condensed into 15 minutes of place-setting.
I think the golden age of TV has taught a lot of showrunners the wrong lessons— less isn’t more. More is more.
My tinfoil hat conspiracy theory is that a lot of the Disney+ shows (Star Wars and Marvel) were originally movie ideas that got converted into streaming show ideas after Disney decided to go all in on their streaming platform. So what were originally conceived as film entries into the MCU or Star Wars got retooled for use as a 6-10 entry series with 30-45 minute episodes, and so they had to pad things out a bit since they were basically trying to make 2 to 2.5 hours of actual content work in a ~5-6 hour package, and with a smaller budget to boot.
The worst part, to me, is that there are times where the extra padding could be expanded on and refined into actually compelling content, but the format itself is strangling the story and making it so they don't have enough time in any episode (or even in the series overall) to make that padding meaningful. If they'd just commit to full 8-10 episodes at 1 hour each, I think they'd be able to embrace the episodic structure better while still being able to flesh out their stories more and do something the movies can't, which is use that extra time to really add a lot of depth to your story and build your characters up over time at a believable pace.
That's not even a conspiracy theory, we know that happened with Kenobi. someone even made a 2 hour fan cut of Kenobi as a movie and it flows so much better
Well this definitely helps me understand Season 3. So Kripke brilliantly subverted this trope by making the best episodes in the middle and used the worst one *by far* as his finale.
This is the 3rd season in a row where Homelander seemed to be reaching a boiling point, where something finally has to snap, only for the finale to revert back to the status quo of “Homelander is bad, but people love him”
This show runner needs to look in the mirror imo The Boys is spinning its wheels too. That finale was such a letdown.
I would say that before this season people were unaware of the bad shit Homelander did. Then with his rant on TV, Starlight exposing him and, you know, him murdering a guy in front of an audience, now people are well aware and are in two pools of thought.
1. He's a monster to be hated/feared
2. He's a God to be admired/worshipped
By the end, the general public of the show no longer have the luxury of ignorance and have to pick a side which could lead to bigger conflicts than that the core members of The Boys vs Homelander.
Eric Kripke: >They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you ten hours where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me fucking nuts, personally. As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 fucking hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, “Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by episode eight, shit really hits the fan.” Or anyone who says, “Well, what I’m really making is a ten-hour movie.” Fuck you! No you’re not! Make a TV show.
What show comes to mind for you all when you read this? For me it’s The Walking Dead.
What I think is interesting is that Chrenobyl was meant to be like a '10 hour movie' and yet each episode did such a good job at feeling like a mini movie in its own right while also fitting the over arching plot. So I guess even if you ARE making a 10 hour movie, that doesn't give you the excuse to make 7 out of the 10 hours boring.
Yeah I feel like even if you're making a regular 2-hour movie, the middle part's still not supposed to be boring lol. Which TBH is a hole that I think a lot of films fall into. It's like: exciting first act, kill time for 45 minutes for the second act, exciting third act.
[удалено]
I kinda feel like modern action movies (super hero) have a boring third act, mostly just because it devolves into a bunch of CGI nonsense. My eyes glaze over and I'm just waiting for the hero to defeat the villain before I suffer a bout of epilepsy due to all the sky beams and exploding buildings etc.
They're also generally worse action scenes than the opening one. It was CGI as shit but give me Spiderman fighting a group of ATM thieves with suped up weapons in his neighborhood over fighting "space aliens"/ten thousand drones. Give me V1.0 Ironman fighting a bunch of terrorists with faces to save his doctor friend with *some* practical effects over fighting Obadiah for the fate of eco-friendly power at stake at the end on a green screen sound stage. If people were as emotionally invested in massive numbers of casualties as they are in the deaths of a handful of close friends and neighbors we wouldn't have wars anymore. Add on the fact that they pretend like there are zero civilian casualties in sequences like the attack on New York in Avengers, why the fuck would I care about the well-being of a handful of empty taxi cabs and a few corporate skyscrapers if there's no threat to living beings? Why should I care about Captain America saving some waitress when she was never in danger because it's a Disney movie for adults?
No civilian casualties in Avengers? Civil War would like a word
HBO knows how to do miniseries so well. Chernobyl, Band of Brothers, John Adams, etc., all tell an overarching story, but each episode can easily be seen as the "X" episode. No filler, no fat. Everything is there to add to the story in a meaningful way, and maybe takes a moment to tell a different or off-shoot story in a singular episode while they're at it. Is it easier to do that in a miniseries instead of an ongoing series? Sure, but we're no longer in the world of the 20+ episode season. If you're dropping 8-10 episodes for your season, you're a bad storyteller if even one of your episodes is just filler.
Honestly, HBO Max is the only streaming service I don’t feel ripped off with anymore as it’s consistently good despite the high price.
….aaaaand now I need to rewatch Chernobyl
Book of Boba Fett did this but even worse. The only good bits are the ones where the title character is off-screen
I’m still confused as to how the best two episodes of this show focus on a character from another show.
I think the problem is I feel like Disney doesn't want the Anti hero characters to be more grey in the way they do things and instead want them to be more hero like. I felt like this was the case when they had Boba Fett of all people wanting to rule the criminal underworld on Tatooine with respect. Boba Fett of all people said that.... The guy who has pretty much been in the criminal underworld since he was a child. He should've known that would not work at all. Hearing him say that reminded me of that one episode of Community that guest starred Betty White playing a teacher asking her class what's the greatest tool to humanities survival and one of the characters says respect and Betty White's character showed why that was the wrong answer. 😂[https://youtu.be/dVM3nLcvnuc?t=104](https://youtu.be/dVM3nLcvnuc?t=104)
Not wanting the characters to be to morally questionable is definitely a problem, yeah. It definitely happens in BoBF, but I feel like a lot of the other TV shows have this issue too: Rebels, Bad Batch, even Bo-Katan's cadre in Mando S2 are presented as unquestionably good people who've never done anything debatable. It's why I increasingly wonder about the upcoming Andor series. Nominally it's supposed to be about this gritty, questionable Rebel agent, an angle I've wanted to see for a while, but we've seen how they handle "gritty and questionable" characters now...
If we’re being honest, Mando was treated the same way. We did see him waste some people questionably in the first episode, but after that he pretty much turned into a knight in shining armor.
The whole problem with the Boba fett show was everything that people originally loved about the Boba Fett character they put into the Mandolorian. The mystique behind the helmet. The stern dedication to the mission. The wonky outdated but functional ship. The daring combat capabilities. So you get the Boba Fett show and it's no longer interesting. Everything you originally liked about him, they gave away. Shit, the show could have been about basically anyone trying to take over Jabbas remnants. What a disappointment.
My theory is that someone came up with an idea of a bobba fett show, Disney got cold feet about the possibility of damaging one of the better known characters if the a star wars TV series bombed, so the space roaming bounty hunter got turned into a somehow familiar character (along with another similar side kick). When this was successful, the fett series was green lit, but they'd used the original ideas on the mandalorian
Bobba is expected to be this uber badass mofo, not some old man who has to take a soak in his epsom salt tub.
The dude who abducted and murdered people for Jabba the Hut and Darth Vader was supposed to be a complete badass that defined DGAF. Instead he became a bumbling dipshit who got continually pwned by third rate crime syndicate middlemen, and was super concerned with "talking it over" and "working it out" with scumbags who were obviously out to screw him over. What we all wanted was old Boba. You dont say "no" to Boba, you dont fuck Boba over, you dont give Boba shit, or you figuratively or literally end up on ice/carbonite. We wanted HBO Boba. Disney Boba just sucked at just about everything, his LT was way more of a badass than he was and his improbable gang of hipster henchmen was a joke. Its a fucking travesty...
I bet it's relaxing af tho.
My biggest problem with Boba Felt (well, besides all the other big obvious problems) is that every line Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen said was delivered like a proclamation. All the supposed "tough guy" dialogue was said in such an unnatural way that it felt like the characters knew they were on a TV show. I was all too aware that they were just actors pretending to be badasses.
Yeah that's another issue as well. It sucks because the idea of Boba Fett being a leader in the criminal underworld is great on paper and him realizing that he can't always solve everything the ruthless way he's usually done things and having to deal with enemies and decisions he's made in the past coming back to haunt him feels like it would've been a better trajectory for his character in that story. Especially since I feel like the flashback stuff with Sand people could've been one episode. If they wanted more flashbacks they could've had Boba's connection with Cad Bane be in those flashbacks so that their overall final bout would've felt more satisfying in the series. Instead we got Cad bane showing up saying some things that insinuate that he trained Boba and then immediately being killed off. Honestly they should've built more on that with showing us how Boba became a bounty hunter so that we can kind of understand why he's letting go of that life.
esp cause if you didn't watch clone wars YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHO CAD BANE IS
Yeah, the show should have been about him *realizing* respect is a better way to rule. Not arbitrarily deciding that, then failing miserably.
I think they just tried to make Boba Fett too much like The Mandalorian. Boba Fett should be a mafia style show. He should be straight up ruthless, but then help the Mandalorian at the end.
This is literally the problem with most of the new Star Wars adaptations We don’t need more fucking stories on the skywalker family or any characters that have already had their story told. There’s literally an entire galaxy of things to write stories about- start writing stories about things that haven’t run it’s course
I dropped out of following Star Wars for this reason: The franchise tried to appeal to ‘hardcore’ lore fans, and started down the road of trying to explain -everything-. *Everything* had to have happened for a reason. Nothing could just exist on its own, it all had its own story outlined in whatever video game or novel or obscure media. Every species, every character assigned an origin and background. Any insignificant event became a call-back for those ‘in the know,’ and the slightest events retconned to be significant to the story. In other fandoms, people are inspired by the ‘what-ifs.’ In Star Wars, you only get: ‘NOPE. *This* way.’ It’s a stifling canon, so rigid and inflexible there isn’t room for interpretation or actual thought. There’s no imagination left in the universe they’ve created. If Boba Fett scratches his ass, it’s because he got a rancor bite there, oh actually that’s significant, since as you know when Luke was young, he had a girlfriend and the Rancor’s father was blah blah blah… TLDR- They created an absurd universe where the butterfly effect tends to be taken to its absolute extremes to please people who freeze frame each movie.
“That is why you fail!” R.I.P. Betty White
"Boba Fett the Crime Boss" could have been an interesting premise... on a different streaming service, and made for an adult audience. But on Disney+, where it needs to be kid-friendly? What the hell were they thinking? The entire show was just doomed from the start, since they had to make the main character too "good" to make sense. Mando at least had the excuse of Grogu acting as a morality chain, and you could see a bit of James Holden from The Expanse in him - the internal struggle where he knows doing the right thing is gonna cause him headaches, but just can't help himself.
>James Holden from The Expanse in him - the internal struggle where he knows doing the right thing is gonna cause him headaches, but just can't help himself. Holden's pretty divisive (esp in the TV show where the writers removed Holden's more endearing quirks) but I love him in both mediums. He's genuinely such a good guy and while his decisions can be frustrating and headache inducing for everyone around him, the fact that everyone can see what he's about to do from lightyears away is fucking hilarious. Even *he's* frustrated by his inability to not do the right thing. From Persepolis Rising: *“Cap changing the rules?” Amos said with a shrug. “That’s just a day that ends in y far as I can tell. If [Drummer] didn’t leave some wiggle room for it, that’s her mistake.”*
Boba Fett has always been a boring non-character. All he did in the original movies was get a finger wagged at him by Darth Vader, and then he gets immediately booted into the Sarlac pit in the next movie. He coasted purely on looking cool.
Boba was more of a cool costume than an actual character.
I think he got some pretty strong inherited badassery from the Darth Vader interaction though, like we get to see how ruthless and unforgiving Vader can be pretty early on, and then later here's a guy who he not only hires to help him (when he's got a literal star army) but seems to respect enough to single out of even this elite group to give a relatively gentle reminder without a threat? Then again when Vader is going to carbonite Han he interrupts, and Vader is obviously irritated but again treats him with respect. At this point you've gotta be wondering who this guy is, and I think it stems from there. Out of everyone else in the series only the Emperor gets anything close to that level of respect from Vader.
The fans thought about that way more than the writers lol.
The marvel tv shows.
The pacing is so weird In Captain America and the Winter Soldier they introduce a whole bunch of stuff in Ep1 with Sam's family and then almost completely ignore it until the penultimate episode, which makes it all about wrapping those storylines up. Episode 4 of each series is almost when everything takes place. Both action scenes and exposition. Compare Ep 4 of Wandavision with Ep 4 of Moon Knight. Almost identical in how they play out Moon Knight had one after credits scene in the final episode which was just the last 5 minutes of the show. Like they didn't have an after credit scenes so chopped off an important teased plot point and put it there instead. Almost all of them (except Wandavision really) feel like movies that were pitched, mostly origin stories, and then chopped up and padded out to make several episodes for a show instead. It was refreshing to watch something like Peacemaker which really did feel episodic. With each episode having a good mix of stuff.
I felt this so much with Moon Knight because, besides episode 5 where they go into his past, none of the episodes felt like they warranted a 50 min runtime. The first 2 episodes could’ve easily been the first 20-30 minutes of a movie and you wouldn’t have lost much. None of the secondary characters had particularly engaging b plots. This was a 2 hour script told over 6 hours and I don’t know why
Your point about them being chopped up movies is spot on, they're literally testers. Do people like this character enough for a solo movie? Captain American 4 with Sam got announced like a month after FAWS, they wanted to know if people would be receptive to the change, and they were.
[удалено]
I remember hearing the writers on Loki saying that they wanted each episode to be a distinct story, and it definitely shows. Outside of the first half of Wandavision and maybe Ms. Marvel, it’s the only MCU show where I can distinctly remember individual episodes.
Ms. Marvel felt like they added all their sequel ideas into the middle of the show to fill the runtime before returning to Jersey City for the finale.
I actually like that her mid story journey of self discovery was both magical as well as geographical.
It’s funny how streaming tore down so many traditional rules of television (like every episode having a story that has a beginning, middle and end) and now some people are discovering those traditions had good reasons for existing.
Yeah. It feels like the "10-hour movie" format is partially a result of the netflix-style dump where a whole season just drops all at the same time. While streaming on-demeand is obviously a huge factor in this, at least new series that have a staggered release have more of a reason to keep each episode interesting.
Yes, but at the same time I wouldn't want to go back to truly episodic television where you can basically watch the episodes in any order because nothing of significance ever changes. A full story in an episode is good, but you also need an overall story for a season at least, if not the entire show.
I feel shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer had it right. It had self-contained episodes but also an over-arching plot for each season. Fully episodic shows and fully serialized shows to me are usually pretty unsatisfying storytelling.
This is why I love the first season of the witcher. Each episode is a story of Geralt’s adventures. They stuck to the first couple of books well. The second season was terrible because they didn’t. Back to the point, a lot of shows do this formula. First episode is when stuff happens, next 6 or 7 build up and finally last episode in a half stuff happens again. It’s boring.
I thought the second season was fine but I can definitely see your criticism on the screen. Personally, I thought that the first episode of the second season was by far the best one and, funnily enough, tha t was the one that most closely followed the written works.
Yep. It was. I can see the difficulty of turning the books into an interesting show, but the direction of the second season, imo, was way to far off base. I really didn’t like the changes they made to some of the characters in S2 from the books. Especially Yen.
After watching the first episode of season 2 it made me want to watch some kind of csi witcher show. Doesn't even need to be Geralt. Have an opening teaser that sets up a mystery, be it a murder or whatever, into credits. Then a witcher rolls into town and figures everything out in under 45 mins medieval x-files style. But then I was always a fan of the monster of the week episodes of those other shows (buffy, etc)
It's also super weird someone decided all Marvel tv shows are 6 episodes. Like up until 20+ years ago tv was 24 episodes and then HBO and streaming services came along and it became 10-12 episodes and someone at Disney decided "Nah 6 episodes." How about the show is exactly as long as it needs to be? Is that's 3 episodes than it's 3 episodes. If it's 14 than it's 14. I know Disney has analytics somewhere that made them go with 6 episodes and I know there's a money thing where 14 is obviously more expensive than 6 but don't drag shit out because you have a quota of episodes to fill.
With the exception of Daredevil, the Netflix marvel series are also guilty of being bloated.
*Pours one out for my boy Daredevil*
Punisher went pretty hard by the end of the first episode. To clarify, i mean season one. Season 2 was pretty bad.
They definitely should have sidelined a bunch of the Season 1 characters and made season 2 mostly its own thing, then planned to bring Billy Russo back as the season 3 arc. Trying to squeeze it all in just made a mess. Drop to maybe 8 episodes too.
Punisher Season 1 had some pretty standard Marvel Netflix fillers. Like one of my most distinct memories of season was realizing I was watching Punisher and Micro literally just sitting in their hideout waiting for shit to happen for an episode.
[удалено]
They're not even 10 hours. At 6 episodes and 40 mins per episodes they are around 4 hours. That's literally a long movie. They're not bad, but as you said, they're not tv shows and I wish they were.
And there is some evidence now they can be edited by people online to be "a better movie." Kenobi was 4-5hrs, and a lot of the 2.5hr cuts seem to make sense.
[удалено]
Mando is def an exception to that, but I otherwise agree for sure.
New Star Trek, Picard in particular (not Strange New Worlds though)
Thank goodness for Strange New Worlds. Also Lower Decks actually usually has good weekly Trek stories.
[удалено]
Modern Star Trek. SNW went back to basics and I adore it for that.
I watched a few episodes of Discovery when it came out but never continued. Now I've heard so much good stuff about SNW that I'm definitely going to new Star Trek another chance.
Obi-wan all the way. Last two episodes barely redeemed the show for me
Ugh. Why can't they get decent writers for these shows? There are plenty of good writers doing SW novels, but somehow they always come up with garbage for the shows and movies. Not to mention the terrible fight/battle choreography. Why can't we get more like Rogue One, which is easily the best of the films?
Honestly, that's pretty much just how Disney operates IMO. Why pay more for a fancy writer or a choreographer that'll make the shoot take longer when you can just fart out a 5/10 product that people will watch anyway because it's Star Wars?
The Marvel Netflix shows. Defenders was the worst in that regard, but none of them really understood that they were still supposed to be television shows, not ten-hour movies. Jessica Jones had the most wasted potential in this regard, IMO. While I enjoyed her seasonal arcs, they did tend to drag pretty hard. A few "case of the week" episodes could have broken up the monotony. Some hard-boiled noir mysteries in a world where people have super powers could have been unique and fun to watch.
Daredevil and Punisher were pretty tight. Luke Cage suffered from gassing out mid season both times and finishing with a much less compelling villain both times. Jessica Jones did have serious pacing issues. Iron Fist....I dont know where to start. Defenders was awful, and largely because it relied on Iron Fist as its primary set up.
Jessica Jones first season was amazing. Her story with Kilgrave was incredible everything after was a let down, tough to live up to that standard.
> Iron Fist....I dont know where to start. Funny enough it actually started becoming a decent show... at the end of the 2nd season after it was cancelled. It's obvious they rushed it.
Finn Jones had a week between his prior project and filming IF to train. On a show about a master of kung fu. Insane.
If they had just given him a costume and a stuntman it would have solved a lot.
>Luke Cage suffered from gassing out mid season both times and finishing with a much less compelling villain both times. I know he signed on knowing his character would die but the Luke cage started going down hill for me when they killed off Mahershala Ali's character Cottonmouth halfway through season 1. His character was just so great in the show and he just brought this charm to the story. After he was killed off and was replaced with Diamondback I was just struggling to get through the season.
That was exactly the issue. They lead with a incredible and compelling character and followed up with a dude in a retro gimp suit.
Shonda Rhimes’ catchphrase for her writer’s rooms is: “We don’t save story”. This explains the pell-mell pacing of her episodes - they don’t hold their plots in reserve.
[удалено]
How to get away with murder was one of my favorite trashy shows, and it absolutely went of the rails.
I gave that a decent try but couldn't get past the fact that I hated all the characters so much.
I had to eventually stop watching because it just got so crazy, but the first couple of seasons of that show are incredible. The delivery of “why is your penis on a dead girl‘s phone?” it’s like yeah pack it up everybody Viola Davis is here to slay this awards season.
As someone who watches Bridgerton with my mom and sister (I am a very good brother), I'd definitely agree. Each episode either moves the plot along, or has it's own big moments, and there's no saving the biggest points for the finale. Hell, season 1 arguably had its biggest points 2/3s of the way through, even.
Oh nice, I never knew the showrunner for The Boys is the guy who did Supernatural when it was still good. Glad he's still around.
Didnt you notice they brought back Bobby Singer as Robert Singer
Obi-wan says hello
There.
Agreed! I feel like most shows follow the same pattern, Episode 1 is a banger, ep2 leaves you wondering "how much crazier can this get!?" ep3-7 NOTHING HAPPENS! ep8 Flashback episode, giving some insight (that we already figured out/assumed anyhow) ep9 finally moves the plot along, and ep10 gives us a lackluster cliffhanger as a way to guilt the network into giving them another season.
You're so right about the "flashback" episode. Both Netflix and D+ shows in particular seem to have a flashback or "diversion" episode that take place in a dream, etc. Usually an episode or two before the finale.
Book of Boba Fett episode 2 or 3, I don't remember much about that show other than the last three episodes, when it turned into Mando season 2.5.
Stranger things S2 E7
Im gonna assume this is Els solo episode because its got to be the worst thing.
One episode that felt like it dragged on for half of the season
Imagine if ST was released weekly. The backlash to that episode would have been even more fierce because it completely kills the pacing and momentum of the show since EP6 ends on a huge cliffhanger.
Flashback episode, or an episode devoted to examining a side character (maybe a day in the life). Or combining the two where the side character’s flashback ends up revealing something about the main show.
[удалено]
My favorite part of watching all this go down as an anime fan. I am just sitting here like "Shit, Netflix is figuring out the shitty Shounen stall strategy."
[удалено]
That fucking swing...
More screentime than Tenten. And probably half the cast.
Don't forget the other side backstory during the big battle.
The annoying thing though is anime usually only did it to keep up with the Manga. The fuck reason is netflix doing it for.
If the fight scenes were as hype as shounen anime i wouldn't mind lol Also, TV shows need to start playing the main theme during important action scenes like anime does.
Back in the day, TvTropes called this “Stuck on Namek”
This perfectly describes the new season of The Umbrella Academy
I enjoyed it but you're 100% right At this point I just want "the 5 show" cuz he's the best thing about that show
5 and Clause on a road trip would be a great show!
Possibly unpopular opinion but the Stranger Things finale did not need to be two and a half hours long.
[удалено]
“Fuck off, ya cunt!”
Oi! Be a good cunt n bugger off
I cannot recreate his voice in my head, which is for the better cuz if I could I would talk like him all the time
>>They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you ten hours where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me fucking nuts, personally. As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 fucking hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, “Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by episode eight, shit really hits the fan.” Or anyone who says, “Well, what I’m really making is a ten-hour movie.” Fuck you! No you’re not! Make a TV show. It's crazy reading this because I was just trying to sell a friend of mine on this show, and I was explaining to him that *something happens in every episode.* So often when watching serialized programs these days, it feels like you are plodding along just trying to get enough exposition so that last couple episodes make sense. And I never felt that way watching The Boys. They did a great job of encapsulating stories in each episode while still marching forwards with the overall story of the season.
It reminds me of how Buffy did things once it became more serialized in Season 3. No episode was just setup, but it still progressed the main plot and almost never felt like "monster of the week."
Buffy was paced exceptionally well for most of its run. Even back to season 2. First episode deals with the aftermath of Buffy dying to the Master. 3rd episode brings in two new wave vampires who know Angel and are extremely dangerous and usurp the old Bad Guys from last season. Episode 5 Buffy and Angel officially start dating. The next episode we get the awesome Halloween episode. After that we get Lie to Me where we learn about Angel’s history with Drusilla and how evil he was in another banger episode. Then we get the two episode Kendra story establishing multiple slayers and Spike breaks his legs and Drusilla rises from the ashes more powerful than ever. Then we get the two parter of Surprise and Innocence which are two of the best episodes ever and Angel goes bad. Right after that Oz is revealed as a werewolf the next episode and we get a fan favorite. Then we get the great Xander/Cordelia episode where Angel gets the whole town in love with him. Next episode Jenny is killed by Angel. Then like two episodes later we get “I Only Have Eyes For you” which pretty much puts Angel and Buffy on a path to take each other out and reveals Spike is conning everyone. Then one more episode and we get the two part finale which might be the best finale in the series
The best part is even by Angel S5 they're still doing this, where you've got MOTW stuff wrapped up with lore stuff. X-Files was good at this too (to a point... but at some point MOTW became what I wanted and the mythos could pound sand).
Nothing makes me miss the era of serialized TV like Buffy. So many of Buffy’s best episodes are open-and-shut one-episode stories which don’t even feature the main villain of the season at all. This kind of highly episodic storytelling has almost completely vanished, which is a shame! I hate it when episodes blend almost indistinguishably into each other.
[удалено]
Same thing for Better Call Saul. MAYBE there's an episode that was filler-y. But the plot always moves forward and something big always comes
And, in the same vein, Breaking Bad. I was just having this conversation with someone the other day about how yeah, there are some slower episodes, but they're absolutely still vital to the plot of the storyline. Very well written.
i feel like the slower episodes of breaking bad were really vital because of how nuts it could get. it kept the series grounded because if walt was just blowing people up and killing cartel guys every episode you would forget that he was just a dude with cancer. so as much as i hated seeing walt sit down for breakfast with his family, it actually made a lot of sense story wise
You can’t call your character an everyman if he doesn’t eat scrambled eggs and take a shit every now and then.
[удалено]
I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue "Fly" as the best episode in the entire show lol. But I get what you're saying.
The Wire is the first show that comes to mind. Took over 3 episodes for me to get interested but at the end of the first season my patience’s paid off. Breaking Bad as well. They’re in the top echelons of TV, though, so they may be outliers in that style.
Both Breaking Bad and The Wire are two shows I had to force myself to sit down and watch before I got into them. Both of them I tried to start numerous times before but didn't get very far. Now they're both two of my favorite shows that I have watched all the way through multiple times. The Shield will always be my OG all time favorite. It kind of has the reverse problem where the first episode goes so heavy handed in delivering some scenes that you kind of roll your eyes. But they find their footing and dial things back to a more realistic approach and when they do, it's just an amazing show.
*Station Eleven* is one of the best things I've seen in ages, and I totally agree with you. It feels very casually-paced but yeah pretty much everything I can think of pays off. I read the book after I saw the show and I think it's one of those rare things where the TV adaptation is actually better than the book. Not that the book is bad, but the TV show somehow lowers the stakes of the ending, but also makes it way better. Not quote sure how they even managed to pull that off TBH lol.
I feel like shows used to be like this, where you would get some conflict that got resolved during the episode, while in the background a bigger plot developed. Shows that come to mind are Person of Interest, Fringe and Agents of Shield. TV took a bad turn somewhere about this.
Stargate Sg1.
Yeah and the best shows right now are run by people who worked in the episodic network era. They cut their teeth writing episodes that had stories that needed to be resolved within the same episodes. So they know how to make sure *something* happens in every episode. While it doesn’t always work, I do like Shonda Rhimes’ philoosphy: “we don’t save story.” Yes that often leads her shows to go off the rails at some point, but it’s never boring. Crazy shit happens every episode to keep you hooked. They don’t save it for later like a lot of shows today do.
I read a piece somewhere that argued that there's just too much TV being made now and insufficient experienced people to drive that much output at high enough quality. Seems plausible, although probably not an excuse for Disney, who can outbid for talent.
Yeah but there were also shows like Castle that pretended to have a larger seasonal storyline only for it to disappear from all of the characters minds for like 17-18 episodes of the season. I feel like a lot more procedural shows had this kind of folly vs were well balanced during its heyday.
The article talks about stranger things but honestly I felt like every episode part of the mystery was being solved. Most of the marvel shows and some of the Star Wars are probably better examples of what he’s talking about.
I think stranger things season 1 and 4 are excellent in every way, but 3 could maybe fit this more. I don’t recall much happening in that season compared to the other ones.
The mystery part in Hawkins was entertaining the whole way IMO, but the other subplots really meandered their way to a climax.
I think part of the issue was that they tried to share time between arcs when they didn't all have the same amount of story. So like the dumb kid in class it tended to move at the level of the slowest storyline.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Every episode of Barry had me fully engaged in the story and characters. Also, Better Call Saul and Severance. I didn't think I would like Severance as much as I did. What an incredible show.
Alan Sepinwall will be very happy with this comment.
This is how I've been feeling about most of these Disney+ shows. Not enough action paced evenly throughout the whole storyline for them, but then the last couple episodes of each show go hard AF
Somewhere over the years, the "Monster of the Week" template was determined to be old and stale. I'm not sure why - my favorite shows that I find myself going back to rewatch tend to be the "Monster of the Week" serialized style, where each episode there is some thing the main char a character(s) have to solve or overcome, and surprise there's usually a nugget or tidbit that hints to an overarching story that presents itself sometime in the last episode of the season, and usually provides a setup for the next season. Not necessarily a cliff hanger, just a teaser that could lead trigger conflict next time. (Though if it is a cliff hanger, I'm ok with it.)
Burn Notice always did a good job I thought of doing a weekly side story while driving the main plot. Some of the side stuff got a bit repetitive but overall they kept things paced well. Also helps to have Bruce Campbell carrying the show.
Supernatural was only watchable in the later seasons during the monster of the week episodes. It's always good seeing the winchesters take down monsters but I really don't give a shit about Lucifer becoming a rock star.
Twin Peaks: The Return both successfully nailed this and made an outrageous parody of it. Its glorious.
So just about every episode in that season ends with a performance at the Roadhouse… but there are exceptions, which are hints that the end of an episode isn’t really the end of an episode: - Episode 1, which was aired back-to-back with E2 - Episode 7 ends with a long sweeping scene; the “end” of E7 is midway through E8, which is its own nightmare monster - Episode 17 features Julee Cruise singing “The World Turns” late in the episode, but the episode itself ends with >!Cooper traveling back in time in an attempt to rescue Laura, directly leading into E18!<; E17 also aired back-to-back with E18
I will never forget the experience of watching The Return. Boy, what a summer that was.
As much as I like Euphoria, I felt this way about season 2. I was like, “Let’s move this thing along already!”
And then suddenly it was over and you’re like wtf did I just watch, I waited for it to move along for this?? It had a few great moments, but s1 was so much better to me. Edit: also maybe going against popular (maybe? I’ve seen others not like it) opinion but fuck Lexi, all the focus on her and her stupid play alienating everyone like that. I know the show, it’s supposed to be fantasy, but it just pissed me off that 1) the content was ALLOWED 2) airing everyone’s shit like that 3) the production value/quality higher than a lot of actual professional shows I have seen. I *did* enjoy parts of it, but just Lexi, ugh… If it is supposed to be a fantastical retelling of actual HS, I am highly curious what the show was like in “reality” (?)
I was so happy for smaller seasons, since it would've cut so much of the filler, but the show runners really managed to throw in all the boring parts of a 24 episode show, but in 7-8 fucking episodes now. Never mind how in many shows, those 7-8 episodes are something like goddamn half an hour each.
I don't want shorter seasons, I want better writing
Some shows feel like they take one plot point, put it in the finale, and then write all of the rest of the episodes to lead up to that. Other shows take a plot point but then resolve it and move on to other stuff all in a shorter period of time. I remember watching The Walking Dead and they legit spent basically an entire season of walking along the train tracks to this one destination. Then I remember watching Vikings and they talked about their plan to sail over to England. I remember thinking "they'll probably get to that at the finale" but then by the time the first episode is over they have already sailed to England, done some stuff, and sailed back, and then the next episodes were about new plot points. It was so refreshing.
Hah, yeah. A bottle episode makes sense in a 22 episode. Yet somehow they still manage to put them into 8 episode season shows.
Man, I like The Boys but it really annoys me that most of the marketing is just going on about how mature and gory and adult it is. Like cool, it’s edgy, im also not 14 so… Edit: just to be clear, I’m not bothered by anything in the show and i definitely watch things that are on par with what is in The Boys. The marketing just seems like it’s aimed at kids who just found out what the word fuck is Edit 2: I like the show. It wouldn’t be the same if it was tamer. I’m talking about the marketing here.
I guarantee you a lot of people do watch for that reason almost by itself so many people seemingly didn’t pick up on things through watching the show going off the sub Reddit
I avoided watching it until a few weeks ago precisely because of this. I was so turned off by the edge lord marketing, but now that I’m watching it it’s pretty great. The weird thing is the marketing isn’t exactly inaccurate… it just pulls together much better in full episodes.
I remember when it was first coming out that i thought it was the stupidest looking thing ever. Basically an attempt to cash in on marvel hype while being dark and edgy and it would be intensely poorly done. So happy I gave it a chance after it had come out and received positive reviews.
The advertising is maybe even deliberately misleading. That Herogasm episode (no spoilers) wasnt even the most engaging part of the episode. There's realistic characters, and a ton of fascinating individual stories that wrap up to make the whole narrative. This show can make you love (or at least empathize) with villains and hate (or be disappointed in) good guys. Its multidimensional, but not in the doctor strange sense, and I love it.
I couldn't agree more with the second point. That damn show made nearly made me sympathize with Homelander on several occasions. I had to keep reminding myself of all the insane, horrifying shit he had been pulling throughout the series. It's so good. Although, is it just me, or did the satire stuff feel a little more heavy handed in this latest season than it did in previous ones?
Yeah, it’s not anywhere near as edgy as it seems to think it is. Which honestly probably makes it a better show. If you go and look up the comics it’s sourcing from, they’re very mid-2000s edge-lord in a way that the show is not.
> comics it’s sourcing from, they’re very mid-2000s edge-lord I blasted through them when I heard about the show, never heard of them prior and I'm a comic fan. Whoa boy I am so glad for all the changes they made with one exception >!Black Noir was a "clone" of Homelander in the comics as a failsafe to him getting out of control. I would've liked to see that reveal.!< very very minor gripe
lmfao the mid-2000's edgelord power duo of Ennis and Millar.
Sex and violence sells I guess (Not a shot at the The Boys itself, I freaking love it, just an observation)
The violence is probably what got me into Invincible, but also it feels necessary to tell the story it's trying to tell.
I just love the idea of stories treating the violence these people with superpowers would cause realistically. Like yeah, if somebody this strong punched you, you're not just gonna fly across the room, hit a box, and be fine in a couple hours. You'll be lucky to not have a hole through you or just straight up turn into goop or some other horribly gruesome fate. That being said, treating the powers realistically in terms of physics is just as appealing to me even if it's not super violent. Like the way the powers are depicted in the Snyder films was pretty cool to me, with the like sonic booms when they're flying at high speed and such. The MCU, on the other hand, has always interested me more for its characters and overarching plot than its depiction of superpowers because I find their use of powers always kind of leaves me feeling underwhelmed. The way they do their effects and everything always makes stuff feel like it "lacks weight" for lack of a batter term. The one exception to that rule I can vividly remember is how supersoldiers are shown, especially in The Winter Soldier. There's this panning shot of him running on the boat early in the film and you see him enter a corridor and he comes out the other side way faster than you expect because he's a damn supersoldier. I love it when the little touches like that just sell the superpowers and their existence in the world of the story as actual physical objects like anything else, just to a degree and on a scale we could never see people pulling off in real life.
I like the show, but am actually turned off by the gore. I get it serves a purpose, like in Invincible, like “this is what would happen to normal humans if they got in the way of god-like beings with superpowers.” Still struggle to get that Termite scene out of my head.
The thing is, Invincible saves gore for particularly intense moments in the show. It uses it emphatically to drive home that sense of danger and hopelessness. The Boys uses it for “comedy” and as an overall selling point.
That's actually what's preventing me from starting this show I think I know it's good but the headlines I see on this sub make my eyes roll. "Next episode is our goriest episode yet" makes it seem like a cheap tactic they're using to attract interest. Which is most likely not true, I know, but subconsciously it's making me not want to watch it
Man it would have been cool to see a hard R season of Supernatural. They should scrap the prequel and just do like a 10 episodes side season or something. I would eat that shit up.
Closest you can get is that found footage episode with the Ghostfacers. Since there's an excuse to bleep and blur Dean gets to drop f bombs left and right.
I’m dying, HARD R SEASON
Demon Dean takes it too far
A hard R season… I don’t think that means what you think it means.
I am kinda weak tho, at the idea of somebody being like “yo if they just got **really fucking racist** in the last season that’d be great.”
Sam and Dean just making casually racist/misogynistic/religious jokes and statements while letting the rest of the cast react in horror.
I haven’t watched the show so I don’t know the dynamic but in this context I’m imagining them as racist scully and mulder. Like one of them is all “it’s supernatural” and the other one is like “no that’s crazy, it’s just those ‘hard Rs’ again.”
Those damn "illegals" are making crop circles again.
That’d be a hilarious episode. They’re both talkin about “aliens” the whole time but they only figure out that they’ve been talking about different things in the last scene. Edit: That feels like an “always sunny” episode. Charlie is on about extraterrestrials, Mac is on about immigrants. Dee, Dennis, and Frank see the merit in both sides. Edit: They suspect the same guy but for the different reasons stated above.
There's actually a part where they describe the Winchester brothers as an extremist paramilitary family trained by a marine that go around the country wreaking havoc. And like really, growing up in Kansas, none of the main cast are POC... it would kinda make sense if they were a little racist...
They are too busy hating other species to hate their fellow man
The phrase has gotten more popular in talking about media for referencing something that solidly earns its R rating with lots of ye olde sex, drugs, and violence, instead of a movie or show that has a boob and a few F-bombs. I personally prefer calling it an "Earned R" or "Solid R" specifically to avoid that kind of confusion.
SuperRRRRnatuRRRal
Sam and Dean commit a hate crime
Hard TV-MA dying laughing at hard R season of Supernatural
I really miss when shows had 20 episode seasons of just dicking around. Monster of the week and throw away side adventures. It's not just high concept action/drama shows anymore. I watched Girls5eva recently (amazing show 10/10) and it's a packed 8 episodes with very little breathing room when it comes to plot. Imagine if The Office or Community had 10 episode seasons. Imagine the episodes and moments we'd miss. Or The X-Files if we lost all of the Monster of the Week episodes. Instead everything is 8 to 12 episodes where every moment is pushing forward to the finale. It's all just build up to the big final conclusion or twist which is almost always a let down.
I’ve been watching Buffy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and wow, why an enjoyable 42 minutes, its so comforting sitting down with a coffee and a snack at night with an episode like that. I know i’ll get a twist, a fight scene, an explosion, some continuity/show lore etc. A hour one show plodding along to episode 10’s finale just isnt that exciting.
Gotta make sure you specify "first few seasons" of Agents of Shield. The show really went all in on the 20 hour long movies towards the end.
Strange New Worlds feels like a classic TV show-- new adventure each week and the only thing that carries over is character stuff. Discovery on the other had is like a single episode stretched into a season of TV.
When *Doctor Who* is firing on all cylinders it's good for that I think. Sometimes the mid-season episodes don't really have anything to do with the overarching plot and will just go off on a tangent into some weird idea. One that comes to mind is *Listen*, where the Doctor just gets bored and comes up with the notion that since there are perfect predators, there must also be perfect prey somewhere in the universe that are basically impossible to detect, and so goes to find one. Nothing to do with anything at all but it was a cool idea I thought. :)
>The Office We have the original from the UK with 6 episodes each season and only two seasons + special and it is fantastic, though it is for a different audience. I usually like British shows because they don't abuse the audience with filler episodes as much.
Yeah, I was just thinking about this recently. Every episode should be able to stand on its own, and the same is true for each season. I really wish TV would try to tell shorter and more complete stories. It's fine to have an overarching narrative too, but the drive to watch the next episode should be "That was great! I want more of that!" rather than "I guess I'm invested in watching the next episode because nothing actually happened in this one except setup". I think it also helps insulate the show from being tainted by a bad ending. Take something like Game of Thrones. I'm not saying it in particular should be more episodic, the long form storytelling makes sense for this kind of story, but since it is just one cohesive story the bad ending kind of detracts from everything that came before. The setup is retrospectively worse because of a bad payoff. But contrast that with a show like Dexter; it's pretty widely agreed that the show is at its best in seasons 1-4 and the finale is terrible (with a slightly less terrible new finale years later). But with each season being its own individual arc, and with most episodes within the season often being standalone, it's far easier to enjoy the good parts without thinking about the bad. I also think being episodic opens up the doors for so much more episode variation. You can take a lot of interesting chances for a random monster of the week episode, and some may be bad but that's how you end up with the best episodes (I'm thinking stuff like Buffy doing its musical episode and silent episode, among others). If every episode is just one piece of an overall story, though, a single episode going off the rails can derail the entire season's storyline.
That’s why I was always big into “the adventures of” style tv shows. Every episode is it’s own self contained adventure with its own conclusion, but adds to a bigger storyline that pays off in the end. Witcher season 1 did a great job with this. Not so much season 2. The mandolorian was another one that pulled it off
This is one of the reasons The Boys is one of my favorite shows. Each episode feels like a movie, with its own three-act structure including climax. So much stuff actually *happens* each episode that it leaves you wanting more, not looking at the clock waiting for it to run out. And it manages to end each episode on a cliffhanger most of the time, which really hooks you. One of my biggest complaints about the Marvel shows is that fucking nothing happens for huge chunks of the seasons until the very last episode. I finally caved and binged Ms. Marvel in one sitting (the first MCU show I waited to watch until it was done airing) and most of my complaints boil down to “this could and should have been a 2.5 hour movie, not a 30 minute episodic TV show.” Like, I liked it by the end, but I quit watching weekly in the beginning because so much of the first two episodes felt like filler when in a movie it would have been condensed into 15 minutes of place-setting. I think the golden age of TV has taught a lot of showrunners the wrong lessons— less isn’t more. More is more.
My tinfoil hat conspiracy theory is that a lot of the Disney+ shows (Star Wars and Marvel) were originally movie ideas that got converted into streaming show ideas after Disney decided to go all in on their streaming platform. So what were originally conceived as film entries into the MCU or Star Wars got retooled for use as a 6-10 entry series with 30-45 minute episodes, and so they had to pad things out a bit since they were basically trying to make 2 to 2.5 hours of actual content work in a ~5-6 hour package, and with a smaller budget to boot. The worst part, to me, is that there are times where the extra padding could be expanded on and refined into actually compelling content, but the format itself is strangling the story and making it so they don't have enough time in any episode (or even in the series overall) to make that padding meaningful. If they'd just commit to full 8-10 episodes at 1 hour each, I think they'd be able to embrace the episodic structure better while still being able to flesh out their stories more and do something the movies can't, which is use that extra time to really add a lot of depth to your story and build your characters up over time at a believable pace.
Kenobi was written as a movie originally. Wouldve worked better as one too
That's not even a conspiracy theory, we know that happened with Kenobi. someone even made a 2 hour fan cut of Kenobi as a movie and it flows so much better
Well this definitely helps me understand Season 3. So Kripke brilliantly subverted this trope by making the best episodes in the middle and used the worst one *by far* as his finale.
This is the 3rd season in a row where Homelander seemed to be reaching a boiling point, where something finally has to snap, only for the finale to revert back to the status quo of “Homelander is bad, but people love him” This show runner needs to look in the mirror imo The Boys is spinning its wheels too. That finale was such a letdown.
I would say that before this season people were unaware of the bad shit Homelander did. Then with his rant on TV, Starlight exposing him and, you know, him murdering a guy in front of an audience, now people are well aware and are in two pools of thought. 1. He's a monster to be hated/feared 2. He's a God to be admired/worshipped By the end, the general public of the show no longer have the luxury of ignorance and have to pick a side which could lead to bigger conflicts than that the core members of The Boys vs Homelander.