SERIALIZED & EPISODIC

In the past, the majority of tv drama series were episodic.  Each week the main characters were faced with a different problem and 50 or so minutes later, things were wrapped up in a neat little package.  Balance was restored in the world…until next week.  Essentially a show could tell the same story every week with enough minor variations in guest characters, setting, motive, disease etc. to give the show the appearance of greater variety.  Some shows excelled in this format and the writing was strong.  In a cop show a crime would be committed at the top of the hour and the detectives would be called in to investigate.  Various twists and turns would occur leading to the arrest of the wrong perp.  This was the red herring.  New information was received in the form of a minor thing that turned out to be a major clue and the actual villain was uncovered.  The villain attempts to the turn the tables.  When that doesn’t work, he or she makes a run for it but is caught.  Roll Credits.  In a medical show an innocent or incredibly courageous guest star is stricken with a mysterious ailment.  The super physicians diagnose the problem while fighting with the bureaucratic medical establishment.  The first cure proves to be wrong.  The guest patient might even become sicker or some other character with the ailment code blues.  Finally some minor clue in the form of a hunch by the smart doctor leads to a radical treatment that saves the patient.  Roll Credits.  This is a very broad view of the template but the basics are what carried tv drama for years.  With the progression of decades some of the “nice” characters were replaced with not-so-likeable people giving the main characters a professional and moral dilemma.  Even though he’s innocent, do I work diligently to save this scumbag because of my high moral standing or do I let him/her rot because the rest of the world will be better off?  That’s right, it’s the ‘70’s.  And sometimes a continuing character would have “issues” like being a recovering alcoholic/druggie/workaholic whose only joy is the job.  This was the ‘80’s.  Also this was the time when elements of serialization started to become popular in primetime television.  Producers knew that daytime soaps thrived on continuing storylines and audiences loved these shows.  There has always been some form of night time soap(PEYTON PLACE in the ‘60’s) but in the ‘80’s there seemed to be an explosion with “DALLAS,” “DYNASTY,” “FALCON CREST,” and a few others.  Melodramatic cliff-hangers and heightened conflicts drove these shows.  Cop and lawyer shows started incorporating longer story arcs and shows like HILL STREET BLUES and LA LAW were born with multiple lead characters who were flawed and relateable to the audiences.  Many of the shows still had some storylines to wrap up in a single episode but others played out over the course of many installments with the biggest cliff-hanger coming in the season finale.  This was done to get viewers to demand another season so the show’s life could be extended.

     A major difference between television and film used to be the rendering of the character arc.  In a film the character seeks to fulfill a goal.  This is the desire line and the character is fully aware of this element.  In good storytelling the character also has a moral need and this is a lesson the character needs to learn in order to become a better person.  The character is unaware of this at first but the audience picks up on it.  This lack of awareness of the moral need is what drives the character to do things that hurt him or herself and those in the immediate environment in some way.  The moment when the character realizes his goal and his moral need is when he has a revelation and chooses to act or not act and this determines his fate.  In a television show a character chases a goal but never fully realizes his moral need.  If he did, the show would be over because the major problem would have been solved so the story is done.  Television has gotten good at giving the character depth  to keep the action going.  Also television has given us many regular characters to enlarge the storyline.  The goal for primetime used to be to get at least 100 shows out of a concept.  That’s roughly five years---enough episodes for syndication so all participating parties can make a profit---at least the production entities.  For animation the traditional episode goal number was 65. (Of course the SIMPSONS are way beyond that.)

     By it’s very nature, soap opera is serialized.  In order to engage us, the drama must be heightened.  If it’s too heightened, we drift into melodrama that has become a convention of soaps. The aim of many serious writers is to keep the drama heightened but grounded in order to avoid the un-believability and cheesiness of melodrama. 

Mini-series starting in the ‘70’s,like RICH MAN, POOR MAN (a so called “novel for television) popularized the nighttime serial.  While it had its moments of shameless melodrama, this ground-breaking show stirred the emotions enough to garner huge ratings, inspire a sequel, and many copy-cats.  Some were good and some were the pitts. But the genie was out of the bottle.  This form peeked in the ‘80’s only to re-surface as full-fledged night time soaps which morphed into the many shows we have today.  By marrying the episodic drama to the serial, much of primetime television is able to tell longer stories and excavate more interesting character details.  I personally prefer shows that have it both ways: there’s several story threads that continue from week to week but there is also a close-end story that spans only a single episode.  But that’s just me.  Many shows that are total serials rack up massive ratings ensuring the life of this trend until…next week.