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What happened to the "reset button"?
In the old days of telly, fantastic things would happen each week. Someone would discover a long-lost evil twin sister. Everyone would suddenly turn into sex fiends because of a virus. The moon would explode and rain fire on the Earth every week. Even in Little House on the Prairie.
But it was okay because at the start of the next week everything would be back to normal, because of the reset button. It let writers run wild with their imaginations, safe in the knowledge that no lasting change would befall their characters.
Some people hated the reset button, but I actually quite liked it. It meant you could miss an episode without losing the plot. The programme makers also loved the reset button because it meant they could show the episodes pretty much in any order without having to worry about the whole thing making sense.
Entire series survived quite happily with the reset button. Good series. Stuff like M*A*S*H and Doctor Who and Cheers.
Then something seemed to change and the programme makers seemed to fall out of love with the reset button. The new fad was the "story arc". Rather than telling lots of little stories, you'd tell one big one.
The insidious rise of the story arc can best be charted by looking at the venerable Star Trek in its various incarnations:
The Original Star Trek - No story arc whatsoever. The only way you could tell the chronological order of the episodes would be by watching Shatner's almost imperceptible paunch growth.
The Next Generation - Slight signs of story arc. Character allowed to grow a beard. Character gains a child that doesn't immediately get forgotten in the next episode. Nothing major.
Deep Space Nine - Some story arc at the start, by the end completely abandons episodic plots (and any real Trek-like sci-fi) for a seasons-long story line about war. Because everyone loves war, apparently.
Voyager - Not as arcy as DS9, but a bit shit. A blip in the generally upward trend of the story arc.
Enterprise - Never mind interesting characters, plot, situation or the established canon, just feel the arc!
Nowadays, no fictional TV show seems to be green-lighted unless it's effectively an epic 120 hour movie split down into 45 minute chunks over 7 years.
I don't know about you, but if you can't tell a story in 10 hours or less, I don't want to know about it. If you can manage it in 1 hour, all the better.
What makes it worse are the people who have the full pay packages on satellite or cable, because even if you did fancy watching something when it comes to "normal telly" you're so fed up with everyone telling you how good it was on cable you'll stubbornly refuse to watch it.
I don't want to be told about programmes that "get good in about episode 7", I want programmes that start good straight away!
To enjoy telly you need to discover it for yourself. In the old days, you could catch a mid-season episode of a show and think "hey this is rather good, I'll think I'll watch this", without having to worry about the episodes you'd missed. Those episodes would be repeated sometime anyway, and you could watch them without them being spoilt by you "knowing the ending", because each episode stood on it's own merits.
Long story arcs just make for lazy writing. If you're not bothered about how you get from A to B because B isn't for another 18 weeks, you won't necessarily bother concentrating on making this episode particularly interesting.
I think I know why the story arc became de rigueur, and it's nothing really to do with writers wanting to "tell big stories", it's more to do with boosting DVD sales and box sets and paying for subscription channels. Because if you want to catch up with a series that's already in it's second season, you have to buy season one, or watch the "catch up" shows on the same network. If you don't download them from the internet, of course.
Of the TV I watch regularly, I can only think of one show that gets it right. The new Doctor Who manages to have compelling story arcs and make each show a gripping and complete story in itself, with no need for a reset button.
Bring back proper episodic telly, not epics cut into episodic chunks. Maybe I'll watch a bit more then. I might even buy the box set.
In the old days of telly, fantastic things would happen each week. Someone would discover a long-lost evil twin sister. Everyone would suddenly turn into sex fiends because of a virus. The moon would explode and rain fire on the Earth every week. Even in Little House on the Prairie.
But it was okay because at the start of the next week everything would be back to normal, because of the reset button. It let writers run wild with their imaginations, safe in the knowledge that no lasting change would befall their characters.
Some people hated the reset button, but I actually quite liked it. It meant you could miss an episode without losing the plot. The programme makers also loved the reset button because it meant they could show the episodes pretty much in any order without having to worry about the whole thing making sense.
Entire series survived quite happily with the reset button. Good series. Stuff like M*A*S*H and Doctor Who and Cheers.
Then something seemed to change and the programme makers seemed to fall out of love with the reset button. The new fad was the "story arc". Rather than telling lots of little stories, you'd tell one big one.
The insidious rise of the story arc can best be charted by looking at the venerable Star Trek in its various incarnations:
The Original Star Trek - No story arc whatsoever. The only way you could tell the chronological order of the episodes would be by watching Shatner's almost imperceptible paunch growth.
The Next Generation - Slight signs of story arc. Character allowed to grow a beard. Character gains a child that doesn't immediately get forgotten in the next episode. Nothing major.
Deep Space Nine - Some story arc at the start, by the end completely abandons episodic plots (and any real Trek-like sci-fi) for a seasons-long story line about war. Because everyone loves war, apparently.
Voyager - Not as arcy as DS9, but a bit shit. A blip in the generally upward trend of the story arc.
Enterprise - Never mind interesting characters, plot, situation or the established canon, just feel the arc!
Nowadays, no fictional TV show seems to be green-lighted unless it's effectively an epic 120 hour movie split down into 45 minute chunks over 7 years.
I don't know about you, but if you can't tell a story in 10 hours or less, I don't want to know about it. If you can manage it in 1 hour, all the better.
What makes it worse are the people who have the full pay packages on satellite or cable, because even if you did fancy watching something when it comes to "normal telly" you're so fed up with everyone telling you how good it was on cable you'll stubbornly refuse to watch it.
I don't want to be told about programmes that "get good in about episode 7", I want programmes that start good straight away!
To enjoy telly you need to discover it for yourself. In the old days, you could catch a mid-season episode of a show and think "hey this is rather good, I'll think I'll watch this", without having to worry about the episodes you'd missed. Those episodes would be repeated sometime anyway, and you could watch them without them being spoilt by you "knowing the ending", because each episode stood on it's own merits.
Long story arcs just make for lazy writing. If you're not bothered about how you get from A to B because B isn't for another 18 weeks, you won't necessarily bother concentrating on making this episode particularly interesting.
I think I know why the story arc became de rigueur, and it's nothing really to do with writers wanting to "tell big stories", it's more to do with boosting DVD sales and box sets and paying for subscription channels. Because if you want to catch up with a series that's already in it's second season, you have to buy season one, or watch the "catch up" shows on the same network. If you don't download them from the internet, of course.
Of the TV I watch regularly, I can only think of one show that gets it right. The new Doctor Who manages to have compelling story arcs and make each show a gripping and complete story in itself, with no need for a reset button.
Bring back proper episodic telly, not epics cut into episodic chunks. Maybe I'll watch a bit more then. I might even buy the box set.
But I have to agree, there's something very dull about the thought of having to 'stick with' a show for however long to see if it picks up.
Also, there's a reason I gave up on LOST, I missed one episode early on in the first season, came back the next week and had absolutely no idea what was going on any more.
And that bit where they killed of the dead guy who wasn't dead, what an anticlimax!
In fact, now I think about it, from our childhood there were some stunning arcs, for example in episode six of Police Squad (in color) they still mentioned the crooks who were sent down in episodes one, two, three, four & five as I recall!
Heroes is a case in point. I gave up 3 or 4 episodes into Season 3. Lost? No thanks.
As for neverending stories... preserve us from the likes of Sliders & Quantum leap please. Oh yes - they probably DID end at some point but I'd already fallen asleep :-)
Characters did change in MASH the reset button didn't always happen Margaret got married and divorced became a warmer more rounded person through the things that happened to her and Klinger became more than the sum of his dresses.
I hear that The Wire is very good but because of its characters and stories not because of the arc. I probably won't be watching it though because it's on too late for me.
It's a lovely little concept - a ghost, a vampire and a werewolk share a house in Bristol - but the series was absolutely great. Even my other half, who hates All Things Werewolf/Vampire was impressed and stuck with it.
I believe they're re-running the entire series on BBC3 from next week. I'd say it's well worth watching from the start - although you can go in in a couple of weeks to watch it too. :-)
You don't know what you're missing :-)
And when oh when will Cheers be repeated???
The absolute worst offender at the rambling story arc with atrocious writing is "Lost". It suffers from all the problems you describe about story arcs plus it is badly written. I don't care if it gets good around episode 7, I just can't sit through more meanderings than the Stour river.
And they handed the keys to Star Trek to the guy who came up with that drek?
Oh well back to the non-arcing Single panels :O)
The thing is, I like miniseries. Especially BBC miniseries. The BBC "Pride and Prejudice" that I watched in the 4th form kicks every Hollyweird versions collective booties. I just do not like it when the line blurs between miniseries and regular series. I was one of the peeps who missed Episode 5 of Lost and was totally confused the following week. Heroes, I gave a second chance because I had a wholly unwholesome crush on Hiro the Hero.
A good example is The Bill which has changed format several times, from self contained episodes to soap opera. Shows like the x-files and Buffy had arcs but also brilliant 45 min episodes which required no prior knowledge.
(and Lost has a season and half left.. there's a definite ending scheduled / planned, apparently)
The word verification for this comment is pregulat, just thought you'd like to know.
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