US TV is so disappointing when you expect an hour long episode but, because of the ads, it's only 42-43 minutes long. A mid-way intermission would be fine, but instead you get shallow plots driven by the need to shove in ads every 12 minutes. And all the procedurals are built around that, like the lives of those characters in that universe pause so some shitty marketing material can play. Of course, they're also 24 episodes long so they run for most of a year, and 90% of the show is the baddie of the week. The 10% of actual substance is distributed in 3-4 episodes throughout so you have to deal with all of it to get the real plot.
I've been watching the last season of Mr Robot on Amazon (and my god is it a cracker). As soon as I went to reddit to check out the fanbase reaction, so many of the posts were about how the vibe was ruined by ads appearing so often. But for me...it was a solid 50 minutes of TV, completely uninterrupted. I imagine those who enjoyed The Expanse on cable are now delighted about season 4 being a pure continuous stream on Amazon. I was.
Of course, you still get the blatant product placement. Death Stranding is my recent fave example for that, where you get Monster energy cans rubbed in your face. Same as with the old Splinter Cell games you'd be climbing across a massive billboard advertising Axe body spray.
I think the US has a serious problem with its special blend of capitalism, individualism, and consumerism. Everybody is out there to get something from you.
> Of course, they're also 24 episodes long so they run for most of a year,
This hasn't been true for shows I'm interested in for a long time, and to be honest I kind of miss it. Especially for shows that used to have longer runs but are now shorter, the pacing seems off. There used to be a season-wide arc alongside individual episodes that may or may not have anything to do with that arc in particular.
You might say that episodes that don't tie into the season are filler, and I get where you're coming from. But in sci-fi specifically, I'm so sick of the trope of "there's a thing that threatens the very fabric of the universe", and literally everything the main characters do between learning about it and resolving it are related. I miss lower stakes episodes that balance out the larger stakes in the overall season.
I'm thinking specifically of Doctor Who in that last paragraph. (which to be fair is not US TV, but I can name some US/Canadian shows that took a similar route) It used to be that the doctor could have a romp around a new planet or an interesting period in history, the doctor or his companions would learn something new, and then they'd move on. Those kinds of one-offs are what the show is built around IMO. But now with fewer episodes every season, the very fabric of the universe is always threatened, and every companion is the most important person ever born, and everything you see on screen reinforces those two ideas. They keep mentioning adventures off-screen, I think because the writers recognize that they're losing something by not having those unrelated adventures happen where the audience can see.
(The latest season of Doctor Who is at least a step back from that, but it had plenty of its own problems, not least of which is a very crowded main cast that ended up underdeveloped as a result. The only character that I felt was interesting in the first episode didn't make it to the main crew, which is probably why they were developed so much better than the rest.)
I've been rewatching the first season of Fringe lately and really enjoying the type of pacing you're talking about here. While the standalone episodes often have some piece tying into the overarching conspiracy, they're also valuable for offering time to build the relationships between the characters. Often in more contemporary shows, with hour-long episodes in 8-12 episode seasons, I feel like the interpersonal relationships rise and conflict abruptly and feel more contrived as a result; these longer seasons make the relationships feel more natural, as they're built on-screen rather than partially between episodes.
Fringe is an interesting case because the first season got one less commercial break per episode so there were five extra minutes compared to the other shows on network TV. That doesn’t sound like much but it’s amazing how different it feels from other shows in that first season. Also make sure you decode the glyphs: https://fringeglyphs.com :-)
> But in sci-fi specifically, I'm so sick of the trope of "there's a thing that threatens the very fabric of the universe", and literally everything the main characters do between learning about it and resolving it are related.
This made me think of “The Mandalorian”. An 8 episode “season”, and a good half of the episodes were unrelated to the main story arc. Is this a good thing or not? It’s hard to say. I don’t feel terribly attached to the show, frankly.
I've been watching the last season of Mr Robot on Amazon (and my god is it a cracker). As soon as I went to reddit to check out the fanbase reaction, so many of the posts were about how the vibe was ruined by ads appearing so often. But for me...it was a solid 50 minutes of TV, completely uninterrupted. I imagine those who enjoyed The Expanse on cable are now delighted about season 4 being a pure continuous stream on Amazon. I was.
Of course, you still get the blatant product placement. Death Stranding is my recent fave example for that, where you get Monster energy cans rubbed in your face. Same as with the old Splinter Cell games you'd be climbing across a massive billboard advertising Axe body spray.
I think the US has a serious problem with its special blend of capitalism, individualism, and consumerism. Everybody is out there to get something from you.