Twin peaks?
Two seasons in the early 90s, then a third season in 2017 where David Lynch basically got a blank check to completely unleash his beautiful insanity. Definitely shows the differences between what was acceptable on broadcast TV back then, vs what’s acceptable on cable/streaming in a much more modern era.
Twin Peaks started out good and stayed good. I didn’t get around to watching it until the late 2000s. I had heard that it started to fall apart after the killer was revealed, but it just kept getting better.
It isn’t for everybody, though, and it probably just got too weird for a mainstream audience.
Have you seen the third season? Came out in 2017. I think it’s some of the best TV that’s ever been made.
Especially episode 8. Just pure David Lynch surreal perfection, right in my veins.
Yes! I love it.
I hate when they release streaming shows one episode per week. I am not going to watch it until it’s done and I catch up on other shows. Stop trying to get me to watch weekly, it’s not going to happen. That’s just not how people watch tv anymore.
So a new show to me is new for a solid year before i can get to it sometimes. So many times a show gets cancelled before I can watch it and half the time I lose interest once I know it’s cancelled
I prefer it that way, because if all the episodes are available at the same time I would just binge it, which always makes me feel bad.
I don’t watch a TV show until it is finished, it had a satisfying ending and it is acclamied.
This is how I watched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Sopranos. I loved it.
This is how I avoided watching a single episode of Game of Thrones.
Maybe I’m weird but sometimes I actually enjoy streaming one episode per week, especially if I like the show, it just forces me to spread it out.
There’s so many shows that I watch one episode of something with the wife every night, and we haven’t run out of stuff to watch in years. We like to watch one show at a time till we finish the season before we move on to something else, so we just wait till the show or season is over
I spread it out regardless, I just don’t want to pick up a show without a conclusion.
I used to hate the weekly model when streaming became popular, but I think people are better viewers when they watch weekly. It’s easier to have ongoing water cooler conversations about each episode, so your show gets consistent buzz. Plus you don’t have the extreme of a whole year+ to wait between seasons. If a classic show ended in May you could start a new season in September. By the time most modern shows have new seasons, I forgot 40% of what I saw last season.
Dude id be fine with like 3 per week… if they do 13-14 episodes then they guaranteed two months streaming income. As it is… yes im gonna just keep rotating streaming services.
I much prefer one episode a week. However the wife doesn’t. This is the main reason we never finished Flash. Also because she felt we had to watch all the arrow verse shows in order to watch Flash and she decided it wasn’t worth it once to do that you’d have to watch one episode of Arrow than one of Flash, then one of DC’s Legend of Tomarrow.
That’s some rose colored glasses right there.
TNG, Voyager… Rough first seasons leading to excellent series
Really Star Trek in general…
Star Gate Universe finally hit its stride in its final season but too late to prevent cancelation
Also see Life on Mars, Journeyman, Freaks and Geeks, Pushing Daisies, and Freaking Firefly.
None of this is new.
I love Freaking Firefly.
They make a lot of shows now that would never have been greenlit back when all shows had to be hits. It’s possible to have a niche now.
Absolutely.
I maintain that Netflix is basically like The Cannon Group was back in the 1980’s… only, profitable. They just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. You get some real art that way, a few okay wins, some real duds, and some absolute freaks of nature that crawl their way to the top and/or into cult status. But none of it is what typical execs would go for. Which is to say that it’s a viable economic niche in the entertainment industry, especially now that it’s bigger than ever.
Briefly, but it’s possible.
If it’s on Netflix, don’t expect them to finish the show.
Mindhunter and Altered Carbon my beloved. Even if I don’t like AC S2, I still like to see their world explored more.
But I guess I have the source books to read.
cause we need to pirate it.
the one thing i do appreciate is them dropping filler episodes
Except that one episode of Breaking Bad…
But then again, that show is over a decade old at this point.
Which one was filler?
A lot of people dislike the “fly hunt” episode.
The one where the whole thing is just Walter chasing a fly around the lab. I’ve even got a vague memory of Vince Gilligan admitting it was only there because they were an episode short of whatever they were contractually obliged to produce but had very little budget left.
no he thought people would like it because of how it develops the relationship… the episode gets referred back to a lot. I thought it was boring though, I’m glad I’m not the only one
S03E10 - “Fly”
omg I was watching behind the scenes and Vince Gilligan was like “i really think that Fly is an episode that’s going to stand out to viewers!” like, why, for being a boring hunk of crap? I think his rationale was that it’s a lot of walt and jesse screen time
Community has the best “big round number” episode.
And also the best bottle episode.
Wait… what is going on here?!
no one tell make them watch 10 seasons of stargate
I tell everyone I can to watch 10 seasons of SG-1 . The first show I actually watched every episode in order, though I am sure I saw many of those in syndication before Netflix became a thing. If you don’t like Stargate there it’s something wrong with you.
But the acting is SO BAD!
It took all my willpower to get through B5…
it’s not supposed to be good it’s supposed to be fun
I… but bad acting isn’t fun!
(Sorry LousyCornMuffins, I can’t help it)
There was an episode of Stargate SG-1 where…remember the paranoid dude who turned out to be an alien? Well he ends up working in Hollywood, and produces a TV show called Wormhole X-Treme, which is a parody of Stargate SG-1. This character then tries to pitch other shows which are pastiches of Sci-Fi shows, to include a very brief send-up of Farscape, especially relevant since Season 9 and 10 take on Ben Browder and Claudia Black, John Crichton and Aeryn Soun on Farscape respectively.
So we get T’ealc in a Luxan chin and Chiana Carter.
Amazing.
hey! i’m feeling mighty aggravated by this!
also, i always get that alien confused with the dan castellaneta episode in season 8. mostly because I’m so excited for that episode I can’t wait for it to happen.
Other than the best possible costume choices for the cast of SG-1? Only the best TV mash-up ever to be crammed into a few glorious minutes of film.
Oh no, filler is a good thing. Filler gives you time to know the characters, and adds depth and color to the world. Filler is where writers actually get to stretch and try out ideas. Filler is what makes a show feel full.
Imagine the X-Files with no filler. We’d lose the Jose Chung episodes, “Home,” “the Post-Modern Prometheus,” and so many other great episodes. Without the filler, it’s just an endless slog through Chris Carter’s poorly planned mythology. Just the smoking man and vanishing babies for
elevennine seasons.just an endless slog through Chris Carter’s poorly planned mythology
Exactly. Watching just those episodes on a binge is going to be… okay, at best. You really need the time in-between those plot beats to let it marinade a bit. Let the conspiracy and shadow-government machinations grow in your head. It lets you get real hungry for the next morsel of “the truth” that eventually comes your way. Then you savor it while you watch Mulder out-think a Genie or whatever.
i mean i haven’t rewatched xfiles since the 90s but isn’t that more of a victim of being a transition between monster of the week episodic and season long story arcs?
I think your opinion is by far the more popular view right now. I completely disagree though. Almost every mini-series I see I’m left dumbstruck as I feel like any decent editor could have gotten the same story across just as well with a 2 or 2.5h movie instead. I feel like they are just wasting my time.
And then you end up with a 6 hour story chopped to shit and get a very disjointed movie that feels like you’re watching what was left of the film stock after Bubba Sawyer had a turn in the editing room.
No. Good movie editing has been happening since shortly after movies were a thing. Huge books have been made into really good movies. Streaming has opened up new outlet for mini-series like content and some of it really takes advantage of the format to deliver new kinds of story telling that can be worth the time investment. However, most of it is just about generating content with minimal editing and borrowing hook techniques that evolved from TV drama series in the 80s and 90s.
Filler can be good, it can also be bad, and perhaps most strangely it can be “bad” but also “fuck you I want to see Goku scream ‘give me your energy’ for four episodes before he releases the spirit bomb. Again.”
There is a weird inverse relationship between how long audiences will wait to give a show a chance, and how long execs (specifically Netflix) will give the show.
I think there must be more to the Netflix example. Maybe they are monitoring other data points like web searches or show mentions on fora to quantify buzz and work out if the show has hit potential with target markets. Either that or they get some new opportunity for creative accounting with each show.
It’s capitalism. Unverified, but I’ve heard it explained as a result of tracking growth through new subscribers. Keeping around an old show won’t drive new subscribers unless it’s a huge show that generates a lot of buzz. New shows have a better chance of appealing to people who aren’t already subscribers. So they cancel the old one and start up another new show instead.
That makes a lot of sense
Back when you had TV on a specific schedule, you were forced to watch things as they were. If a show was clunky, well you didn’t have much choice in the matter, it was watch that or change channel or go outside.
With on-demand stuff, you can just completely skip over stuff you might actually like because the first few episodes are clunky. Why should I watch something clunky when I have the choice to watch something I know is good from the start?
…I’m still not watching One Piece though, I don’t care how good it gets later.
Every 100 episodes of one piece has 10 good episodes. Fans of the show will clip those 10 episodes and yell from the rooftops that it’s the best show.
I read One Piece and I like it. Yes, I don’t recommend starting.
Conversely
Producers find a new show idea that looks interesting and could be popular …
Writers: yeah we got this idea that could be turned into an hour and a half hour long film … it’s very interesting, great plot dialogue, and there’s a great twist
Producers, executives: Great idea! I love it! But it would give us more content if you could turn it into a series instead. Take the whole film and stretch it out across seven one hour episodes.
Writers: how?
Producers, executives: just cut it up into seven parts, slow everything down and make a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of every episode.
Also writers: We don’t give a shit about the source material the fans love. Fuck these nerds.
I was so disappointed by the ready player one film and was absolutely flabbergasted when I learned the author was actually actively involved in the film.
And then, Kai Patterson comes in and cuts it back down into a pretty good standard length film which I see as a win.
Opposite problem, too. Take what was supposed to be a series and shrink it down to a movie. The Section 31 movie comes to mind. It’s so much better if you view it as if it were the pilot for a new series, but that’s never going to happen.
It depends. I really like the ability to flesh something out into a longer format - especially book adaptations. Not that there isn’t space for 2 hours and under films, but the rise of high production TV series that aren’t meant to go on forever IMO has been net positive.
Apparently I have horrible taste because every show i like gets canceled in the first or second season
We should start our own streaming service
With blackjack, and hookers!
forget the blackjack!
Is there a television show that doesn’t have a gun in it?
The grand tour.
Clarksons farm.
Must see if you like laughing your ass off.
Game of Thrones?
queens gambit
I had the exact same thought. Abandoning American productions is the best way, although it sometimes means reading subtitles. For example, many of these are free to watch:
Ireland https://www.tg4.ie/en/player/online-boxsets/ South Korea https://www.viki.com/categories/country/korea/genre/all
Tons of 'em! Comedies, in particular, tend not to have guns. I watch a lot of UK light ent, particularly panel shows, which fit the bill.Then there’s sci-fi (if you’re cool with space guns), and shows set before guns were invented (other weapons may make appearances).
I don’t recall the last time I saw a gun on TV outside of an advertisement or the news, so I guess your mileage may vary.
Black Books
You just have to forget that it’s Graham Linehan who wrote that because it never quite hits the same when you realise who it was. It’s the same with IT Crowd and Father Ted.
Didn’t know the name, but knew the shows. What an unfortunate piece of shit he is.
damn. I’m gonna miss IT crowd in that case :/
Part of the problem is that modern shows have far smaller audience than two decades ago in absolute numbers. The most watched shows today have horrific numbers compared to previous decades.
they don’t know that I’m watching
They do if you’re streaming. If you’re pirating, then you’re worthless.
I hadn’t thought of that. When something was broadcasted then, everybody watched it. And at the same time even.
I mean, this is entirely untrue. There’s a bit in the first episode of the renewed 4th season of Family Guy joking about it. This was 20 years ago. FOX had already stumbled on the “people are more excited about the first season of a show” formula that Netflix wouldn’t adopt for another decade.
And that’s not even considering the graveyard of television in the 80s and 90s. Shows nobody even knew about until they’d been cancelled (American Gothic, the Original Battlestar Galactica, Freaks and Geeks) or shows that flared out from the enormous budget (Alf, Dinosaurs) too soon, but developed cult following after they were gone.
Survivorship bias is a hell of a drug.
On the plus side, it makes fishing for the TONS of shows that never got past a couple airings surprisingly entertaining.
Crap was so ruthless seasons weren’t fully ordered, written or filmed by the time they were on the air because shows would get cancelled overnight, so they were fully ramped up and working without knowing if they’d end the season they were doing at the time. Between that and how much cheaper everything was it’s no wonder no film actors would be caught dead in a TV show until prestige television broke out of that mold.
Between that and how much cheaper everything was
I mean, here’s an article from 1992 complaining that TV costs too much to produce.
I’m sure a proper Marxist could say something about the stead decline of profit. But if TV studios are strapped for cash, you’d never know from that validations of their parent companies.
it’s no wonder no film actors would be caught dead in a TV show until prestige television broke out of that mold.
There was definitely a jump from TV to Movies that people didn’t want to come back from. But there’s also only so many hours in the day, and half of making a movie was the market you did after filming was completed.
But at the end of the day… People remember Cheers and Cosby Show much more vividly than The Critic or Joey.
Hah. That’s a fun time capsule. They’re whining about 1.4 million per episode, which just seems so quaint now. the figures going around are 6 mill per episode in season 1 of Stranger Things and 30 mill per episode in season four. Even adjusted for inflation Quantum Leap wouldn’t know what to do with that much money.
RIP KAOS
RIP Dennis
Honestly there is so much back catalog to watch, who even needs a flood of new stuff? I can’t possibly keep up.
That’s the problem.
All new TV must compete with the rest of the gag streaming catalog.
Netflix take note!
Lol
