I write a lot of updates and reviews of the shows I follow during the year, mostly sci-fi, and here is a list of the shows I’ll be reviewing in the upcoming season. Three start in the fall and three in the spring.

 Heroes (Season 3)

NBC, Sept. 22, 2008

Catch Up On Previous Episodes

I think there’s a good chance we’ll get the big, epic season we’ve been waiting for this year. I say this both because of the “villains” premise and because creator Tim Kring realized the error of his ways with season 2. Looking forward to finally seeing another FULL season. I just hope the don’t end up making me hate any of the characters I currently like!

Chuck (Season 2)

NBC, Sept 29, 2008

Watch Some Previous Episodes

When the writer’s strike cut Chuck off last season, it was just getting into a really interesting arc– Casey was just informed that he would have to turn against Chuck. It wasn’t intended to end there, but it ended up a cliffhanger. The show was fresh, original comedy and I’m glad it’s coming back.

Smallville (Season 8 )

CW, Sept. 18, 2008

Yep, despite the fact that Smallville has lasted well beyond its time, it’s returning for another season. Without Lex. A lot of fans are worried it’s going to become Lois & Clark again, but it looks like Chloe will be back after all, which may help deflect that dynamic. Clark will finally work at the Daily Planet and start building a secret identity, though he still won’t be in costume. Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is returning as a regular (which will be the only thing to keep me tuning in, and even that may not be enough). They’re going to do Doomsday. I can’t see how they can possibly pull that off. I’ve kept up this far, so I’ll stay with it, but probaby won’t review this one weekly.

24 (Season 7)

Fox, January, 2009

Next spring, 24 FINALLY returns after a year-and-a-half hiatus. Season 6 was kind of a bore, and I for one was happy for the breather. I’m excited to get into the show again and there are a lot of rumors that Tony really ISN’T dead (he didn’t get a silent clock, if you’ll recall) and that he’ll be Jack’s nemesis this year.

Lost (Season 5)

ABC, January 2009

Catch Up On Previous Episodes

My predictions for the next season of Lost are here. Only two more seasons left, and I think after this year, the show has really found its feet again. Lost is my favorite show to write about because there’s so much to discuss and speculate about, rather than just doing regular reviews.

Dollhouse (Season 1)

Fox, January, 2009

Joss Whedon is finally returning to television. Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy) as a memory-wiped human, or doll, who is constantly reprogrammed by a company to be whatever they need her to be. She begins to remember pieces from her own past, and the show gets going. I think the trailer is a bit confusing, but it has potential and I’ve learned to trust Joss’ instincts– I’ve liked every series he’s produced so far (Buffy, Angel, Firefly). Angel’s Amy Acker will also be recurring character.

Termiator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has also been signed for another season, starting in January. I enjoy this show and have written on it, but I don’t review it by episode.

It looks like a promsing year. Hopefully there won’t be a repeat of last season’s writer’s strike, but there is fear that it could happen again. All we can do is enjoy it while it lasts and pick up a good book when it goes away again.

 LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Until the early 90s, prime-time dramas, much like sitcoms and other kinds of series, were mostly episodic, meaning the show had a basic premise that was all you really needed to understand in order to tune in. You could watch any episode in any order without needing to see everything that came before it. Sometimes there was a slight progression or one episode that would call back to another, but if you missed an episode here or there, you didn’t have to worry that you couldn’t follow the next one. Every week was a new, stand-alone story with the same characters, similar to Sherlock Holmes stories. These shows tended to be somewhat formulaic in order to come up with enough material to do several seasons, often over 100 separate stories. Good examples of this are Star Trek: The Next Generation and the early seasons of The X-Files.

Series like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Babylon Five were seen as experimental but drew in large audiences because they took longer to tell big stories. Their characters went through deliberate changes, evolving with their grandiose plot arcs. Instead of occasional two-parters, every story would be bigger than one episode, sometimes lasting entire seasons or longer. The drawback to these sorts of shows is that they’re a long-term commitment– if you don’t watch the whole season, if you miss even one episode, you could be missing an important piece of the puzzle and be totally lost until you catch the rerun or wait for the dvds.

These continuous shows are becoming more and more common. Sci-fi fans are especially beginning to expect it. The most successful shows are of this type, shows like Heroes, Lost, and 24. The days of the formulaic and episodic sci-fi show, ala Quantum Leap, seem to be mostly behind us. Why is that? I hear a lot of talk in director commentaries and interviews about this being a positive step forward, that we’ve moved to this kind of storytelling because it creates deeper, changing characters and more complex stories can be told. That’s certainly one of the pluses to the continuous format, but I wonder if that isn’t more of an effect than a cause.

This trend is best illustrated by Smallville. The first season was mostly episodic– you really didn’t have to see the episodes in order (except maybe the pilot) to understand another, even though minor details would come back here and there, and there was a slight build up to the season finale. Slowly but surely the show moved in more of a continuous direction and now it follows the Lost and Heroes thread– you need to see pretty much every episode of a season to follow it. In fact, one of its biggest problems these days is that it still does lame, contrived one-shot episodes in the middle of season arcs that bog down the story. So why didn’t it just stay with the episodic format? I think it’s because writers keep covering the same territory. There are only so many one-shot sci-fi plots you can do in a show. A lot of completely unrelated shows have reused a lot of the same premises. For example, how many times have you seen the fight club scenario? A main character gets kidnapped and forced to fight to the death, and the supporting characters have to rescue him/her. I’ve seen it in Star Trek: Voyager, Angel and Smallville (just last year!). And get this: Birds of Prey was an episodic show that only got 13 episodes, and ONE of them was a fight club episode!

Voyager, “Tsunkatse”

Smallville, “Combat”

My point is, these huge stories that go through an entire season or even a whole series, in the case of Lost, is thriving, I think, because there seems to still be some unexplored territory there. Granted, it’s been THE popular format for close to a decade now (after shows like Deep Space Nine were no longer simply experimental) and so a lot of that ground has been covered. What’s nice about them is that very long stories can look more original, even if they aren’t really in essence, because so much more can happen within them. If the fight club scenario was a six-episode arc, it’s possible something more than the same old formula could be done with it. Heroes has been criticized as being just a live-action X-Men, and yet it’s extremely popular. Is that because the stories are so complex and the characters are given time to mature and grow, so we really don’t mind that the initial premise is something we’ve seen before?

But I sometimes wonder if expecting your viewer to watch every single episode of a show is still too much to ask. A lot of networks have begun putting full episodes on their websites in case you miss something, which makes it a lot easier to catch up if you miss something. But I find it a lot harder to follow a lot of shows at once this way, not only because I have to see every episode, but because there’s a lot to keep track of. With 24, you have to remember everything that’s happened in a day and you have to readjust from it’s hour-to-hour format after watching anything else (which is pretty jarring until you get used to it). With Heroes, I have to keep up with a lot of characters and how they’re all connected, and ditto with Lost, except there I have to remember pretty much everything that ever happened because it all ends being important to understand anything that’s happening!!!

I realize the episodic format isn’t dead. A lot of cop shows still keep this and I think CSI is too, though I’ve never watched it. Chuck is an interesting hybrid of both, with contained stories but a lot of through-lines that only matter if you care to keep up.

So what do you think? Do you prefer the current trend of continuous shows or do wish you could just tune in whenever you wanted and didn’t have to make a TV show a six, seven, or even a ten year commitment? I’d love comments on this.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan