I read this interesting article which I think that sums up a lot of what I was struggling with? 13 episodes of trying and failing to catch Kilgrave just doesn't appeal to me as much as shows that have individual episode cases, as well as the serialised element.
See, that's what bothers me a lot about episodic and serialized shows. Having self contained episodes makes it harder for me to care much about the actual story being told, since in a majority of cases, it feels as if the impact from X is never carried over into the next to create a better, sequential story that goes from A->B->C. Which isn't to say that you can't have smaller arcs filling in larger ones, but then you end up with shows like Elementary and iZombie, which despite their relative strengths, suffer from the case of the week setup which while possibly good at generating specific moments, never feels like it has a strong finish. Fringe is one of my go to examples, since the show felt like it got a lot better once it began to make a conscious choice to drop the case of the weeks in favor for the larger focus on the overarching mythology of the show, and how everything fits into it. It does have pitfalls though- if you have too many episodes, you end up with messes like Sleepy Hollow, or if you plot out your arcs badly like Hannibal was fond of doing, then you end up with abrupt shifts.
(Which might be of no surprise that I'm relatively uninterested with this season of iZombie, since it just seems very...eh. It also doesn't help that I still think Major is about as interesting as a rock.)
There's also arguments that having an episodic setup forces you to have shorter story arcs that do resolve themselves neatly, and acts as an assumption that everything that happens is story shaped and has a nice progression from start>climax>descent, in which case of reality, life isn't story shaped all the time. I will say that JJ should've used the middling episodes more to explore other parts of the show that it never did get to looking at well (ie, Malcolm and the support group, Jessica's past more) but as a whole, the season as a single vehicle is a model I'm more interested in.
As a show though, JJ is not nearly as viewer friendly as Daredevil is. I mean, Daredevil is violent, yes, but violence is something that we're much more acclimated to as opposed to emotional violence and trauma, which makes for a harder to digest viewing. Which seems to be a reason for a lot of people stopping, since it is an upsetting subject matter.
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2015-12-24 09:46 pm (UTC)See, that's what bothers me a lot about episodic and serialized shows. Having self contained episodes makes it harder for me to care much about the actual story being told, since in a majority of cases, it feels as if the impact from X is never carried over into the next to create a better, sequential story that goes from A->B->C. Which isn't to say that you can't have smaller arcs filling in larger ones, but then you end up with shows like Elementary and iZombie, which despite their relative strengths, suffer from the case of the week setup which while possibly good at generating specific moments, never feels like it has a strong finish. Fringe is one of my go to examples, since the show felt like it got a lot better once it began to make a conscious choice to drop the case of the weeks in favor for the larger focus on the overarching mythology of the show, and how everything fits into it. It does have pitfalls though- if you have too many episodes, you end up with messes like Sleepy Hollow, or if you plot out your arcs badly like Hannibal was fond of doing, then you end up with abrupt shifts.
(Which might be of no surprise that I'm relatively uninterested with this season of iZombie, since it just seems very...eh. It also doesn't help that I still think Major is about as interesting as a rock.)
There's also arguments that having an episodic setup forces you to have shorter story arcs that do resolve themselves neatly, and acts as an assumption that everything that happens is story shaped and has a nice progression from start>climax>descent, in which case of reality, life isn't story shaped all the time. I will say that JJ should've used the middling episodes more to explore other parts of the show that it never did get to looking at well (ie, Malcolm and the support group, Jessica's past more) but as a whole, the season as a single vehicle is a model I'm more interested in.
As a show though, JJ is not nearly as viewer friendly as Daredevil is. I mean, Daredevil is violent, yes, but violence is something that we're much more acclimated to as opposed to emotional violence and trauma, which makes for a harder to digest viewing. Which seems to be a reason for a lot of people stopping, since it is an upsetting subject matter.