pokken wrote: ↑2 years ago
Serial vs. self-contained is I think the distinctin? Episodic shows have a self contained story in each episode, serials have a a longer storyline that's built up over time and cliffhangers and such.
think like star trek (self-contained, procedural) vs. serial (Battlestar galactica)
It's actually an interesting question and it's not exactly black and white, more of a spectrum. On one end, you've got something like Mr Bean, where each episode has essentially no impact on the next. On the other end, you've got something like Game of Thrones where almost everything is causally linked. But then in between there are shows like Supernatural that occasionally have an episode that leads towards the main conflict of the season, but also have lots of episodes with pretty self-contained plots.
In theory there are infinite gradations along the line, determined by how much each episode resolves itself vs how much it contributes to the larger plot, but in practice I think there's probably a few places where most shows cluster, so personally I don't have much difficulty splitting them into two camps. I would say all of the shows I listed would be serial except for arguably Away, which is pretty damn close to the line for me. It definitely did the thing where each episode had its own conflict and usually interpersonal conflicts got some sort of resolution by the end of the episode, but there were also technical problems that persisted between episodes and the whole season had a very concrete goal of getting to Mars. Forced to pick, I'd say serial, but it's definitely close to episodic and that's part of what I disliked about it. I get a similar vibe from Travelers except minus the space setting (which I like) and plus time travel (which I'm p bored of unless it does something really original).
EDIT: of course I'm only 3 episodes in, so my criticism here might be inaccurate, but I can't say I was terribly interested in any of the main cast of characters yet. I think having them being put into bodies of other people essentially forces them to be pretty blank slates since whatever was happening in their lives before is mostly gone. The character I probably liked most was the social worker since he actually has a thing going on.
Second edit: The thing that annoyed me with the show in particular (though I wasn't, like, enthralled at that point so kind of a camel's back situation) was how the plot from episode 1 and 2 seems to basically just get dropped in episode 3, which also felt pretty standalone-y. I'm really not interested in a show where they keep solving little individual problems, I was more interested in a show where they have one clear objective - prevent the world from ending - and they're working on that one task.
Although admittedly that task is kinda bleh. Considering the exciting-sounding concept and the relatively-high stakes of the first couple episodes, I kind of expected a bit...more? You really expect me to believe the US military is driving around with basically-a-nuke with that little protection? And then the general dude comes back to the lab completely alone? I just got a strong low-budget vibe that killed the immersion for me. Hard for me to feel like the world is really on the line when everything feels so banal, plus as mentioned saving the world is a super boring goal tbh. Would still rather have them focused on one task, but ideally it would be a more interesting, less nebulous task. So there's a few things.