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Season arcs?
Jul. 29th, 2008 11:32 pmPeople still talk a lot about the influence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is out of proportion to the show's actual ratings, but there's one influence I don't hear mentioned much: am I correct in thinking that it was the show that largely popularized the modern TV convention of having one story arc per season?
I know that other shows had done this previously (the original Doctor Who tried it once in the Seventies and once in the Eighties, but didn't stick with it after either instance; the anime Space Battleship Yamato aka Star Blazers was another—I have no idea whether this structure was more common back then in Japan).
But it seems to me that prior to Buffy the vast majority of dramas and SF/fantasy/adventure shows I saw were either purely episodic, or continued endlessly like soap operas, or had an arc that was supposed to last the entire length of the show; in the latter case, season-ending episodes were usually cliffhangers that indicated a sort of chapter break. Buffy instead gave its heroine a new major adversary every year, who would be defeated in a big boss battle in the season ender; the introduction of each new Big Bad would often be accompanied by major changes in direction and tone for the show. Post-Buffy, I see more shows with season arcs in place of an overall arc.
The Wire seems to be a particularly critically acclaimed show with this structure. The revived Doctor Who is another, as was Life on Mars (which was only two seasons long and also had an overall arc, but its first season had an arc of its own concerning Sam's father). I guess, though, that for the British shows there's also influence from the British tradition of limited-run series, which are somewhat less common in the US; a modern UK-style show with 13-episode season arcs is almost the same thing as a succession of limited-run series with the same characters.
The multiyear arc approach is very hard to do well just because so many unpredictable things can happen over the course of a multiyear TV show; you have unavoidable cast changes, cancellation threats, series retoolings done because of meddling from the suits, etc. It also means you have to actively avoid writing an ending unless the show is preplanned to self-destruct at a certain time, and when the ending does come it's often hastily assembled when the creators learn about impending cancellation (if they even get the chance). J. Michael Straczynski actually managed to more or less pull off a multi-season arc with a preplanned plot for Babylon 5, but he had to plot out dozens of contingency plans in case he lost actors or had to deal with other crises, and he actually had to activate several of them. Most show-runners aren't going to do that. In practice, more often what you got was something like Twin Peaks, The X-Files, or the new Battlestar Galactica: a show that supposedly has an overarching plot, but, after a couple of seasons, shows definite signs of flying by the seat of its pants.
The single-season arc, on the other hand, offers a chance to do an extended story with a much greater degree of predictability in the production. I remember thinking when I was watching Buffy that it had hit on the right length for this sort of thing, and whether they got it from there or somewhere else, many people must have agreed.
Now that I've written this, I'm sure somebody out there is going to come up with so many pre-Buffy examples of shows with season arcs that I come off as completely nuts or misinformed. I suppose that would be interesting too.
I know that other shows had done this previously (the original Doctor Who tried it once in the Seventies and once in the Eighties, but didn't stick with it after either instance; the anime Space Battleship Yamato aka Star Blazers was another—I have no idea whether this structure was more common back then in Japan).
But it seems to me that prior to Buffy the vast majority of dramas and SF/fantasy/adventure shows I saw were either purely episodic, or continued endlessly like soap operas, or had an arc that was supposed to last the entire length of the show; in the latter case, season-ending episodes were usually cliffhangers that indicated a sort of chapter break. Buffy instead gave its heroine a new major adversary every year, who would be defeated in a big boss battle in the season ender; the introduction of each new Big Bad would often be accompanied by major changes in direction and tone for the show. Post-Buffy, I see more shows with season arcs in place of an overall arc.
The Wire seems to be a particularly critically acclaimed show with this structure. The revived Doctor Who is another, as was Life on Mars (which was only two seasons long and also had an overall arc, but its first season had an arc of its own concerning Sam's father). I guess, though, that for the British shows there's also influence from the British tradition of limited-run series, which are somewhat less common in the US; a modern UK-style show with 13-episode season arcs is almost the same thing as a succession of limited-run series with the same characters.
The multiyear arc approach is very hard to do well just because so many unpredictable things can happen over the course of a multiyear TV show; you have unavoidable cast changes, cancellation threats, series retoolings done because of meddling from the suits, etc. It also means you have to actively avoid writing an ending unless the show is preplanned to self-destruct at a certain time, and when the ending does come it's often hastily assembled when the creators learn about impending cancellation (if they even get the chance). J. Michael Straczynski actually managed to more or less pull off a multi-season arc with a preplanned plot for Babylon 5, but he had to plot out dozens of contingency plans in case he lost actors or had to deal with other crises, and he actually had to activate several of them. Most show-runners aren't going to do that. In practice, more often what you got was something like Twin Peaks, The X-Files, or the new Battlestar Galactica: a show that supposedly has an overarching plot, but, after a couple of seasons, shows definite signs of flying by the seat of its pants.
The single-season arc, on the other hand, offers a chance to do an extended story with a much greater degree of predictability in the production. I remember thinking when I was watching Buffy that it had hit on the right length for this sort of thing, and whether they got it from there or somewhere else, many people must have agreed.
Now that I've written this, I'm sure somebody out there is going to come up with so many pre-Buffy examples of shows with season arcs that I come off as completely nuts or misinformed. I suppose that would be interesting too.