Season arcs?

[mmcirvin]

People 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.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Didn't B5 do arcs?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I see B5 as more a single five-season (or maybe four-and-a-half-season) story arc with chapter breaks. There wasn't the sense at the end of every season that the story had finished.

[aderack.livejournal.com]

I get the impression the influence may not be so much in regard to the audience as to the creative and business side of things. It became kind of a proof of concept for writers and producers to point at when talking with networks, and a rough model for them to work to. Before Buffy came along, there wasn't a whole lot to show to a stiff white guy in a suit and say "I want to do this. Except with superheroes, and a little more serious."

[aderack.livejournal.com]

In the US at least, I think up until very recently syndication concerns may have been contrary to this sort of a structure. You'll see it in the weird episode count of many pre-mid-'90s shows; the goal was to produce as many episodes as possible, rapid fire, to reach a certain critical mass. Then if those were successful you'd get contracted for more.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That's a good point.

I think the model for Buffy

[notr.livejournal.com]

was probably the various soap-like Nickelodeon and Disney shows that followed kids through a year of school in each season. Buffy started out in high school and so had that same built-in yearly arc.

I wonder if those shows got the form from somewhere else. Earlier school-based shows like Kotter, Facts of Life, and Fame didn't use it, that I remember.

I think of Britcoms as starting the season arcs--series arcs? (What the heck do the Brits call the overall run of a programme, anyhow?)--in their second series, once they were established. Reginald Perrin and Rising Damp are certainly that way. Of course, those two had extra-short seasons.

Re: I think the model for Buffy

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Hm. Blackadder didn't really have ongoing stories, but it did have seasons that were obviously very distinct from each other.

[aderack.livejournal.com]

On the British end, the Granada Sherlock Holmes sort of did this during its second series -- which seeded in almost every story Holmes' growing discontent. Along the way were several hints that not everything was as random as it might appear. Mycroft was introduced, to set up some logistics for later. Then Moriarty was finally introduced in The Red-Headed League, before coming to the forefront in The Final Solution. I just watched this all recently, and I was fairly impressed with the sense of dread that built through the series. Even the theme music got more erratic and dissonant.

Then it came back, and kind of meandered according to ITV's schedule and actor availability.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

I think the season-arc thing has been pretty common in anime since well before Buffy.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Further to that - one reason may be that anime series are often just one or two seasons long. Instead of being designed to run indefinitely, and then running until cancellation, a series will be designed to end at one season and then if they decide to extend it, they have to come up with new content and that in turn will be designed to end after the second season. It may also have to do with anime series usually being stories adapted from other media instead of being original to TV.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

Well, no, I wouldn't call it common. Mostly for the same reasons: Shows are, indeed, designed to run a story to the end. The only time you get a "series arc" is if a series is unexpectedly extended to run for another season, which is fairly rare - either people have a fairly good idea how long they will run for, or they leave the story unresolved to make it easier to continue. Having a clearly defined "season arc" is more of an accident than anything that is intentionally planned for.

[aderack.livejournal.com]

Mm. Original Japanese shows tend to follow something closer to the British model: a small, set number of episodes, and they spread the narrative across them. From what I've seen, It's only really mass-market adaptations like Kenshin or Ranma that keep getting renewed for new seasons.

[kodi]

I don't think you can talk about arcs without mentioning Wiseguy - it didn't lead to any sort of arc explosion, and they weren't season arcs (the longest arcs were 10 and 11 episodes, I think) but in terms of American teevee, I think it was one of the first to really say "for these 10 episodes, all we're going to talk about is Sonny Steelgrave." I don't think it was influential in the way Buffy was, but it's striking how similar the Wiseguy formula was to The Wire, right down to the villains who are in many ways more likeable and engaging than our heroes.

Dr Who's Daughter?!

[timchuma.livejournal.com]

RRRRRRR! WHY HULK SO HARD?!