So, I'm watching the new season of Fallout and every episode I find myself routinely checking the time wondering how much longer the episode is going to be. It's not really that I find the show boring, I am entertained, I like to see where all of this is going. And still. The episode seems to drag.
This is not a new feeling for me. I remember it most strongly back when I watched season 2 of Stranger Things. I didn't even dislike what I was seeing but every episode seemed to go on forever and I had to push through so much that I stopped watching the show altogether after the season finale.
Now that I took active notice of that phenomenon, I remember that I had that same impression with multiple if not most made-for-streaming narrative shows I have recently watched or am currently watching. And now that I know it was happening I could feel out the why of it all.
Let's get one thing out of the way first. Personally, I believe that letting the episodes just get longer and longer in general is an issue, in the same way it is true for movies. Time constraints force screenwriters and directors to decide what is necessary and makes, in most cases, for a better product. I'm not saying that episodes - or movies for that matter - should never be long, but you should have something to show for it, you know? (An excellent example is The Bear's Fishes, an episode that's over twice as long as the regular episodes. It's tense and dynamic all the way through. A masterclass of an event episode.)
However, that's not the only issue. And to me, it is not the main issue. More than the actual length increase, what makes these episodes feel longer is, to me, the almost utter lack of narrative arcs. No emotional arc, no thematic arc, no relationship or character arc. These episodes are just an accumulation of scenes until they are cut off at a seemingly random moment in time. You could've let the episode end a scene earlier or a scene later and it wouldn't have made a difference.
I've floated the idea that maybe this is because these shows are meant to be binged, so it wouldn't matter that the collection of scenes that they call an episode aren't bundled into coherent chunks, but Fallout is released on a weekly schedule, so that's not it.
My knowledge of the industry is not advanced enough that I could divine a reasoning beyond speculation but what I can talk about is the effect.
If the scenes comprising an episode aren't following an arc, I am constantly waiting for something to happen. For the episode to go through the build-up climax denouement (or similar) stages but it never does and I end up waiting in vain. Sure, there'll be an action set piece in between or an emotional moment but it won't lead to anything, at least not in this episode. This is especially grueling when the show switches perspectives (this, too, often randomly). Fallout will show you an exciting or interesting scene and then take out all its momentum by then having you watch Hank MacLean blow up some mice. I know, I'm ragging on the show here but it is by far not the only offender, just the one where I noticed it most recently.
Even when you tell a continuous story that has arcs that span the whole season and possibly the whole run, you can still have smaller arcs every episode that make them feel tighter, more coherent, and just better. I know it's possible because I've seen it work. Game of Thrones (in earlier seasons) had arcs in its episodes. Sense8 with its 8 story lines and season-spanning narratives managed to connect these in in emotional or thematic arcs within each episode. I sit down and rewatch single episodes of these shows sometimes because they are a satisfying experience by themselves. And there are many shows where I cannot imagine doing that.
No comments:
Post a Comment