To the people who know me and our family, it’s not much of a secret that TV is pretty important to us. We watch A LOT of TV (possibly more than we should). But hey, after a hectic day it’s nice to let the evening unwind with a few hours of somewhat escapist entertainment…
One of the show that we like a lot is Jericho over on CBS. It was a new show this season, and when I first started watching it I wasn’t sure if I would continue. I wasn’t sure a show based on a doomsday scenario was going to be something I would really want to get in to. But Jericho is a show that jumped on the ABC bandwangon of serial dramas. Like Lost, Jericho had an ongoing plotline that is really the basis of the entire show. A good serial drama like Lost or Jericho can suck you in as you try and figure out just what the heck is going on… and that’s exactly what Jericho managed to do…
They also followed with the common season ending “event.” You know, the big cliffhanger that promises to change the course of everything… The cliffhanger that’s so big you end up cursing the calendar AND the writers because you HAVE to know what’s next. As much as I hate those cliffhangers I’m ok with them… What I’m not ok with, is when a show has one of these big hanging season ending cliffhangers, and then THE NETWORK CANCELS THE SHOW!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!  Even more frustrating is when it’s a show that isn’t really doing all that bad, but unfortunately isn’t meeting the network’s expectations…. And that’s exactly what CBS has done, they’ve canceled Jericho just a week after it’s season finale answered a few question, and raised a whole crop of new ones….
Networks have been struggling with serial dramas since they started to pick up steam. The juggernaut is clearly Lost over on ABC. Unlike a drama like ER or Law and Order where every episode can pretty much stands on its own as an independent story, a serial drama like Lost has an overarching story that is the series. Missing an episode can seriously affect your ability to try and figure out just what is going on. Each episode in a serial drama tells a new part of the overall story, and while some episodes don’t advance the story line, most if not every one helps you understand and follow the entire story.
The trouble is that serial dramas do very badly in re-runs, as a result networks tried to put them on hiatus for a few weeks (or months) so that they don’t have to air re-runs. Sounds good, expect folks start to move on and the shows still tend to loose some viewers in the time that they’re off the air. That’s what’s been happening to Lost and has apparently happened to Jericho as well. Supposedly the loss of viewership during it’s winter hiatus is what did the series in.
But I think there’s a bigger problem with serial dramas, and that’s the fundamental way US TV networks operate. If a network has a show that becomes a hit, they’ll run it as long as they can, driving a show into the ground until every possible creative opportunity has been sucked out of the show and viewership falls in to the toilet. That’s fine for a sitcom or a traditional drama, without the overarching story that is the entire basis for the show it can take a while to suck them dry.
A serial drama is different since the overarching story is truly the essence of the entire show, trying to prolong that story so that it can be sucked completely dry can kill a show as fans flee over the ridiculous and ludicrous plot shifts that writers attempt to keep things going. What networks haven’t realized, is that they really need to remember that a good serial drama can’t be a never ending saga. Since a serial drama really is a story, they need to have the 3 essential elements of a story- A beginning, a middle, and an end. Networks that decide to run serial dramas need to decide up front how long they want to keep a story going. Let the writers know going in how long they will get to let the story run its course and finally end with the important bits tied up.
While such a strategy might prevent a good serial drama like Lost (and too a lesser extent Babylon 5) from spending several seasons evolving and developing further depth, it also relieves the writers of the strain of having to come it with episodes that do little to move the plot along other than waste time. This benefits the viewer because they don’t get an episode that is boring, un-fulfilling, or just overall fluff that could diminish their attachment and interest in the story as a whole.
It also has the added benefit of not leaving legions of frustrated and disappointed viewers who were left hanging with unanswered questions or a dramatic plot twist that they’ll never get to see play out.
It is incredibly frustrating to get sucked into to an engaging story only to have it cut off and left unfinished, but if networks didn’t try and milk a show for all it’s worth, maybe more serial dramas would be allowed to come to something resembling a satisfying conclusion and leave behind millions of happy fans who would be ready for another engaging story. Instead networks are leaving behind hords of frustrated disenchanted fans who are probably more likely to go out and buy a DVD box set of the canceled series than jump right on to a new serial drama that can get ripped out from underneath them…
