The Problem With Arcs

As I was browsing through the Something Awful Forums TV show section, I saw several shows that I enjoy, 30 Rock, Community, Chuck. I asked myself why I stopped watching them, and the answer was that when I was busy one semester I missed out on almost an entire season of all 3 shows. But after missing a season I didn't want to pick it up in the next season without seeing the previous episodes.

So half a season becomes one season, then two seasons, maybe more, which prevents me from watching the new season. I know I'm not the only person who does this, as I've spoken to other people who have said something to the effect of "yeah I still have to catch up on episodes before I start watching."

The point of this long rambling is that it costs a large amount of money to develop a television series, but the more seasons that you go through the less people are going to watch just because they are behind on the plot arc. Sure they can go out and buy the old seasons on DVD, but that costs a lot of money and a lot of people aren't going to bother.

The smarter thing for networks to do is either reruns of these plot arc shows, or to put all the previous seasons online to watch for free with advertisements. By allowing people to catch up on previous seasons it brings in more viewers for the current season.

I don't disagree. Some heavy-arc shows started annoying the hell out of my wife and me - The Sopranos comes to mind. It gets to the point where you're almost annoyed that you HAVE to watch it every week to keep up.

Here you go!

I actually prefer anthology type shows, or shows that don't have arcs. I like not having to watch the entire series or even being able to miss weeks on end and not getting what's going on. That's one of the reason I really never like DS9.

I don't mind arcs.

And this is why God made DVR, Netflix, iTunes, and a bunch of other ways you can quickly catch up.

I prefer them.

AT&T uverse - record and watch up to 4 shows at a time and watch them in any room at any time.

The only Community story arc (and it wasn't much of one) that I recall was the 3-episode(?) bit near the end of last season and the first episode of this season where Jeff slept with Britta and made out with Annie and had to deal with the resulting fallout.

I think there's a point where you just have to admit you have a TV addiction problem.

If there are two things on we want to see, we tape one (yes, we still have working VHSs) to watch later if we have time. If there are three things on, we just decide to skip one of them.

DirecTV offers 4-show recording now, too, but I won't be going back to them. They pissed me off and I switched to U-Verse earlier this year.

And in my case, "TV addiction" has nothing to do with it. Being able to record more than one thing at a time has been a real lifesaver, since I have two teenage girls and a wife who also want to record shows that often overlap with each other.

Plus, the DVR records in HD.


I resisted the DVR thing for a long time, too (my VHS machines are much higher end models than most people buy) , but when I got a TiVo-equipped DirecTV receiver a few years ago to replace a non-DVR box that had gone bad, I was hooked. No more programming a VCR every single time a show came on (not to mention having to keep tapes sorted and whatnot). You wanna record BSG/Law and Order/Two and a Half Men? Set the DVR to record the series and it does so automatically. No fuss, no muss.

Plus, if I'm watching live teevee and need to take a piss/answer the phone/answer the door, I can pause whatever I'm watching.

Yea, it's not tv addiction - in fact, might be the opposite. There's only a couple shows I watch - ... actually, I think it's down to just the one now, SG:U, and I often forget to watch it when it airs, so I'd miss the show completely if not for the DVR.

Everything else I watch is completely random depending on my schedule and whether or not I feel like watching tv on a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

I'm not saying I dislike arcs. As a matter of fact I don't like shows that have no continuity. I'm just saying that the way its done makes things difficult.

I have AT&T U-Verse but sometimes it decides to randomly delete shows I haven't watched yet or even better not record them. I also have netflix, but that's $9 a month on top of what I already pay for cable.

The point I was trying to make is that in order to stay caught up on a show with plot arcs you need to invest money, when the network itself could be making ad revenue putting their library online at no cost to the consumer.

I'm not a big fan of shows that igrnore their own continuity, but there has to be a fine balance between that and a show that reuires that you watch every episode for the entire run of the show to get the finale. A two or three part episode is fine, but shows with story arcs just bore me after a while, simply because I don't want to go out of my way to watch the show.

They're probably get paid more by Netflix for rights to the show than they would from ads.

Yeah see.....

Damn networks put all this crap on the same time so it becomes difficult to watch everything.

Throw in the wife and the kids and it's a nightmare that no VCR could ever fix.

Right now the only shows I care for are Big Bang Theory, Venture Brothers, Walking Dead, and SGU (and that interest is waning fast). Of course there are documentaries but those aren't season pass stuff for me.

I didn't think of the problem with a large family. It's just the wife and me, and we pretty much watch all the same things together.

I kinda like a story with my story.

Personally, I think StarGate SG:1 had the right idea of how to do their story arcs.

They would have an episode central to the big story, but then might have have a dozen stand alones after it.

But when the next episode of the arc came on, they recapped the key events that led to that point at the first of the new episode. Even if it took place seasons earlier.

Lost interest in Big Bang Theory. Stopped watching Walking Dead back in season three when Rick didn't kill the governor the multiple chances he had. (I really started hating the characters and their stupitiy)

Venture Brothers? Simply too long between seasons. The show is as old as my oldest kid.

SGU? Yeah that sank faster than the Titanic. Wow I can't believe it's been almost eight years.

But story arcs? Seems they are in everything I watch now. I can not think of any show that I watch that isn't arc based. Wait, I do watch Bob's Burgers and that's not really arc based.

Shows with arcs: Archer, The Expanse, West World, Game of Thrones.

And VCR? I don't even have one now. It's gone. Hell I can't remember the last time I even bought a DVD.

I do remember my first DVD though. It was The Matrix. Couldn't play it because I didn't have a DVD player until a few months later. Still pissed that I didn't see this movie in the theater because it's just "Keanau Reeves".

even the ostensibly episodic drama shows now have some background arc going that is touched upon in every episode. The more so if there's any genre element. All the DC shows for example. But not just genre, hell NCIS strung along plot elements related to Ziva's family for years, and they did one whole season (at least) on a particular serial killer. That's just the state of the industry now.

Lol, this thread is so.old people were recording on TiVo and the 4 show recording was new

This is a pretty common failing of virtually all crime shows. But there is a pretty practical reason for such. If you wanted to make it realistic would you really want a crime to occur in Season One and not see the suspect sentenced to prison (or acquitted) until Season Four?

Suspension of disbelief, buddy.

Something things that are inaccurate....are better.