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Ozoneocean at 7:09PM, July 4, 2024

To caveat what I say: when you put in that big threat arc in a serialised story it takes serious, hard planning to do it right, you can't just faff it like most writers like to do. There's not much room for play. This is why something like Breaking Bad was good because it was all so carefully orchestrated. If you can't commit to that then you have to try containing the story in less episodes, maybe a short series that's easier to control. Long things and especially open ended things just do not work well with that unless the writers are committed to putting in the work and most are not able to- and it always shows.

Ozoneocean at 7:02PM, July 4, 2024

Speaking of Dr Who that was the main thing I couldn't deal with in the modern reboot stuff. They went to single episodes with a weak serialisation that was a super shitty retcon about him being "the last timeliord" and being involved in some huge ongoing battle about good and evil with a tragic backstory- ALL the typical modern stuff it's fashionable for bad writers to put into every story they write. Makes me want to vomit up my entire insides. Never, ever, ever do this in a story, it's NOT interesting or clever or relatable unless you're doing a movie where you can contain it neatly because you will almost always disappoint. You can rarely ever properly deliver on a big overall threat you develop over a whole series without faffing it and in the mean time you just stress your audience and take the fun out of things.

Ozoneocean at 5:20PM, July 4, 2024

I've been going through a lot of shows and I've found that each thing has its place. But I REALLY think serialised stuff is better for short series. On tv back in the day the undisputed king of this was Doctor Who, the original series, not the reboot. You'd ALWAYS have 6 or 7 episodes serialised over weeks, then the next serialised chunk would directly continue that continuity. That worked perfectly. Anime is a great example of good serialisation because typically it will usually just be over 12 episodes. Longer serialised things are just too fatiguing. I LOVE more episodic contained things, they're so neat, clean and bit sized- the only serialised aspect is to continue continuity- but when more and more serilisied aspects creep in (like in Castel) it ruins the dynamic.

PaulEberhardt at 2:08PM, July 4, 2024

Older episodic series of course put much less psychological pressure on their viewers because you can watch them in your own good time without having to fear "missing out" too much to catch up again. (Please note that that's just what streaming services would like you to believe and quite clearly BS, as there's of course no actual reason not to watch new series at your own pace, too, just like the old ones.)

PaulEberhardt at 2:05PM, July 4, 2024

I'm quite solidly in the episode camp with my comic. There are a few episodes that may make a tiny bit more sense if you know what happened before (as far as any of them make any sense in the first place, lol), but that's about it. I know for a fact that in the modern media landscape the main aim is always making viewers spend as much time as possible with your products (just the same way as with online games), because from a producer's point of view each minute they do directly translates into revenue for the streaming platform and especially how much of it gets forwarded to the production company. Making you have to watch the entire series in order to get what's going on in these awesome-looking recent episodes clearly helps there. For what drove the market in those antediluvian days when there was just TV see marcorossi's comment, which nails it.

usedbooks at 5:21AM, July 4, 2024

My comic has long episodes that are part of the ongoing story. In terms of my preference as a member of the audience, I like many types of storytelling. But my favorite, hands-down, is the anthology. Like, even MORE self-contained than an episode and the SHORTER the episodes, the better. Maybe that's from my Saturday morning cartoons days of 8 to 15 minute episodes. 🤷

marcorossi at 3:29AM, July 4, 2024

I think the reason episodic stories were so common in the past is that once when there was only broadcast TV with a limited number of channells, and perhaps a single TV fo a family so that if dad is watching the superbowl mum will have to skip an episode of the romcom, it was very common for people to skip episodes, or perhaps enter into an episode in the middle, so that each episode had to be self-standing and formulaic enough that people could easily understand what was going on even if they jumped in in the middle. For my stories: I think each of them as if it was a self concluded episode, like a graphic novel. I think that this is a bit different both from a multiple episodes form and a serialized thing, although perhaps more comparable to a serialized thing.