Solo4114
Master Member
Those shows were episodic, but they did end up telling a specific story each season. The story didn't necessarily develop with every single episode (certainly not in the early seasons), but each season had its own contained arc that began and resolved pretty neatly. This is even more the case with The Wire. You could watch any single season and the story would make sense and feel as if it concluded naturally (if not always satisfactorily in the sense of "Yay! Good guys win!").
I do agree that the problem with LOST and other similar shows is that they often bill themselves as "grand mystery" shows. If the story was just the aimless day-to-day drama of surviving on the island, that'd be fine, but you throw in enough spooky, weird, "this really needs an explanation as to WTF is going on here" elements, and you start creating a "mystery." The show clearly exploited that mystery -- although maybe the writers weren't as enthusiastic about it as the producers or the network -- and when those mysteries went unresolved or were unsatisfactorily answered via "Uh.....magic!" or whathaveyou, it's natural that the fans who were driven by the mysteries more than the characters would feel let down.
I also tend to think that it's WAY too difficult to take a seven-season show (or however many) and tell a single, completely coherent, fully satisfying story on TV. What if an actor dies? What if someone says "my contract's up and I want to leave the show"? What if any number of things happens? How will you resolve the plot? How do you juggle enough balls at once to keep a multi-season show both interesting and internally consistent, without seeming canned?
I'm not sure it's possible, actually. Certainly I've not seen any examples of shows that managed to do this flawlessly. The closest I can think of is Babylon 5, but that show's characters were a bit thinner and less realistic than those in shows like the new BSG and such. That said, plot-wise, B5 was rock-solid, to the point where a single writer (namely the creator of the series itself) wrote the bulk of the episodes, and had plotted the thing out in exquisite detail to the point where he built in "trapdoors" for each character so that any time an actor might've wanted to bail from the show, he had a way to handle it. The big problem was that it pre-dates a lot of the more realistic approach to characters that you started seeing around the late 90s. It was very much a product of the early 90s and before. All well and good, but it's tough to stack up those characters against, say, Bill Adama.
Anyway, this is -- again -- why I say the best way to do it is contained story arcs for each season, with each new season standing on the shoulders of the last one, but NOT leaving you hanging for the subsequent season.
I do agree that the problem with LOST and other similar shows is that they often bill themselves as "grand mystery" shows. If the story was just the aimless day-to-day drama of surviving on the island, that'd be fine, but you throw in enough spooky, weird, "this really needs an explanation as to WTF is going on here" elements, and you start creating a "mystery." The show clearly exploited that mystery -- although maybe the writers weren't as enthusiastic about it as the producers or the network -- and when those mysteries went unresolved or were unsatisfactorily answered via "Uh.....magic!" or whathaveyou, it's natural that the fans who were driven by the mysteries more than the characters would feel let down.
I also tend to think that it's WAY too difficult to take a seven-season show (or however many) and tell a single, completely coherent, fully satisfying story on TV. What if an actor dies? What if someone says "my contract's up and I want to leave the show"? What if any number of things happens? How will you resolve the plot? How do you juggle enough balls at once to keep a multi-season show both interesting and internally consistent, without seeming canned?
I'm not sure it's possible, actually. Certainly I've not seen any examples of shows that managed to do this flawlessly. The closest I can think of is Babylon 5, but that show's characters were a bit thinner and less realistic than those in shows like the new BSG and such. That said, plot-wise, B5 was rock-solid, to the point where a single writer (namely the creator of the series itself) wrote the bulk of the episodes, and had plotted the thing out in exquisite detail to the point where he built in "trapdoors" for each character so that any time an actor might've wanted to bail from the show, he had a way to handle it. The big problem was that it pre-dates a lot of the more realistic approach to characters that you started seeing around the late 90s. It was very much a product of the early 90s and before. All well and good, but it's tough to stack up those characters against, say, Bill Adama.
Anyway, this is -- again -- why I say the best way to do it is contained story arcs for each season, with each new season standing on the shoulders of the last one, but NOT leaving you hanging for the subsequent season.
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