It’s harmful to Dick Wolf’s bottom line. In the network system he can create one generic show and a handful of derivative spin-offs and make bank. In the streaming system, he’d have to, you know, come up with compelling stories and stuff.
Well sure. The days of the USA TV bigwigs not having to compete with streamers or easy access to content from other countries is… over. There is nothing they can do about that. So moving forward, with that reality…
I should also add that since I can get the premiums without cable, they’re competing against them now too.
For what it’s worth, I’d be way happier with a 200-episode backlog of excellent TV than a 40-episode backlog of excellent TV for a given program. I also recognize that in a lot of cases, the larger US season orders could work against TV being consistently excellent. But then I think of stuff like West Wing and Community and the like and say to myself, “I mean, it can be done,” and I look at shorter fare like Iron Fist season 1 and think, you know, fewer episodes doesn’t magically mean higher quality.
If a given showrunner works better with 6- or 10-episode seasons, and that’s where he or she produces their best work, awesome. But for the ones who relish in or at the very least can find ways to take advantage of 20- or 22-episode orders, well, I look forward to binging through their enormous backlogs someday :)
And to be clear, I kinda consider Mr. Dickwolf to be one of the latter. L&O: SVU and CI were never really “excellent” TV in the vein of Hannibal or Mr. Robot or what have you, but they were incredible popcorn junk food entertainment that I greatly enjoy consuming in vast quantities every now and again. My college roomies and I basically had SVU as the background soundtrack to a lot of our adventures back in the day, for instance!
I mean, you go back and look at West Wing and I think you’d find it’s less consistently excellent than you remember, especially in comparison with the high water marks of shorter format TV. Even when Aaron Sorkin was still running it. (I’m not saying this is for sure true, because I haven’t done it, but I would bet.)
Certainly, a shorter format doesn’t guarantee quality, because people still make plenty of crap, but even so, imagine Iron Fist at 22 episodes. Does it become better? I doubt it.
I mean, I watched WW for the first time about 4 years ago and rewatched the Sorkin seasons with my gf 2 years ago. I am of the opinion that it absolutely stands up :)
And while you were watching that, think of all the other shows you were not watching. It’s hard to get people into new shows when they can binge watch the endless thing that is Supernatural (I don’t watch Supernatural).
I put in my ten seasons for Supernatural. They beat god’s sister. Kinda. Sorta. I was content with stopping there :)
Oh, sure, it’s still good - but consistently excellent, for every episode across every season? I am putting on my skeptical face here.
Counter-offer: across 7 years, WW produced more excellent episodes than virtually any short-seasoned show I can imagine.
Further contention: I am unsure if length directly correlates to quality, e.g., if WW had been 12-episode seasons, I don’t know that all 12 would have been 10/10, as compared to, say, 10 10/10s, a handful of 7s and 8s, and a couple of 1s and 2. I think of, for instance, Doctor Who, which routinely has stinkers every single season, despite only needing 10-12 eps apiece (and often getting a couple of years to produce them).
Shit, Sherlock has weak points and has like 9 episodes total across a similar production timespan to WW (I realize that’s not a totally fair comparison since each ep is movie length and part of the delay involves the business of various principles).
So I’m pretty comfortable with my original point: some showrunners can absolutely excel in a standard American-length season, or at the very least are not overtly hampered by it, and I am all about that shit when the two combine and I can extract dozens of beloved eps from a decade-long run.
Man, I can name half a dozen shows I’d take over West Wing any day off the top of my head, all of which are shorter format - The Wire, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Mr. Robot, Legion, Carnivale…and that’s not because I don’t love West Wing.
Edit: Wait, I think I misunderstood your argument. Ok, sure, it has more good episodes in total than most of those. I don’t agree that those good episodes are individually better than those shows or that I would benefit more from watching all of those episodes instead of, say, two or three of those shows. And that’s the thing - they’re competing for the same time.
I mean there are shows I like more than WW. The point is that there is a shit ton of good WW to watch!
I’m a binger, man! It’s a condition!
I mean logically that ought to be a workable phrase, if its inverse is considered one.
West Wing is a great podcast with Joshua Malina and they usually get actors and former Obama/Clinto Officials to talk about the show and the ideas.
Comes out every Wednesday.
Personally I need to watch Supernatural, but if it comes to binge watching, I really enjoyed rewatching Psych and Community. Both have some much going on that I get something new from watching it again. They pack both shows with so many gems!
Finally, I have been really tempted to binge watch Stargate SG1 and Atlantis again.
https://quotational.com/quote/1538/
TV Quote from The Good Place 01x10: Chidi’s Choice
Eleanor : What’s this show called again?
Tahani : Deirdre and Margaret. It ran for sixteen years on the BBC. They did nearly thirty episodes.
When reading the above posts I was thinking about WW too as an obvious counter-point, and I then see you took up the mantle very well. Is it the exception that proves the rule, though? All of my other favorite TV are shorter seasoned and serial.
But we’re not really saying everything has to be short or should be short right. It’s just combating this idea that Dick Wolf has that the math simply works against him until broadcast decides to do the same short seasons that streaming does. Except, well some of the cable companies already do that and the premiums definitely do too. Cable is shedding customers, maybe they should just look at it a different way before it’s… too late.
I left cable because of the costs, not the lack of content. I decided that they were asking for is too much, and I discovered while I missed out on some shows (I never finished Psych because of that, but might someday), I found a lot of other quality content to replace it and… more time to play games.
There’s inertia to a shows production. The more product you can produce from a single set of writers, actors, sets, etc, usually helps you amortize the investment more effectively. Personally, I love 20+ episode seasons. I think the problem with shows like the Marvel stuff isn’t that they have too many episodes, its that they refuse to be episodic, like at all. A 13 episode run doesn’t have to drag out the plot too far, so long as you’re willing to tell stand alone stories along the way.
I’ll agree with that. I am not a fan of jumping into the middle of things that have season long plots. on the other hand, it’s not a problem when you can binge watch an entire season in two days.
I absolutely understand it’s cheaper for them to put a lot in one show than to put the same resources into three. I just, well, Father Brown, Call the Midwife, Vikings. GoT… I have a lot of content and little need for cable. For them to get me back into cable doesn’t actually require them to change the way they make their shows, episode counts or otherwise, unless not doing so doesn’t lower the price. The people that have “all” the content… they’re paying 120-160 a month. That’s nuts~ (this may include internet too).
Remember you don’t need cable to see the kinds of shows Dick Wolf makes. You just need an antenna.
I have to admit, I also got a lot of years of comfort food viewing from Law & Order. I didn’t watch every episode, I’m sure, but I watched most of them. It was never disappointing to me, especially the “Order” part of the show. Eventually I decided I didn’t like the police/cop portion of the show, and started tuning in at the half-way point on purpose. As a half-hour prosecution show, it was perfect.
I loved Law and Order. I think I watched it past Lenny and probably stuck around until Sam Waterson left, or maybe shortly after that. Heck I was big into SVU until they lost some of the cast I cared about there too. I don’t have a lot of complaints or the length of his show. I’m just not sure doing the same ole until someone forces us to do something else is the best approach when in the arena with new players.