I appreciate the argument in favor of filler episodes, that some breathing room is good and that not every episode needs to move the plot forward, but in my opinion it doesn’t go far enough. Bring back purely episodic shows. Jessica Fletcher doesn’t need forward momentum; she’s too busy solving mysteries.
Emphatically yes. I realized at one point that that's one of the things I loved about mysteries: a certain set of fixed axioms (such as Jessica Fletcher writes novels) and then an endless fount of stories built on them. Same with “Columbo” and “Ellery Queen” and “Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries” and on and on.
But it's not specifically a mystery thing (e.g., “Stargate: SG-1”), any more than mysteries are necessarily purely episodic (e.g., “The Apothecary Diaries”). Mysteries are making a comeback; let's have episodic stories make a comeback, too.
There are ~three~ four things I want from the fiction I consume:
- Good people trying to do right by everyone — more specifically, themselves, each other, and the world around them. If everybody is some kind of asshole/has umpteen secrets they're keeping from half the cast/can't go an entire episode without lying their face off, I invoke the Eight Deadly Words* and nope out.
- Examples: Most “Star Trek”, most mysteries (the regular characters are good people, the villains obviously not).
- Non-examples: Most US TV from the last 20 years, especially after “Lost”, but for a specific example I've seen (besides “Lost”), “Discovery”.
- Self-contained stories that don't require me to follow along for multiple seasons of bullshit or read a spoiler-ridden wiki. I am busy; I watch TV to not have to think for an hour.
- Examples: See above, but also a lot of (especially older) cartoons.
- Non-examples: Again, most US TV from the last 20 years, especially after “Lost”.
- Brief resolutions. I don't want to find out who the villain is and what their grand plan was and then have the show spend three more seasons figuring out what to do with that information (or get canceled before satisfaction finally arrives). Brief resolutions correlate with self-contained stories that have to tie everything up by the end of the episode.
- Examples: Mysteries in general (the resolution is “the killer was caught and generally handed off to the cops if they didn't hoist themselves on their own petard”); most episodic shows such as “Totally Spies”, “SG-1”, again most “Star Trek”, etc.
- Non-examples: … Again most US TV from the last 20 years. I don't have a lot of specific shows to list because I always get bored long before then.
- Fixed axioms that define the characters and the world. Jessica Fletcher writes novels. The A-Team solve problems using extralegal methods while running from the MPs. Joel/Mike/Jonah/Emily and the bots are stuck watching cheesy movies screened by their captors.
- Often correlates with the “reset button” trope (no big changes ever happen to the fundamental axioms) but doesn't have to; permanent changes can happen as long as they're (a) rare enough and (b) don't break the format of the stories.
- Also, doesn't preclude an ending (e.g., a journey to a fixed destination, like “Star Trek: Voyager”)—the ending having not yet been reached (in that example, “we're traveling back toward the Alpha Quadrant”) being one of the axioms.
- Examples: All of the ones above plus “Spy × Family” (Loid is a spy pretending to be a family man, Yor is an assassin pretending to be his wife, Anya is a telepath who is their adopted daughter, etc.). Even though “Spy × Family” is serial, once it establishes a fact, that fact tends to remain true as the basis of all subsequent story development.
- Non-examples: Again most US TV from the last 20 years, as TV has moved to serial storytelling where every episode Changes Everything. A lot of anime are purely serial, but some do still have some axioms, like “The Apothecary Diaries” (Maomao is a servant girl with hidden intellect) and “Banished from the Hero's Party” (Red and Rit are running an apothecary together in a remote mountain town).
At least two of those are about being able to invest myself in the story. If all your characters are liars, I have no reason to believe anything they say. If Everything Changes every other episode, I have no attachment to anything that has happened or is happening, because something else will negate or moot it later on.
*The Eight Deadly Words are “I don't care about any of these people”.