lutz

writing, criticism, podcasts

i'm a boy from indiana and this is very emotional for me


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Lilli
@Lilli asked:

How do you feel about the current streaming model destroying the sort of normal structure of television where plot lines are no longer contained within episodes and spills over into The Season

i understand and appreciate the desire to Go Big when the canvas is big but there is something about it that feels like, to paraphrase noted talented jerkass robert frost speaking about free verse poetry, "playing tennis without a net". traditional television certainly didn't have a process for producing 100% bangers but as i've said on some podcast or other, the weekly episode with act breaks punctuated by commercials at least provided some sort of impetus for regular moments where characters have to establish what's going on, what it is they're doing, and why they're doing it.

with these kinds of built-in checkpoints you could actually structure and pace a season with one big arc and several micro-arcs that fit into it (and you still could in streaming but that would require insisting on putting up a net that production methods have just largely turned against)! and it could be wooden and hacky, of course (i remember watching Dexter and being like "okay, it's episode three/six/nine, something's gonna pivot unexpectedly"), but the nice thing about it at least in potential is that this sort of narrative macro-structuring doesn't seem to trend so uniformly toward being simultaneously overcrowded and wheelspinning like, eg, Stranger Things


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