Plot Not to Be Foiled - Part 2

This is Part 2 of posting about how shows, specifically Justified and their new approach, plot their seasons.  Part 1 included some background.

Why Justified is the Best


Season Four is a whole new approach to plotting a season. it carries an underlying story throughout the season, a mystery, while allowing for detours throughout.  Some plots last an episode, some plots take a few or four episodes for their own arc.  One starts in the premiere, only to be revisited in episodes seven and eight in near complete detour that somehow still manages to be a character study of Raylan.  Some of them tie back into the main mystery and some do not.  The kicker is that the mystery is resolved not in episode 12 or 13 but in episode 9!  How does one tell a thirteen chapter story by resolving the underlying question in episode 9, you ask?

Fallout and reactions.  The world constructed by Graham Yost & Co. is such a well developed, organic creature that revealing the mystery demands fallout and reactions from the characters.  The characters created by Yost & Co. are so well fleshed out, even if they are new to the scene in Season Four, that the audience is better served and more interested in seeing the reactions to the unfolding events than by simply playing up the mystery at hand and making the climax the reveal.  Instead, the climax of the season is when all parties, deftly tied together, react and converge in a not only believable but expertly plotted way.

The approach could have been inspired partially by the format of Raylan, the most recent book by Elmore Leonard which contains three stories.  Each story is about 100 pages long, too long to be a short story but too short to be novels unto themselves.  While the entire book tells a story of Raylan's marshal adventures in his hometown, each story has a beginning, middle and end similar to the detours taken in Season Four*.

* Started this post only talking about Justified ("Why Justified is the Best"), but realized I could not properly explain it without the context of other plotting examples. 

We discuss and analyze and recap shows on an episode by episode basis out of the natural convenience of shows broadcasting one episode on a weekly basis.  However, the cumulative effect a show cannot be felt by discussing a single episode, especially early in a season, without considering "all the pieces" as David Simon would.  If someone (who had not yet seen the show) were to re-cap The Wire now, it would not make sense to write four articles for the first four episodes.  Even the most ardent Wire fan would not claim the show grabs you from the start.  Instead, it takes a few episodes before you are "in it" *.  Rather, if I were writing about The Wire, I would probably take it four or so episodes at a time, at least to start.  There is a reason the show gained traction and attention in the media when HBO decided to send critics the entire season prior to it airing.

* Like Natalie Portman's character in Garden State would say.

As plotting becomes more and more complex, not just in the sense of following a season long storyline, but integrating vingettes and side adventurs like Justified did, the question will be if analysis and discussion can find a new paradigm as well to best suit the new format.  Otherwise it will become like recapping a book chapter by chapter and comparing the chapters to each other (if it isn't already). 

And we already see the format changing again.  With Netflix recently releasing all thirteen episodes of House of Cards and all fifteen episodes of Arrested Development, viewers are more able to get the whole picture in a manner more appropriate to the format.  When House of Cards was released, a bunch of articles popped up about this new phenomenon called "binge watching" that has been around for quite a while.  In fact, binge watching, which was just called "watching DVDs" played a big part in revival of dead shows like Family Guy and Futurama.

The reason this now has a name is because of the demographic shift in who is doing it.  Rather than college kids (with no money) watching a DVD collection they got for Christmas, these are adults watching a high minded show via a subscription service.  A Venn diagram of the audiences may actually show that many of these adults are simply the aged 2013 version of the Family guy watching college kids from 2004.

You could build a house, or at least a nice shed, out of the brick jokes flung about in the new season of Arrested Development.  The serialized and simultaneously released nature of the House of Cards episodes lend to show predicated on the long, long con at the highest stakes.  So not only has the way we watched television allowed us to enjoy the shows in ways not previously available, it is actually influencing the way shows are produced.

Plot Not to Be Foiled - Part 1

In the 1980s, shows like Hill Street Blues extended story arcs beyond an episode.  In the 1990s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer used a Big Bad * each season.  At the turn, The Sopranos plotted a thirteen episode, season long story that had a clear beginning, middle and end, and launched the new paradigm that would become prevalent among cable drama.   Various models are used but by and large cable drama** tells a thirteen episode story each season.  David Simon***  has spoke about constructing his seasons like a novel, and each episode like a chapter.


* “I’m not the new Big Bad everybody needs to be afraid of.” said a villain on True Blood who was recently introduced at the top of the new season

** One network example (when it was exclusive to NBC) was Friday Night Lights which would take viewers through the naturally occurring timeframe of a football season and the milestones throughout.  Due to the writers strike and a half renewal and custody sharing with DirecTV, only Season One had the classic 22 episodes.  It speaks to the advantage of plotting the new standard 13 episodes compared to old model of 22.

*** What we were asking was, “What should we spend 12 hours of television saying?”

 What was once cutting edge is almost a prerequisite for (cable) drama these days.  Viewers expect a cohesive story.  What was new and exciting in 1999 on The Sopranos is almost conventional by now.  A season may depend on a theme, an idea, the introduction and defeat of a new villain or any number of things.   Even getting a character from point A in episode 1 to point Z in episode 13 is a large change from former drama models.  Before The Sopranos, you'd see a character move from place to place from season to season, but rarely was it a meticulously plotted season long journey.  More often you'd see a three episode arc that happens to coincide with the end of season/sweeps.  The only long term plot line one was likely to see was a pregnancy in the fall meaning a birth in May sweeps.

The new, hyper serialized television demands viewers' attention, and thus rewards them.

At the same time, these meticulously plotted shows can suffer from slower, table setting episodes that are necessary but less attention grabbing.  Case in point, watch episodes in the 5-8 range for the first three seasons of Game of Thrones.  If you are someone who watches a show for the season long story, you are not as likely to be bothered by slow moments as someone who is amazingly able to still be viscerally upset by the end of the Sopranos while simultaneously breathing through their mouth.  However, even knowing there is a payoff, the middling episodes cause an evenness in the season.

Breaking Bad has been a great example of a show that has beginning and end points in mind for the series, as well as clear progress each season*.  The end point for each season accumulates everything that has happened thus far and contributes to the ultimate goal of Walt becoming Scarface. They are like landings on a staircase until you reach the roof. 

* Group Season One and Two together due to the writers strike, and consider two halves of Season Five as separate seasons, a la Sopranos. 

While The Sopranos often introduced a new foil to Tony each season* , a show doesn't necessarily need to schlep in new villains or a whole host of characters each year to plot out that season's novel though.  Justified** spent Season Four (possibly its best) on a mystery.  Finding it's way midway through the first season, introducing the baddest of the big bads Mags in Season Two, piling on two new guys in Season Three.

* Again, formerly cutting edge, now conventional.

** Something that Justified and Breaking Bad have in common is the relatively slow passage of time on the show.  Debuting in 2010, only about a year has passed in Justified's Harlan County (including about 10 days in Season Four), and debuting in 2008, Breaking Bad's ABQ has only seen two years pass from the pilot to the (still not seen in a real time context) flash forward of bearded Walt on the run, purchasing a BFG.*

*  Footnoting for the explanation of that term because the text isn't hidden when hyperlinked. 


Coming in Part 2 is the innovative approach Justified took in Season Four, which was originally the whole point of this post.

Hill Street Blues was a network show

Part I - A Dearth of Options

Quality drama tends to come from cable and pay-cable these days.  If I watch an old episode of The Wire or The Sopranos or Deadwood, or current episodes of Justified or Breaking Bad, I can figuratively feel the punch in the gut these shows pack.  And I think about how tame network was and is, and wonder how I enjoyed those shows, and doubt I ever will again.

Then I catch an old YouTube clip and remember why I liked it so much.  I still catch an occasional ER or NYPD Blue episode and see how great they are/were.  The fact that there's so few quality dramas on network these days is often chalked up to competition from cable and not being able to say certain swear words, but given the right story and characters, there's no reason networks can't put in the effort to bring back network drama.  ABC is at least trying.  While I haven't seen Scandal or Revenge, they have loyal followings and garnered critical success and respectable ratings.  ABC tried to continue their success and started the season with three new dramas (666 Park Avenue, Nashville, Last Resort*) , though only one made it through the gauntlet (Nashville - though it still has not been renewed for next Fall). 

The other three networks are almost trying.  NBC retread Hannibal Lecter and Dr. Jekyll in their attempts, Hannibal, whose main claim to fame is getting episodes pulled from TV (but on iTunes) and a Utah network's refusal to air the show**...and Do No Harm, which was cancelled after a second or two of being NBC's poorer man version of the poor man version of Sherlock.  Granted, they do have what appears to be a poor man's version of Revenge in Deception.  Plus their poor man version of Walking Dead/Hunger Games in Revolution.

I've become cautiously fond of Elementary, which more closely resembles CSI than Sherlock, as well as Hawaii Five O, which is watched more as an unintentional comedy.  But both tend to stockpile on the DVR for when nothing else is available or supply as background noise, and neither would cause much of a stir upon their cancellation. 

The Good Wife is the only network show *** currently airing that has been nominated for a 'Best Drama' Emmy.  Law & Order: SVU has been on for a decade and has an intense following.  But that is two hours in about 66 hours of network primetime Sunday-Friday****.  While reality shows are cheaper to produce and fill time easily (and are among the networks' highest rated shows) surely the networks besides ABC can at least try for an hour drama that's not a retread of a previously done idea from another network.

Part II - why we want the networks to do well

* Putting faith in Shawn Ryan (of The Shield), I have these final episodes sitting on my DVR.  I wouldn't bother but they apparently brought it to a legitimate conclusion following cancellation.

** Eventually folks will figure out that such action only brings more attention to a show.

*** Downtown Abbey is a BBC who and airing on PBS.  While not cable, it doesn't come from one of the four broadcast networks either.

**** Fox local news comes on at 10 p.m. so their model only allows pritmetime from 8:00-10:00