BRETT DALTON, CLARK GREGG

Whenever I pick up a new book, I try to approach it with a sense of patience.

I follow the age-old rule and refrain from judging it by its cover, and even refrain from judging it by its first chapter. Books are a different animal than film of course, requiring a longer commitment, and rewarding the audience with more nuance and texture. Since it takes longer to tip its hand, I like to give any book I pick up 30% of its page count before deciding whether I want to bail out. By then, you see, I’ve given it half a chance to play past any first-act-jitters, allowed myself to get into the proper head-space, and given the story an opportunity to show its hand.

…it’s like TV in that way.

With the new TV season beginning, I have seen a lot of declarations about how certain shows are abjectly terrible, tone-deaf, should be cancelled, or never should have been greenlit in the first place. Often after one episode…or less. I’ve never understood this.

In the current landscape of television, a lot of shows are cancelled inside of six episodes (sometimes faster). The stakes seem to be sky-high and the trigger-fingers have never itched more. Thus, it would seem as though many network executives think like many of those who scream on social media about how “This show is the worst!” or “That show sucks!”. The funny thing for me as a viewer, is how that has left me skittish to get into a new show. The last thing I want to do is get into something new only to have the rug pulled out from under me after six weeks.

I treat it like ‘Nam; I don’t even want to learn a recruit’s name until they’ve been in The Shit for six months.

But back to the itchy trigger fingers…

Why is it that viewers want every last show to arrive as a fully-formed specimen? We become spoiled by shows like “True Detective” or “Game of Thrones” and expect absolutely every show to step out on to the street guns-a-blazing. We forget, that a lot of our favorite shows have actually been an evolution…artistic endeavours that have found their footing over the course of weeks, even years. Don’t believe me? Dig up the first episode of The Sopranos, or Sex in The City. Even Breaking Bad isn’t exactly itself in the pilot.

We forget sometimes that pilots are usually designed to appeal to three key groups; network executives, advertisers, and test audiences. Quick show of hands: Who trusts any of these groups as tastemakers? Who even trusts two-out-of-three?

Where would we be if these shows hadn’t been allowed to go through their growing pains? To figure out what their principles did well, and what their scripts needed to work on? Once in a while, a show hits the ground running…but more often than not, it’s through the course of their first season – sometimes their first two – that they get a firm hand on their own identity. Where would LOST have been, if their showrunners didn’t convince ABC to allow them to work with an end-date in mind?

Time and patience, it’s the key to a lot of great television. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Time and patience aren’t virtues that most viewers are equipped with though.

So where does that get us? Perhaps zeroing in on shows that deliver blockbuster pilots…like Glee, or Heroes, or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

So maybe we should read a few more pages before we put these books down. Considering how differently shows play week-to-week against binge-watching on demand, maybe the time has come to stay the execution. Maybe say “not yet” and let it work out its bugs before giving it another chance later in its inaugural season…or even its second.

Perhaps the time has come for a bit more patience.

11 Replies to “Remote Control: Is It Time To Be More Patient With TV?”

  1. Have not been watching many TV shows the last couple of years, which means that if I get into a show it has already been out for a while and has good ratings. So I guess it means I don’t have to deal with being patient 😉

    2. That’s one way to see it, but I never get the feeling I’m missing out. Watching a TV show is a big time investment and I usually rather watch a couple of movies instead. If you were to ask me which shows are hot at the moment I honestly wouldn’t be able to give you an answer.

  2. Very nice post! It’s interesting with The Walking Dead in its fifth season, a lot of viewers thought it should be canceled in the 2nd-4th season where the episodes were more character-driven. They weren’t horrible seasons but weren’t offering what people wanted. The same goes for Mad Men; after it reached its peak in the third/fourth season, the later seasons just seem like torture because it’s not as good as it used to be. It seems like whether a show is new or been around the block for a while, stories have to go the way audience’s want them to or else they aren’t worth our time.

    I find it difficult to get invested in new shows because they always end up getting canceled before or after one full season. My patience has been tested too many times but it’s still there to see if things work out. Sometimes the interest to watch something flourish, no matter how strong the production might be, feels cheated when networks don’t let a potential show surpass 6 or 13 episodes.

    1. Walking Dead has been an amazing case-study. I remember hearing calls – especially in season two at The Farm – that the show was stuck in the mud, and getting dull after a barnburner first season. The funny thing though, is when one looks on-paper at what goes down each episode, the season is actually stacked with a lot of intense plot moments. This intensity really comes through when the episodes are watched back-to-back. Part of me wonders if we’ve become so used to binge-watching, that when we’re made to wait week-to-week we get too impatient.

      Honestly, my only minor worry about Walking Dead? “How will it end”. If the comics are still going after hundreds of issues, how can the showrunners know when they want to call it a day?

      (Sorry for the much-belated response)

  4. If I’m not into something within the first handful of episodes, I’d rather wait and see what people are saying at the end of a season or 2, or even once it’s done. I couldn’t get into PARKS AND REC at the time, but watching it after 6 seasons, I knew it was likely worth the patience of getting through the weaker first season (and I ended up adoring it). I disliked season 1 of BREAKING BAD, but I’ll go back and try again considering how beloved the series now is. Am I too impatient? Perhaps, but I’m always willing to give things a second chance.

    1. The good thing about your attitude is that you’re willing to let something grow. To go back to my book analogy, what I see happening in The World of McCosh is a pile of started volumes returned to the shelf waiting for you to be in a better mood to dig deeper into them.

      Ain’t nothing wrong with that – it’s not like you tossed them, or sold them off.

  5. Wow, great, thought-provoking post, Ryan. Totally agree – The Office (the American one) comes to my mind immediately. I actually hated the first season, but look what it became! So true how the test groups – I don’t think I trust ANY of them – to decide whether or not a show is going to be great or not.

    And thinking of books . . . I struggle to not finish a book in its entirety if I start it. Maybe it’s just my OCD, but I hate to leave something hanging.

    Excellent points, and very relevant topic in today’s day and age. I always get bummed out when I start a show, really start getting into it, only to hear that it’s getting canceled before it got a chance to shine! It seems like a big flaw in executives’ decision-making is that when they put brand-new shows out there, they’re NOT fully fleshed out because they’re not based off a popular book series (like Game of Thrones). It’s new material that hasn’t gotten a chance yet. So when the show doesn’t deliver in its first few episodes, it’s ripped from the network before it can grow into anything great.

    OK, I’m done now. Haha.

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