Are American tv shows stuck in Act 2 for their entire runtime between season 1 and final season?
Are American tv shows stuck in Act 2 for their entire runtime between season 1 and final season?
Season 1s are great, setup, some payoff, a bit of lead into the overarching story. Then season 2 to X. The heroes win and then lose in the final episode, cliffhanger to next season. People get bored. Final season is announced and they wrap up the show.
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I think the shows with long term success either have multiple independent or semi-independent story arcs or they have a well defined story arc that lasts for the entire run of the show. The characters grow and change as the show progresses which keeps the audience interested.
Where they run into trouble is when the constraints built into the structure of the show limit the number of possible stories, but success leads to them trying to keep the show running after all possibilities have been used. At that point, the show becomes repetitive and boring.
Writing this, I'm reminded of the show, Scrubs.
Scrubs was an excellent show for the entirety of it's 8 season run. The concept allowed for a story arc that lasted the whole run, specifically the story of JD and his friends learning and developing as doctors from first year residents to attendings. There is a natural progression during that process that allows for individual growth of the characters and accommodates natural shifts in storylines to allow for new topics for episodes. In addition there are countless opportunities for different individual smaller story arcs to make each episode able to stand alone as it's own tale.
Because there was a built-in plan creating a structure for the life of the show, they were able to maintain quality and audience interest for all 8 seasons.
If the producers had foolishly tried to squeeze more seasons out of the show after they had exhausted the original concept, they would have inevitably failed. The result would have been a weak and pathetic shadow of the previous seasons and would have rapidly lost the patience of the audience.
Eh, Scrubs suffered a lot from trying to find ways of keeping the characters somewhat together and on the hospital. Also, even if not relevant to the topic, flanderization utterly fucked Scrubs from season 5ish onwards.
Flanderization? And in what way regarding Scrubs? Genuinely intrigued by your point.
I'll leave you with two links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Flanderization/LiveActionTV (search for Scrubs there)
Careful, don't get sucked into the TVTropes website, it's a black hole.
I think they're asking for examples of it. Not what it means.
I can think of a few with Dr Cox and Dr Kelso in the later seasons.
@delitomatoes @NABDad @danielbln @fartsparkles
There are examples in the second link, but I can paste them here for you:
Scrubs:
J.D. started as fairly emotionally needy due to him wanting a father figure to replace his own dysfunctional family. Fast forward to season five where J.D. is an appletini (light on the tini)-swilling "sensey" (that's "sensitive person") who can't hold on to his "man cards" (which would be taken away from him if he did something girly) for a full day. This is lampshaded by Zach Braff in the bloopers to Season 8.
"You haven't been here in a while, my character's really gay now."
Carla was initially a tough cookie Team Mom. As the seasons went on, the writers Flanderised her obsession with gossip and her domineering tendencies over Turk. She also went from giving advice to forcing her opinions on everyone else and admitting that taking the moral high ground "is like crack for me".
Elliot went from being a pretty normal, slightly quirky, girl with no interest in kids and a high degree of efficiency coupled with no personal skills to highly neurotic, obsessed with getting married and having kids, and the most compassionate doctor in the hospital that was only there because she wanted to help people. The family part is at least somewhat justified by the fact that she as she got old she had a stronger desire to settle down.I don't think those are good examples of flanderization. Looking at JDs example, he was always that way, but was less confident in himself to show that side. A core character growth point for him is embracing his lack of masculinity while his father figure continually lambasts him for it. As he becomes more comfortable in his new job as a doctor, it would make sense he would be more comfortable being himself.
Flanderization is when a character becomes fully defined by what was initially just a quirk or feature of the character. I don't think you can summarize JDs character as 'feminine dude' . JD continues to be complex and grow throughout the series. It's not perfectly linear growth, but it shouldn't be.
I think a big reason it shouldn't be considered flanderization is he gets serious when it's necessary, he does still struggle with his masculinity some, and he grows as a character in other ways. Hell, he ends up as a strong and responsible leader while maintaining his lack of masculine traits.
Elliots example you copied is just weirdly self-countering and kinda sexist. Elliots growth was heavily centered around self confidence and self acceptance. She started out as a shallow, rich kid, know it all who couldn't take the pressure and couldn't handle when she wasn't good at something. I don't think any of those traits ended up flanderized.
There are plenty of shows that flanderize characters to a pretty extreme level. I find it weird that you would call out scrubs of all shows for flanderization.
@delitomatoes @NABDad @danielbln @fartsparkles @Potatos_are_not_friends
Fair points, I have only watched a few episodes myself and was merely copying the source since others weren't seeing it.
My second link shows a bunch of Scrubs examples.
Man, Scrubs was great. Still one of my favorite shows ever
Scrubs had its problems too. It just didn't matter as much because its a comedy first.
For example: Elliott took like 6 seasons to gain confidence. Probably because JD kept trying to get with her then being an idiot and breaking up.
Hot take: Scrubs Season 8 was weak. Dr. Cox as chief was lame, the new interns were lame, the Janitor’s wedding was lame.
Season 9 was actually a bit of a dead cat bounce.
dead cat bounce
I think the point of the question is that the producers get greedy midway. And stop the progress so they can go indefinitely. Then when the show is cancelled the finish the story arcs in the final season.
I don't think it's the producers--it's the networks or streaming service. I've read a lot of articles where a showrunner says they had a 4 year plan or a one season plan, only to have the show be really popular and additional seasons added, or the opposite which we've all encountered, the show cancelled before the plan plays out.
I don't know how to get around this but I would love to see a model where more shows follow a short run K drama type schedule and get a fixed 8 or 16 or 32 episodes to tell their story, and that's it. That way, they can plan ahead of time without having to worry about network interference. Obviously this would never fly with U.S. broadcast networks but they're a dying breed anyway.