The Pro's & Con's of Supporting Episodic TV Dramas

Night before last, I finally got to see the season finale ep of Prison Break (yeah, thanks to ReplayTV, I don't have to keep up anymore). And with that, my wife and I waved goodbye to the series. Nevermind that they'd already broken out of said prison in LAST season's finale, I stuck with it, because I had a sense that the writers knew where they were going with this. But with about 25 minutes to go in the episode, they set up just about everything I need to know about the next season: cookie-cutter cliffhanger, same characters/new plot, and NO denoument for the anxiety they put the characters through for the first two seasons...just pick up the pieces, and slap them onto a new chessboard.

I thought, here's a show where we finally get to see the plot work itself out...and then it gets renewed beyond its' intent, so you have a "do-over" shoehorned into the climax, robbing the audience of the satisfaction.

We already know the perils of betting your television-watching hours on the wrong shows. Nowadays it's not enough that you support and enjoy a good program that hooks you, now you're also required to trust that the producers will be given ample time to give you what you want out of the story.

Kidnapped from NBC, and ABC's The Nine deserved a chance to grow, not a chance to "hook" us with one or two episodes. I thought Six Degrees from ABC however, was worth the viewings even when I knew the storylines wouldn't be resolving - because it was more character than plot (except, of course, for the contrivance of having the storylines overlapping to validate the shows' title and theme).

For years we waited for the nets to give us the realism in storytelling that comes with plots that don't resolve themselves within the hour. Now we're paying or that by having to choose our viewing habits not by quality, but by which ones we think will be given the room to work themselves out.