Everything Bad
Last Christmas, I received “Everything Bad Is Good For You” from Erin’s Mom. I read it, and certainly agreed with a lot of the premises in the book. One of the pieces that is discussed is the increasing complexity of popular TV (or the increasing popularity of complex TV.) I watch some shows regularly, and I see exactly where he’s coming from.
Lost is an incredibly complicated situation. Somebody sitting down to watch “just one episode” wouldn’t get much out of it – there’s too much backstory required in order to fully understand what’s happening in each individual episode. Lots of overlapping, longrunning plots. Last week’s throwaway comment may very well become next weeks plot focus. The first season was very enjoyable, but it’s gone downhill since then. It’s become apparent that big mysteries will never be satisfactorily resolved – or if they are, they’ll be replaced with bigger ones. It’s like the Lost writers are trying to keep a fish hooked by force.
Contrast that with Veronica Mars – I’ve just finished watching the second season of that show – where there’s a single season story arc, and as the viewer, you trust that the writers will finish this year’s story arc in a satisfactory way. I know that after watching season 2, there isn’t a lot of well developed storylines that require me to continue watching season 3, but there are enough hints, and Season 2 was good enough, that I want to watch season 3 anyway. The viewer retention policy is to continue to produce good TV, as contrasted with Lost, where the viewer retention policy seems to be “leave so many threads hanging, that one of them will pique your curiosity.”
The implications are pretty big – in the first case, I want to keep watching, and the show has generated a positive association. In the second case, I almost want to stop watching rather than continue to wait for the show to get good again. It’s like I’ve picked up some sort of vibe from Lost that they don’t respect me, and don’t respect their own talents enough to allow the show to stand on its own merits. It’s the cost of switching being so artificially high that it’s driving me to want to switch.
All TV shows eventually get cancelled – lets face it, a lot of them live on longer than they should – and with Lost, the feeling is very much that at some point the show will be cancelled, and nothing will have ever been resolved. Why continue to watch, when you know that’s going to be the end result – choice 1) stop watching now – nothing is resolved. choice 2) watch it until it’s cancelled, and nothing is resolved. I mean, sure, there have been vague hand-wavy resolutions to some smaller mysteries, but it’s been kind of crappy thus far this season (to put it mildly.)
That whole diatribe is kind of unstructured, and hand-wavy too – I apologize for that – I just think I’m very close to having identified exactly what’s wrong with that show now, as compared to season 1. I guess it’s inevitable, they painted themselves into a bit of a corner with the whole premise. Network execs don’t like to see a successful show end before they’ve been able to suck all the revenue possible out.
Simpson’s quote of the day: “Gentlemen, I have decided there will be, uh, no investigation. Now if you will excuse me I’ll go away.” – Mayor Quimby