After baring through the final season of Lost, having caught up through 5 seasons on DVD I began to wonder if perhaps, certain TV shows really dont work as a weekly serial on TV.
I really began to wonder this when I watched season 2 of Dexter, and I had heard from lots of people that it was the worst season. I, watching it on DVD, thought it was amazing. I went back and spoke to those who disliked it, and they had watched it live on a weekly basis. Upon hearing this, I realized that most of what I loved about the season probably would have sucked if it was drawn out for a month or 2. Like the last 6 episodes I couldnt stop watching, but if it took 6 weeks...yuck.
I also noticed, most shows I fall in love with on DVD or internet viewing have a drastic quality drop off when I start watching them from week to week.
For example, would I have liked BSG season 3 and 4 more if I had not watched them week to week?
It seems like some of the best shows on TV are ones with ongoing, gripping story arcs. But it also seems that the format is less enjoyable when forced to wait every week.
Or rather, the experience may be better waiting, because you have that anticipation and reward for your patience, BUT the view of the work will be negatively impacted. Most people hated season 2 of Lost, thinking the hatch and button pushing was lame. I personally loved it. But I recognize in retrospect, nothing much happened week to week, and watching it live would have sucked.
So I guess, the question is, is it better to watch these ongoing TV shows like Lost, Battlestar, Dexter etc as they air, or on DVD at your own pace?
I would argue that the experience is unique and possible more rewarding live. Theorizing, discussing it with friends, anticipating what happens next with no clue of where it will go, is all great times. However I will also argue that the episodes themselves will seem worse because you will feel a lot of dissapointment and lack of reward for your waiting.
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It's just an element of gripping storytelling, and it doesn't just happen in TV. Peter F. Hamilton, one of my favorite living authors, is currently in the middle of a new trilogy and after reading book 2 I desperately want book 3. Heh, I started reading the Bleach manga because I couldn't wait until next week to see what happens on the anime and now I'm stuck desperately waiting for new scanslation releases of THAT every week =P
There really isn't an alternative to this though, while it's more fun to get instant gratification on all those cliffhangers I'm pretty sure it's vastly more money to make a successful book series, TV series, etc. than a one shot of some kind.
I like watching shows like that on Netflix one episode after the other. Keeps things condensed and entertaining.
I would argue that perhaps season 3 and 4 of battlestar werent all that worse then 1 and 2, but I and others just feel that way because many of us discovered the show during or after season 2.
Its probably the same reason Firefly is so highly regarded, NOBODY watched it while it was on. So everyone got the joy of seeing it on DVD.
The issue is, a big chunk of people have to take the hit of seeing these things live because the market demans they have to be serialized TV shows and not direct to DVD box sets. Should we give out awards and medals for watching these shows as they air?
"I survived the season 2 break during the Pegasus Arc"
In fact, I actually watch the majority of my television in this way now, waiting until the season is over, and then watching the entire thing over the course of a week. The only real exceptions to this rule are sitcoms, Castle, Supernatural and Doctor Who. Everything else, I wait either for the mid season break, or for the season finale before starting.
However "the experience" involves all of that, and the show itself did not. The quality of entertainment I derived from watching the individual episodes was probably decreased.
I might have not remotely minded that the Jacob episode happened and wasted my time and instead just enjoyed it for what it was. When watching week to week theres a higher demand for moving things along quicker and action.
Very possible. I watched the series from the very, very beginning, when the miniseries first aired, and I regard the quality as fairly consistent beginning to end.
Edit: And yes, the 9-month breaks between half seasons was excruciating.
I noticed the same thing about Lost season 2 as well. I thought it was great, and it's still probably my favorite season. Watched it straight through on DVD and it was very rewarding. I loved season 3 of BSG as well, others not so much. 24 season 5 was great to watch on DVD.
So yeah, pretty much any show is better to watch on DVD, you just have to watch out for potential spoilers, as they are everywhere now.
I just don't have a stable enough schedule to catch shows week to week anymore.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
on TV its the worst show ive ever sat down and tried to watch. On DVD its an action packed, edge of my seat, must watch the next episode.
I find it a bit harder to gauge how much time has passed in a show when I'm watching it in a big marathon, but that's a small price to pay for avoiding annoying commercials and stupid waits. I swear, if I had to experience the wait between Supernatural seasons 1 and 2, or... well, hell, every goddamn season has ended with a cliffhanger. That's just mean.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Being able to watch the first season of Heroes in a couple of days and then pretending it got canceled is the only way to do it.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Well there's always hulu, tivo or torrents. I tend to enjoy reading and discussing shows online week to week as they air so I watch things as they're released despite it being more rewarding to watch all at once.
That said, there is a bit of a "free rider" problem here, if we all wait until a show is done then it will be cancelled before it reaches season 4 or whatever.
In general, though, I greatly prefer to watch tv shows on DVD. If I start watching them on DVD mid-run and have to watch new episodes on TV I usually stop watching the show.
The really nice thing about Instawatch is that they'll sometimes add new episodes to the end of the previous seasons. That's how we watched NCIS and Heroes for a while last season.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
there are definitely shows that are helped by dvd, but I'd also say there are ones where it hurts. for me, scrubs was a great show when I saw episodes here and there, but I thought I was more into it than I was so I ended up wasting some cash on a few of the seasons. now, was that my fault or was it just that the show didn't stand up when watched that intensly? I guess a little of both. I imagine that applies to lots of sitcoms.
I will add in response to the OP that I thought dexter season 2 was my least favorite until I rewatched it on netflix. it was a lot better than I thought at the time but you're right to say it's obvious why.
This is an interesting discussion that I've been thinking about a lot with Lost, and how different people experienced it. good thread!
I haven't made it to season 2 of Dexter yet.
I would wager that the only reason I made it past season 2 of Rescue Me is because I had 5 seasons available and I wasn't watching something else at the time.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Then again, Ive fallen in love with many sitcoms through marathon viewing. Where as I think the only one ive managed to fall for while watching week to week is community.
As for ongoing serailized stories, I will say that the Shield nailed it. They had a perfect blend of episode-to-episode plot lines and smaller, 3-4 episode arcs mixed with season arcs mixed with overall series plot lines. Watching it week to week held up very well.
I havent watched the DVD version, it may be that the additional smaller storylines drag down the DVD marathon viewing experience a bit.
This is definitely the best argument for keeping up each week. When a huge cliffhanger happens on a show and you're watching it each week you can have lots of discussion and speculation about it, whereas splurging all at once means "Will so and so die next episode? Time to find out....now!".
That said I usually marathon shows more often than not, but many times I do wish I could have been around when the outcome of certain events were, well, uncertain.
I think the worst experience is marathoning a show in progress and waiting a week for each new episode once you've caught up. I don't know about everyone else but I've burned out on quite a few things by doing that since I just wasn't able to get used to the sudden change in pace.
Honestly I think Lost is a special case at least for me. Its rare that I feel the need to speculate about things in a show but Lost necessitated that because the writers threw mysteries around like candy from a parade float. Also I think I would get more joy out of figuring out what happens in a show by watching it on DVD than spending lots of time coming up with theories. I don't enjoy sitting around speculating so to each his own.
I RARELY watch things on TV and when I watched the Lost finale I wanted to punch someone in the goddamn face because of all the commercials.
As for the OP I think it really depends on the type of show and quality of writing. I do think its better to run through Dexter or Firefly on dvd. However shows that are excessively formulaic become painful to watch on DVD. The first season or so of House was this way and I couldn't stand watching those sorts of episodes back to back. It didn't really have much of a story arch or character development. It was pretty much "oh noes new mysteries case lets try and solve it but at the 30 minute commercial break we will find out our solution doesn't work and they are getting worse! Epiphany at the end. Woo saved someone!" Repeat ad naseum.
I wonder if I'd got fed up with the series less quickly if I hadn't binged on it.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The show is great.
But yeah, with sitcoms, I think the quality of the show really impacts whether or not it holds up on DVD. The worse the show, the more difficult it would be to watch on DVD. Mediocre sitcoms can hold my attention when they are on because I have nothing better to do. But if I walk in a room and someone is volunterily watching The Queen of Queens on DVD, id have to ask them to knock it off.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
For those talking about Lost who didn't watch seasons 2 and 3 live, let me explain the release structure: Season premiere, new, new, new, rerun, rerun, new, rerun, new, new, rerun, rerun, rerun, new, new, new, rerun, rerun, new, new, new, season finale.
People got fed up with it skipping weeks. The half-season format was much better. It also allowed them to not have nonsense filler episodes.
Personally, I hate the water-cooler theorizing about shows, so I would marathon every series if I had the patience.
But like Slicer said, they have to be finished. There is truly nothing worse than watching a couple of seasons in a month and then going to a week-by-week format.
6 episodes of Dexter literally takes 5 hours...
So, yeah, 5 hours of a sitcom, even the best ones, might be too much to take. But 2 or 3? Thats plausible. I can usually pound out a disk of a sitcom no problem if its good.
Not only does it make the plot feel less dragged out (not that I think it really was in case of Chuck, but whatevs) but you also notice more things. Jokes and references to previous episodes resonate more because those episodes are still fresh in your head.
It did a little bit, yes. But it's not nearly as badly as the aforementioned formula shows (like House, and to some extent 24), where you realize every fucking episode is the same. Still, I found I preferred watching The Shield weekly over DVD-style. The only sad part about FX shows is that after 13 weeks you're done, and you're like that's...it?
WANT MORE.
I never realized it, but I really do think this is what killed (by "killed" I mean made marginally less awesome) BSG for me.
Only if we have Nielson families that post here.
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I used to get the diaries. It was actually kinda cool writing down the shows I like, and knowing it (to some small extent) "mattered."
Also, don't modern DVR systems have reporting mechanisms? I though some ratings were gathered through those.
They do, but they still mean next to nothing on whether a show gets renewed or not. The only thing advertisers care about still is Nielson numbers, while DVR numbers can take a flying fuck, because people will skip over their ads.
Thirded.
I was off sick for a while, my brother gave me heroes season 1 and it was awesome until the last minute when Sylar
I probably didnt need to spoiler that at this stage, but just being careful. I've tried the show since, but just didn't care anymore. Shame.
Beat me on 360: Raybies666
I remember when I had time to be good at games.
Fucking months. Like, what. 6 or 7? Fucked up.
DVD is superior.
On the other hand, trying to watch episode after episode of In Treatment made me want to seek therapy. Never finished the first season.
However, the greatest thing marathoning a show has going for it is getting you past a fair to middling pilot episode. I tend to think that a pilot is prolly the hardest thing to write, cause there is just a lot you have to do in a 1/2 hr to hr long episode.
I may never have gotten out of the first two to three episodes of my now favorite show evers, Avatar, the Last Air Bender if a didn't have a whole season on DVD. And that would have been a crime against humanity.
I dunno, I think marathoning a marginal show can make it worse depending on the kind of show. More episodic shows can wind up seeming even more formulaic when you plow through several episodes in a short time. Hell, even good shows (thinking of House, as previously mentioned) get worse when you watch them back-to-back.
However, in a show with a strong serial storyline I'd agree that marathons can help a marginal show. Hell, I can't imagine how painful it must have been watching the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer "live." Ugh. On DVD? Decent. Mainly because you can fast forward through some of the shittier episodes.