Hey all! Last time, I briefly outlined my thoughts on different kinds of television storytelling. Today, I’m going to describe one of the three methods in detail. This method is clearly the one that television networks love and depend on the most. I hope you like what you read :).
The Episodic Procedural:
Whether you want to watch a show about lawyers, cops, doctors, or people somehow related to any of the above, television will always have something for you. The beauty of these shows is that they’re grounded in the resolution of a weekly problem. Will the case be won? Will the criminal be caught? Will the patient die? No one has to stick around for several seasons to figure out what the Smoke Monster is or what the Cylons are planning. That’s probably why networks love them. New viewers can be easy to come by since no one is confused by years of previous convoluted plot developments. At the very least, you can miss an episode or two without having to stream them.
All of that aside, the case of the week is hardly the point. What really matters is character evolution. To make the cases matter to the viewer, they often mirror the direction of said character evolution. When done well, it can lead to some of the most emotionally satisfying and/or draining episodes of any kind of show out there (I’m looking at you almost every single House Season Finale). Grey’s Anatomy also does this really well.
So as to make sure that a procedural doesn’t simply camouflage itself as every single other procedural, each has its own particular hook.
Bones combines the fun of forensic anthropology and being rational with the thrill of catching killers and having gut feelings, all the while leaving us to wonder whether Booth and Brennan are ever going to hook it up (SPOILER ALERT: they probably will and not just in dream sequences). 
House combines exotic hard-to-solve medical cases with hilariously offensive doctoring and racial stereotyping, all the while leaving us to wonder if House and Cuddy are ever going to hook it up (SPOILER ALERT: they already have and not just in dream sequences). 
Grey’s Anatomy combines surgery with monologue-giving doctors who occasionally make impressive statements well beyond the ability with which we see them handling their personal problems, all the while wondering if any of them are going to hold down their current quasi-faltering relationships (SPOILER ALERT: they probably won’t and not just in cancer-induced ghost-dream sequences; however, they likely will in the case of a series finale).The one thing that these shows have in common is that they try to make you feel. It might mean feeling for the patients/clients/victims, or else the main characters themselves. When done well, both can be quite moving at the same time.
What procedurals often don’t do is make you think. Before you decide you disagree and rush to the commets, hear me out. First of all, I acknowledge that there are exceptions to this statement. Feel free to riddle the comments section with examples. Second of all, when I say think, I don’t mean trying to figure out who done it before the episode is over. I mean think in the sense of rich thematic content. In procedurals, the metaphors are all pretty easy to parse and once you get over the initial shock, joy, sadness, or confusion, you aren’t left with much to ponder. As much as I love lots of these shows, I don’t sit around all day thinking about the deeper meaning of last week’s episode of Bones.
That certainly doesn’t mean that they don’t bring up important current issues and give you food for thought, nor does it mean that the writing is any less sharp or creative when compared to serial dramas. It just means that the artistry put into the thematic content isn’t usually on par with fine literature.
Interestingly enough, most of the exceptions to this are often found in fantasy and science fiction universes. Star Trek Voyager, Torchwood (especially COE), some Doctor Who (2005), and other episodic shows like them have often left me deep in thought for hours (I’m looking at you the episode of ST:V in which The Doctor has a moral dilemma that causes him to malfunction because his subroutines and views on ethics don’t mesh with his decision), while moving me intensely (I’m looking at you the episode of ST:V in which the doctor creates himself a holodeck family, which ends tragically). Seriously, I think that that episode of Voyager is probably the first time that television moved me to tears. And really, have you seen Torchwood: Children Of Earth? If you haven't, drop everything in your life and do so. Immediately. That’s the kind of thought provoking/tear-inducing art I mentioned in my first article.
Television: The Greatest Art Form Of All Time?
Alright, that’s a wrap for this post. Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed what I had to say! Next time, I’m going to take a break from this series of articles and discuss how television music moves me.
If you missed my last article, which was essentially a preamble to this one, then here it is.
Television: Three Ways To Tell A Great Story
- Cadence
Another great article, thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteLoving your articles Cadence, you seem to know your stuff.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more.
I gave this 5 stars :)
I would add that House is one of those series that makes you think, it makes you think about everything during the week between the last and next episode, and especially during the hiatus. Mainly because they don't make things so obvious. Not always anyway.
ReplyDeletex
Thanks :D! I'm excited to be writing and posting, so it's good to know that it isn't going unheard.
ReplyDeleteCould you elaborate on this point? I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you use the word think. As I defined it above, I mean think about the show in terms of its artistic imagery in regards to thematic content and metaphors. A show that leaves you pondering the significance of a scene for days after an episode has aired has a power that other television shows lack. A strong example of this is The Lost Series Finale.
ReplyDeleteDo you think about the direction of the show?
House definitely does produce some wonderful thought-provoking imagery when compared to other procedurals (SPOILER ALERT: Like Kutner's last episode); however, it still isn't as consistant or as rich as other styles of television.
The one thing House definitely does better than other shows is the way it uses cinematography to set the mood of an episode or a scene. That definitely creates some fun metatension.
I don't really see any point in comparing Science Fiction with Drama, since they are two different ways of telling a story; with Sci-Fi they can do whatever they want and it doesn't have to make sense, but with a drama that is set in a Hospital, it's hard to do things without having a logical explanation to back it up, which is probably why it comes off as the same thing every week.
ReplyDeleteThe point is definitley the character development. You can't tune in to a procedural and just watch it for the logic and the same format every week, you watch for the characters evolution from episode to episode based on the case, which is what House does well, and in turn, makes it fun to speculate and talk about online with a lot of people. I've watched Bones and I've see Grey Anatomy, and neither does that. They come off as just skimming the surface of characters and making them one dimensional, but with House even though it's not exciting breath taking stuff every episode, the character depths and cinematography that you mentioned, helps it become a hit every season.
Scenes on House aren't exactly amazing and unique all the time, they have the same backdrop every episode; but again the directing of the episode and the editing of it makes it good and probably better than it would be if it was the same lighting every episode, no matter the theme of emotions they portray in that episode.
I love Sci-Fi, and I can definitley say with confidence that that genre is the best one mainly because there is different situations different possibilities every episode and every season. It's just the way reality is exploited in Drama and procedurals that makes it interesting and refreshing.
Lost is one of those great tv show examples of great storytelling as opposed to great storylines, becoming the main reason people love the show and why people talk about it all the time. They create so many endless possibilities about one scene or one episode, because they don't have to explain it within that one hour, they can let it manifest for months and years, without having to explain it. That's probably why it's more fascinating to you, and to a lot of other people, including myself.
I completely agree with half of your comment and completely disagree with the other half :P.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right about the need for the character drama to be at the forefront of "realistic" procedurals. The characters are set against a potentially redundant backdrop and they are what make the procedural worth watching. That, in large part, is the point of my article. This kind of storytelling is in stark contrast to lots of science fiction shows that have some high concept or some mythology that the show is often exploring. That’s something I will explore later on in my articles about serial dramas.
Where we differ in opinion is that science fiction doesn't need to make sense, while other kinds of procedurals do have to have some sort of logical centre.
First of all, I really DO think it's worth comparing science fiction with normal drama. In regards to procedurals, the same basic method of storytelling is used. Whether the story uses a patient-of-the-week, a case-of-the-week, a monster-of-the-week, or a dire-situation-in-space-of-the-week as a plot device, it's still an episodic procedural.
I do concede that while a show with mediocre writing and mediocre characters can’t make a normal procedural particularly entertaining, the same isn’t true of mediocre science fiction for all of the reasons you mentioned. ANYTHING can happen. Early Star Trek TNG can attest to that. Unfortunately, at the other extreme lies a set of science fiction and fantasy authors who know this and often use it to produce really awful books and movies that seem to do well anyway. Have you ever tried to read books based on a dungeons and dragons world? Apparently, we don’t need good writing or good characters when we’ve got dragons and magic!
Second of all, while I would love for all of a procedural to make sense, since it ought to be grounded in reality, a lot of characters often make really strange choices. I don't mean that they make irrational choices. Everyone does that. I mean that the characters sometimes act out of character for the sake of the story. SPOILER ALERT: Cameron's exit for one was almost completely nonsensical. The writers even threw in a line where House said something like "Either I'm right, or Cameron has no internal logical consistency." They were basically trying to tell the viewers that we shouldn’t think too much about it, but in case we had, HOUSE THINKS IT MAKES SENSE SO WE SHOULD TOO! This happens a lot and makes the show make less sense.
At the other end of the spectrum is a realistic science fiction show. As exciting as Battlestar Galactica was, I definitely watched it mostly for the drama and the characters. It seemed very “real” in that the decisions that characters made weren’t completely inconsistent with who they were. When you say something like Lost had good storytelling as opposed to good storylines, I disagree. Jack’s character arc is one of the best-written storylines of all time. Jin and Sawyer’s arcs are also worthy of note.
Wow, I just wrote an entire mini-essay. I may turn this into an article :P.
You make some valid points. :)
ReplyDeleteenjoying the articles dude.
ReplyDeleteThe site seems to be pushing forward at the moment into a post-lost era and I'm loving it :)