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"Netflix pacing"
Feb. 5th, 2021 08:31 pmSo, I got into Western fiction pretty late, and I still remember reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in high school and hitting the end of the book and saying "wait, the story is just beginning!" (Yes -- I completely missed the humor of the book completely). Then I read The Golden Compass and was like, "wait, this book ended on a cliffhanger???" And, like ... I know I'm supposed to read the next one, but guess what? I never did, because I was so pissed that I went through ALL that effort, only to read the beginning of a story. I felt so betrayed by the fact that the book didn't have a complete story arc. This isn't to say I don't like multi-book series -- I'm fine if I know ahead of time how many volumes it takes to have the complete story told (such as LotR), or if the books in the series, while featuring the same universe and the same people, are telling discrete stories.
But it's incredibly frustrating to me when I'm offered a unit of a thing that I expect to tell me a story with a beginning, middle and end, AND IT DOESN'T. I think this is what I find frustrating with what Spouse calls "Netflix pacing", which is the recent trend for 10-13-episode seasons that you're supposed to binge-watch. It usually takes 3 episodes to set up the characters, another 5 for the core plot, and then a final 3-5 for whatever climax/denouement. In these cases, the unit of the thing is not an "episode", but rather, a "season." But it's still pretending that the unit is "episode." If someone said to me, "hey, do you want to watch 1/10th of a movie tonight?" I'd be like, "No." But if someone said to me, "hey, wanna watch an episode of something tonight?" I'd be like "Sure." And it used to be that while episodes would have some time devoted to the season-long arc, it would still be standalone -- DS9 was like that, A:TLA was like that. But now more and more shows seem to forget to have a story for the episode.
TV shows used to be 99% episode plot, because you couldn't count on people watching for a whole season, and even now, procedurals and comedy shows tend to be that way. And then there were the TV shows that were 90% episode plot and 10% season plot, which was usually facilitated by the "Previously on..." segments at the beginning of an episode. With maybe a 2-episode season opener and season finale that have a bit more cohesion. But when's the last time a new show had a "Previously on..."? I feel like so many new shows are 99% season plot, which means watching an episode just leaves me feeling dissatisfied. Half the episodes are spent setting up things in the future, and the other half of the episodes are spent wrapping up, which means there's actually very little of each episode that actually tells a story.
Again, I'm trying to figure out what specifically I find frustrating about this, because I happily watched 26 episodes of Escaflowne, which is also a story that is told in a season length and not an episode length. Maybe it's, once again, the fact that I knew the commitment going in. But it might also be that Escaflowne was still expected to have some *story* happen in each episode, and not just some *setup*. Episode 1 introduced Hitomi, her relationships and friendships, and ended with her in a different world and already embroiled in the plot of Van and the guymelefs. All in <30 minutes. In comparison, we just watched the first episode of the Expanse, which introduced to us one (1) mystery girl, one (1) gritty detective, one (1) Indian lady who apparently is okay with torture, and one (1) freight ship guy who is trying to avoid having responsibilities. It ends with an explosion that may???? be plot????? but is mostly just mysterious???????? So after an hour of watching, I now know a tiny bit about 4 characters, have very little sense of the season-long plot, and I guess I'm supposed to ... keep watching? Let the 5 second countdown happen and binge for another 2-3 hours? Like, nothing against the Expanse -- apparently everyone likes it, and there's some good political intrigue in it. But I can't help imagining if the episode pacing would have been different if binge-watching is not the default. For example, what about starting with the freighter guy getting a distress call, and introduce the other characters as they become relevant to the core story?
I was talking to Spouse the other day about how Star Wars: A New Hope was one of the few Star Wars where you didn't have to read the opening scroll, where you can just jump into the movie and be as clueless as Luke and it wrapped up at the end and everyone got awards. In contrast, the first Star Wars movie I ever watched was Return of the Jedi, and oh boy that movie makes no sense if you haven't watched the other two -- I didn't know who the main character was for the first 10 minutes, I didn't know why there was a guy who was frozen in a slab of wall, I didn't know why only Luke had telekinesis powers. I was so confused when Darth Vader picked up the Emperor because I was like "um okay why didn't you do that in any time in the last 30 years?"
And as more and more movies are part of "cinematic universes" (I blame MCU for making it the "safe bet" in Hollywood), I feel like more and more movies are also falling into the trap of "Netflix pacing", except on a movie scale. Now, it's not about watching a 45 minute episode at home and feeling vaguely dissatisfied because 90% of the episode was building up to something else, but rather watching a whole 3 hour long movie and feeling a similar sense of dissatisfaction. What is the standalone story of Endgame, really? At least with Infinity War, the standalone part is Thanos' Fetchquest / Earth finally getting people together to defend against a world-ending threat, and the theme of "we do not trade lives" is threaded throughout. Endgame's standalone part is ... the Time Heist? or Tony having a heart? And if the theme is "misplaced nostalgia for the past", I guess they hit it, but if the theme is "what are you willing to sacrifice" then um give Nat's sacrifice proper weight, and give Steve a proper sacrifice. And if it's an ongoing cinematic universe, then each movie is just setting up for the next one or wrapping up the previous one, and there's an infinite number of next ones, which leaves very little space to actually ... tell a story. Or have sensible character arcs. (Tony's character arc was great in IM 1-3, but then he had to regress in order to fit the Avengers storytelling. Steve's character arc was short-shrifted by only having 2 movies and being too afraid of teh gays between Steve and Bucky)
Anyway, it's not that these "Netflix pacing" stories aren't effectively told in a 10 hour season or a 10 movie extended universe, but I'm one of those people who'd like to spend 30-45 minutes watching a show and feel like I got a nice tidbit of story out of it, and there are fewer and fewer of these types of shows out there. I feel like we're losing the ability to tell concise, effective stories in this show/film medium, which I'd like to mark and lament.
But it's incredibly frustrating to me when I'm offered a unit of a thing that I expect to tell me a story with a beginning, middle and end, AND IT DOESN'T. I think this is what I find frustrating with what Spouse calls "Netflix pacing", which is the recent trend for 10-13-episode seasons that you're supposed to binge-watch. It usually takes 3 episodes to set up the characters, another 5 for the core plot, and then a final 3-5 for whatever climax/denouement. In these cases, the unit of the thing is not an "episode", but rather, a "season." But it's still pretending that the unit is "episode." If someone said to me, "hey, do you want to watch 1/10th of a movie tonight?" I'd be like, "No." But if someone said to me, "hey, wanna watch an episode of something tonight?" I'd be like "Sure." And it used to be that while episodes would have some time devoted to the season-long arc, it would still be standalone -- DS9 was like that, A:TLA was like that. But now more and more shows seem to forget to have a story for the episode.
TV shows used to be 99% episode plot, because you couldn't count on people watching for a whole season, and even now, procedurals and comedy shows tend to be that way. And then there were the TV shows that were 90% episode plot and 10% season plot, which was usually facilitated by the "Previously on..." segments at the beginning of an episode. With maybe a 2-episode season opener and season finale that have a bit more cohesion. But when's the last time a new show had a "Previously on..."? I feel like so many new shows are 99% season plot, which means watching an episode just leaves me feeling dissatisfied. Half the episodes are spent setting up things in the future, and the other half of the episodes are spent wrapping up, which means there's actually very little of each episode that actually tells a story.
Again, I'm trying to figure out what specifically I find frustrating about this, because I happily watched 26 episodes of Escaflowne, which is also a story that is told in a season length and not an episode length. Maybe it's, once again, the fact that I knew the commitment going in. But it might also be that Escaflowne was still expected to have some *story* happen in each episode, and not just some *setup*. Episode 1 introduced Hitomi, her relationships and friendships, and ended with her in a different world and already embroiled in the plot of Van and the guymelefs. All in <30 minutes. In comparison, we just watched the first episode of the Expanse, which introduced to us one (1) mystery girl, one (1) gritty detective, one (1) Indian lady who apparently is okay with torture, and one (1) freight ship guy who is trying to avoid having responsibilities. It ends with an explosion that may???? be plot????? but is mostly just mysterious???????? So after an hour of watching, I now know a tiny bit about 4 characters, have very little sense of the season-long plot, and I guess I'm supposed to ... keep watching? Let the 5 second countdown happen and binge for another 2-3 hours? Like, nothing against the Expanse -- apparently everyone likes it, and there's some good political intrigue in it. But I can't help imagining if the episode pacing would have been different if binge-watching is not the default. For example, what about starting with the freighter guy getting a distress call, and introduce the other characters as they become relevant to the core story?
I was talking to Spouse the other day about how Star Wars: A New Hope was one of the few Star Wars where you didn't have to read the opening scroll, where you can just jump into the movie and be as clueless as Luke and it wrapped up at the end and everyone got awards. In contrast, the first Star Wars movie I ever watched was Return of the Jedi, and oh boy that movie makes no sense if you haven't watched the other two -- I didn't know who the main character was for the first 10 minutes, I didn't know why there was a guy who was frozen in a slab of wall, I didn't know why only Luke had telekinesis powers. I was so confused when Darth Vader picked up the Emperor because I was like "um okay why didn't you do that in any time in the last 30 years?"
And as more and more movies are part of "cinematic universes" (I blame MCU for making it the "safe bet" in Hollywood), I feel like more and more movies are also falling into the trap of "Netflix pacing", except on a movie scale. Now, it's not about watching a 45 minute episode at home and feeling vaguely dissatisfied because 90% of the episode was building up to something else, but rather watching a whole 3 hour long movie and feeling a similar sense of dissatisfaction. What is the standalone story of Endgame, really? At least with Infinity War, the standalone part is Thanos' Fetchquest / Earth finally getting people together to defend against a world-ending threat, and the theme of "we do not trade lives" is threaded throughout. Endgame's standalone part is ... the Time Heist? or Tony having a heart? And if the theme is "misplaced nostalgia for the past", I guess they hit it, but if the theme is "what are you willing to sacrifice" then um give Nat's sacrifice proper weight, and give Steve a proper sacrifice. And if it's an ongoing cinematic universe, then each movie is just setting up for the next one or wrapping up the previous one, and there's an infinite number of next ones, which leaves very little space to actually ... tell a story. Or have sensible character arcs. (Tony's character arc was great in IM 1-3, but then he had to regress in order to fit the Avengers storytelling. Steve's character arc was short-shrifted by only having 2 movies and being too afraid of teh gays between Steve and Bucky)
Anyway, it's not that these "Netflix pacing" stories aren't effectively told in a 10 hour season or a 10 movie extended universe, but I'm one of those people who'd like to spend 30-45 minutes watching a show and feel like I got a nice tidbit of story out of it, and there are fewer and fewer of these types of shows out there. I feel like we're losing the ability to tell concise, effective stories in this show/film medium, which I'd like to mark and lament.
