X-Files is pretty much the platonic ideal of a show whose stand-alone episodes are head and shoulders above the ones that deal with the mythology, mysteries and overall story arc.
They are thinking of rebooting X-Files, right? With Ryan Coogler having Chris Carter blessing to come up with something new. So we might find out soon-ish...
+1 to all that about longer seasons and the detours, happy accidents, and deeper dives allowed by so-called filler episodes.
I haven’t seen the end of Fantasmas yet but *did* wake up from a nap today having dreamt that Julio Torres was taking over as star and creative director of a revival of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark...
Can I nominate the "Goliath and David" s5 episode of THE GOOD WIFE? "Thicky Trick" is litigated, and everyone runs around like crazy trying to figure out who the "Peter" is who impregnated one of Gov. Florrick's advisors. The payoff on each is wonderful. It does not advance the big stories at all.
YES, Alan. Thank you so much for saying this. I've been thinking a lot lately about the slow death of the 22-episode season and your perspective is spot on. I truly miss it and while the limited series and short seasons sometimes work to their advantage, they mostly make me miss the days of longer seasons and filler episodes, bottle episodes, and lengthy season-long arcs (and even the massive episodic shows). Thanks for writing.
For those who enjoy Rashida Jones performances, a heads up that there's an old show called NY-LON, a British import that was on BBC America about 20 years ago when the channel that actually had British TV shows. She became one of those actors You could rely on and worth watching in most anything she appeared.
Agree that the first two eps of HoD S2 were both underwhelming, the confusion over names and who is who at times can be vexing, but I've really enjoyed the 3rd and 4th eps. I'd agree that keeping Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke apart is unfortunate, those two are at their best when they go head to head, but I think both are still great.
Eve Best has been excellent. I think Ewan Mitchell as Aemond has been great and Fabien Frankel as Cole has been good (in spite of how one-note his character often is). Aemond feels like he's due for his Joffrey moment soon. Matthew Needham is being saddled with Littlefinger 2.0 but I've enjoyed his diabolically evil turn.
HoD is not GoT, that's for sure. It doesn't have the deep bench of well-written roles, the smorgasborg of solid character development, or the quality of dialogue that GoT did in its prime. Dramatizing what were essentially Cliff's Notes can't be easy. But when its working its still good TV, I'd argue much better than any of the other fantasy series of the last few years (low bar to be sure) or even much of the genre TV out there right now. But then it's not hard to beat shows like Ring of Power, The Boys, Fallout, any of the tripe Disney is producing, or the random other genre adaptations in the mix. There's a lot of "content" but much of it is all expensive production design and weak sauce.
I’ve never been much for nostalgia, but I know I used to care way more about TV than I do now, and I think making everything into prestige TV and 8-hour movies is a part of that. Filler episodes were where you fell in love with the characters, and that’s what made you stay with them for dozens and dozens of hours. Someone please make it the peak days of TV Club and the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast again through science or magic.
Well said. Have been thinking a lot about this as me an my partner are watching Supernatural (Rewatch for her and first watch for me) and Veronica Mars (other way round) and I appreciate you put "filler" in quotation marks because the phrase does annoy me. Why are you watching a TV show if not to spend time in a world / with its characters? You can not like episodes - sure - but I think dismissing episodes that are not essential to some idea of an important plot always feels off to me. Also both the shows we are watching are often better when they are standalone and not too fully focused on the overarching plot
I haven’t started The Bear season 2, but I considered the S2 episode “Copenhagen” to be in the vein of “filler.” I guess it only involved the one character, but it was a nice detour from the main plot line.
The Lost reference was timely, as I'm midway through a Leftovers re-watch. And while I've never seen Lost, I feel tempted (just because The Leftovers is so damned good).
I hate puzzlezbox shows (I bolted from Westworld early). Teased mythologies *always* disappoint, and I can't think of a single exception. En passant subtlety is far more dramatically interesting than tectonic revelation, as Lindelof, himself, eventually demonstrated.
So if I watch Lost, shall I simply look past The Mysteries? Any other framing suggestions for a Lost newbie?
LOST is as much a character drama as it is a mystery show. Yes there are mysteries but unlike a show like Westworld which is all plot/mysteries and no heart/character, Lost is a 50-50 split between characters and the larger mystery. No frame of reference adjustment is required, the show does it for you. People think of "mysteries" when the think of Lost but forget that back when it was airing there were people like my aunt watching who didn't care at all about the mysteries but were watching it for Sawyer, Jin, Sun, Kate and Hurley.
I really enjoyed the first two eps of “Sunny” that have dropped. At least among these two episodes, the world-building has been efficient, and by the end of the first ep I found myself saying, “I’m in.” As you note, it’s a wonderful vehicle for Rashida Jones, and I’m so happy for her that this project came her way.
A detail that I liked in “Sunny” was a Menorah on her kitchen table (the show takes place during the December holidays). So far, it hasn’t been mentioned but it shows how much of an outsider she is in Japan.
As someone who has always lived in the UK, we would look at the amount of episodes coming from the U.S. in wonder. 22/24 episodes of our favourite show, wow! But sometimes the need to have so many episodes just diluted the whole series. I mean M*A*S*H famously lasted longer than the war it was portraying!
Personally, I think 13 episodes is a better halfway house, especially if they take the Andor route and do mini arcs within the overall season
I’ve always wondered how UK tv stations kept their schedules filled when every series is like six episodes. There must be a thousand shows on every year.
I've often wondered why M*A*S*H gets this critique, but other shows don't. Hogan's Heroes lasted longer than US involvement in WW2. It had a D-Day episode in (I think?) season 2. Combat, and McHale's Navy also lasted longer than US involvementi in WW2. And going over to the UK, Dad's Army was nine seasons, and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum and 'Allo 'Allo were on longer than the war as well. One that did thing's about tge right length was Foyle's War, which for seasons 7 and 8 pivoted to The Cold War.
I can confirm that The Visitor (I think the only episode of ST:DS9 I have seen) does not pack all that much emotional heft without prior experience of the characters.
The Constant which many consider to be one of the best if not the best episodes of LOST was also a technically a "filler episode". Lindelof and Cuse even admitted it back then saying they had a 16 episode season so they couldn't have had Desmond and Sayid safely land on the Freighter in episode 5 and start demanding answers that they weren't ready to reveal until later in the season. So they came up with the entire timey-whimy mechanic to keep everyone occupied so that they didn't have to start giving answers about Widmore/Ben immediately,
We’re currently rewatching Veronica Mars from the beginning and the filler episodes are far more enjoyable than the info dump episodes.
If X-Files were to be made from scratch these days, it would just be the mythology episodes, with maybe one Monster of the Week per season. No thanks.
X-Files is pretty much the platonic ideal of a show whose stand-alone episodes are head and shoulders above the ones that deal with the mythology, mysteries and overall story arc.
They are thinking of rebooting X-Files, right? With Ryan Coogler having Chris Carter blessing to come up with something new. So we might find out soon-ish...
+1 to all that about longer seasons and the detours, happy accidents, and deeper dives allowed by so-called filler episodes.
I haven’t seen the end of Fantasmas yet but *did* wake up from a nap today having dreamt that Julio Torres was taking over as star and creative director of a revival of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark...
Can I nominate the "Goliath and David" s5 episode of THE GOOD WIFE? "Thicky Trick" is litigated, and everyone runs around like crazy trying to figure out who the "Peter" is who impregnated one of Gov. Florrick's advisors. The payoff on each is wonderful. It does not advance the big stories at all.
YES, Alan. Thank you so much for saying this. I've been thinking a lot lately about the slow death of the 22-episode season and your perspective is spot on. I truly miss it and while the limited series and short seasons sometimes work to their advantage, they mostly make me miss the days of longer seasons and filler episodes, bottle episodes, and lengthy season-long arcs (and even the massive episodic shows). Thanks for writing.
Longer seasons also gave the writers time to spotlight the characters that weren’t driving the plot.
For those who enjoy Rashida Jones performances, a heads up that there's an old show called NY-LON, a British import that was on BBC America about 20 years ago when the channel that actually had British TV shows. She became one of those actors You could rely on and worth watching in most anything she appeared.
Cutting out all the "filler" leaves less room for happy accidents that may take you in a new direction or to a new level.
Yes, and I cite a classic example of this in the column.
(No spoilers for HoD)
Agree that the first two eps of HoD S2 were both underwhelming, the confusion over names and who is who at times can be vexing, but I've really enjoyed the 3rd and 4th eps. I'd agree that keeping Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke apart is unfortunate, those two are at their best when they go head to head, but I think both are still great.
Eve Best has been excellent. I think Ewan Mitchell as Aemond has been great and Fabien Frankel as Cole has been good (in spite of how one-note his character often is). Aemond feels like he's due for his Joffrey moment soon. Matthew Needham is being saddled with Littlefinger 2.0 but I've enjoyed his diabolically evil turn.
HoD is not GoT, that's for sure. It doesn't have the deep bench of well-written roles, the smorgasborg of solid character development, or the quality of dialogue that GoT did in its prime. Dramatizing what were essentially Cliff's Notes can't be easy. But when its working its still good TV, I'd argue much better than any of the other fantasy series of the last few years (low bar to be sure) or even much of the genre TV out there right now. But then it's not hard to beat shows like Ring of Power, The Boys, Fallout, any of the tripe Disney is producing, or the random other genre adaptations in the mix. There's a lot of "content" but much of it is all expensive production design and weak sauce.
Larys is one of the lamest (sorry, didn’t mean it that way) ripoff characters since Coy and Vance slid into the General Lee.
That's fair! George couldn't even be bothered to come up with new names for like a third of the characters, haha.
I’ve never been much for nostalgia, but I know I used to care way more about TV than I do now, and I think making everything into prestige TV and 8-hour movies is a part of that. Filler episodes were where you fell in love with the characters, and that’s what made you stay with them for dozens and dozens of hours. Someone please make it the peak days of TV Club and the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast again through science or magic.
Well said. Have been thinking a lot about this as me an my partner are watching Supernatural (Rewatch for her and first watch for me) and Veronica Mars (other way round) and I appreciate you put "filler" in quotation marks because the phrase does annoy me. Why are you watching a TV show if not to spend time in a world / with its characters? You can not like episodes - sure - but I think dismissing episodes that are not essential to some idea of an important plot always feels off to me. Also both the shows we are watching are often better when they are standalone and not too fully focused on the overarching plot
I haven’t started The Bear season 2, but I considered the S2 episode “Copenhagen” to be in the vein of “filler.” I guess it only involved the one character, but it was a nice detour from the main plot line.
The Lost reference was timely, as I'm midway through a Leftovers re-watch. And while I've never seen Lost, I feel tempted (just because The Leftovers is so damned good).
I hate puzzlezbox shows (I bolted from Westworld early). Teased mythologies *always* disappoint, and I can't think of a single exception. En passant subtlety is far more dramatically interesting than tectonic revelation, as Lindelof, himself, eventually demonstrated.
So if I watch Lost, shall I simply look past The Mysteries? Any other framing suggestions for a Lost newbie?
LOST is as much a character drama as it is a mystery show. Yes there are mysteries but unlike a show like Westworld which is all plot/mysteries and no heart/character, Lost is a 50-50 split between characters and the larger mystery. No frame of reference adjustment is required, the show does it for you. People think of "mysteries" when the think of Lost but forget that back when it was airing there were people like my aunt watching who didn't care at all about the mysteries but were watching it for Sawyer, Jin, Sun, Kate and Hurley.
I really enjoyed the first two eps of “Sunny” that have dropped. At least among these two episodes, the world-building has been efficient, and by the end of the first ep I found myself saying, “I’m in.” As you note, it’s a wonderful vehicle for Rashida Jones, and I’m so happy for her that this project came her way.
A detail that I liked in “Sunny” was a Menorah on her kitchen table (the show takes place during the December holidays). So far, it hasn’t been mentioned but it shows how much of an outsider she is in Japan.
As someone who has always lived in the UK, we would look at the amount of episodes coming from the U.S. in wonder. 22/24 episodes of our favourite show, wow! But sometimes the need to have so many episodes just diluted the whole series. I mean M*A*S*H famously lasted longer than the war it was portraying!
Personally, I think 13 episodes is a better halfway house, especially if they take the Andor route and do mini arcs within the overall season
I’ve always wondered how UK tv stations kept their schedules filled when every series is like six episodes. There must be a thousand shows on every year.
Pretty much! https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/tv-listings/ is a great guide to a days TV listings in the UK
I've often wondered why M*A*S*H gets this critique, but other shows don't. Hogan's Heroes lasted longer than US involvement in WW2. It had a D-Day episode in (I think?) season 2. Combat, and McHale's Navy also lasted longer than US involvementi in WW2. And going over to the UK, Dad's Army was nine seasons, and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum and 'Allo 'Allo were on longer than the war as well. One that did thing's about tge right length was Foyle's War, which for seasons 7 and 8 pivoted to The Cold War.
I can confirm that The Visitor (I think the only episode of ST:DS9 I have seen) does not pack all that much emotional heft without prior experience of the characters.
The Constant which many consider to be one of the best if not the best episodes of LOST was also a technically a "filler episode". Lindelof and Cuse even admitted it back then saying they had a 16 episode season so they couldn't have had Desmond and Sayid safely land on the Freighter in episode 5 and start demanding answers that they weren't ready to reveal until later in the season. So they came up with the entire timey-whimy mechanic to keep everyone occupied so that they didn't have to start giving answers about Widmore/Ben immediately,