Alias

Anyone see the last Alias?
Is anyone else worried like I am that it's going to suck this season? It seems that the writers have taken the show and made it episodic. Every episode has the whole thing wrapped up in a nice little package and resolves by the end of the episode. There is not much right now in the way of story arc. That kinda makes me mad. I mean they did that with Andromeda and the show sucked and crashed. I know they think that we as Americans can't watch an entire season... but with shows coming out on DVD every week, it would seem that people desire to watch that arc over and over again.
Again Hollywood does our thinking for us.

The only shows that can get away with episodes is sitcoms. They are designed that way. They present us with a problem... they fix it by the end. Science fiction shows are designed to show us a part of a larger story and have them fix the smaller problems along the way. People are into that, they want to see that. Why do you think people started to watch Farscape in the last 2 seasons? It's because of the story arc. Why do you think people loved to watch Babylon 5... the story arc. What is the best season(s) of Deepspace 9? The last ones when there was a story arc. People love this stuff. It's what keeps people coming back week after week. If you make it episodic, then people will show up and watch if they choose to.
I missed 2 entire seasons of Friends. When I came back, nothing much had changed... some friends were in different beds, but other than that I could just sit and watch and not be confused. That was a sitcom... if I missed 2 episodes of B5, then I would be SOL for about 3 more shows as I tried to figure out what I missed. Often times I would have to ask a friend or hop on the web to get the low down.
Reality TV is almost a good story arc illustration. That's "life" right there and you can see that people watch that stuff all the time. Why? Well part of it is our voyeuristic nature... the other part is the story arc. We want to see what happens next to the characters that we have started to like or hate.
Lost. There's another example of a good story arc. People come back week after week to see what happens to people on an island. There's even a larger being or something that looms over all of them that keeps us all in the story and makes us feel like a part of the cast. I mean if we knew why they were there, we would be less interested because we know something they don't know. As long as we are a part of the journey of the characters we feel like we need to know more and are glued to our chairs every week to find out.

Anyway... enough about TV.. got TIVO? If you get one, drop me a comment I'll give you my e-mail address so that