Because it tends to show strain, weariness weakness over time.
See what happens is that a show, a pilot is created, an idea is funded because it’s just like——such and such——but different enough that it isn’t such and such but will absorb some of their audience. There’s only a small fraction of the population actually supporting genres, ideas, etc..
So our Show——Reboot gets picked up for a full season 13 to 26 episodes for streaming, cable, network TV take your pick.
Season 1=Now the first season, has got to prove on its original concept. Easy enough. Exciting, new fresh, excitement form the team at working together, guaranteed paychecks. Most actors and actresses are getting $10 to$250k an episode so they’re happy, satisfied.
Season 2——now it’s been guaranteed another full season and the creative team gets to try some things out, delve into some character seeds planted in the first season. Everyone is still happy and the number are averaging—-2 to 10 million viewers will keep you on adjusted streaming, cable, network TV.
Season 3 is really solid time—-when the team has gelled, the audience is set and committed and the budget has gotten a little bump because of 50 to 75 episodes being able to be syndicated. Seasons 4 and Seasons 5 are generally guaranteed at that point.
Season 4 and 5, guaranteed, gives the whole team space to spread their wings, tell their own stories, experiment, challenge, try out some new ideas. But a shift happens due to the relative success of making it 5 seasons. Making it that far suggests that it could go farther—-6,7,8, 9 or more Seasons. Which is good and bad at the exact same time.
It’s good because a series gets to last and folk get to be paid and mortgages paid and so on.
Bad because money, fame and power shift by Seasons. Seasons 1 to 3—-are generally controlled entirely by the network/production company—-because they’re funding—-extending cash/credit, using all of their relationships to make the show a hit. And it works.
Seasons 4 and 5, it becomes about the creative team—-writers, actors, directors——the power has shifted because now the ensemble is usurping the most valued on the project.
Then Seasons 6,7, 8, 9,10+ it becomes about two things: the talent—-the actor stars and the production team——producers, writer, show runners—-who are tasked with making the show sustainable—-like a new show, maintain or increase those numbers of viewers and/or revitalize the show which means bringing in new creative folk and cast members but not abandoning the core 2 to 5 million audience that has kept the show floating to Season 6. It’s a controlled freedom that begins to cost more and more to produce—actors are generally signed to limited contracts, 1–5 years, or the midpoint so the popular ones, everyone basically has to get a bump up in salary—-especially your break out characters. The same for your creative team plus the cost of bringing in new people, new sets.
A show gets more expensive the longer it goes on.
From the Audience Perspective
In trying to serve all of those perspectives, interests and expenses, a show’s audience falls into two groups—-old and newly attracted. Particularly if say the show ended before a new audience discovers it streaming or on DVD.
I discovered Breaking Bad a few years after it had gone off of the air. I started watching it on Netflix—-I got about 2–3 seasons in. And stopped. For a couple of years. I thought it was interesting but “meh”.
My mehness had to do when a show inevitably shifts from absolute production control to trusting the creators and actors to innovate so I returned a couple of years later—-knowing that the “book ends”, the show closes out. Now they’re more dynamic, got more money, the stars are comfortable, etc.. But that comfort edges into familiarity and a creative-success laziness. Plots repeat, in jokes happen constantly, people phone in performances——there is very little new territory to go with the beloved characters.
Then you start realizing how longgggggggggggggggg a show is. And there are very few plots that can keep going that long so they start doing things to save money for bigger episodes—-like the single room episode—-where the characters are trapped in a space—-less production costs——every long running show has one or many of them. Then actors are now so expensive or want to do other things so they start limiting the amount of episodes they’ll do. That ingenue started out greedy for Season 1, 26 episodes, but by Season 6 is down to 18 a season so she can pursue a movie career.
At the same time the writers and producers change because they are more easily replaced than the faces of the show. So the stories change in tone, depth, darkness, etc. as new writers try to make an older show—-new in feeling and ideas.
A viewer cannot sustain attention and a productive human life with all of these floating pieces——which is why there re a hundred other competing shows to switch to. It’s not that our attention span is shortening for 200+ episodes of Cheers or Star Trek or Supernatural—-I would never go near Supernatural, where to start? Why to start?
What happens is I have 100 other options that might have a twist or idea or cast—-I’m partial to lots of foreign fare on Netflix—-Turkish, Spanish, Indian, Korean, Japanese——so Breaking Bad really isn’t that Avant Garde for me though I’m American. And access to foreign fare with decent budgets and unfamiliar actors, gives me that suspension of disbelief an audience is looking for.
I don’t watch TV regularly but when I do flip something on it’s for something with a finite time frame or a newness or a foreignness to it.
The psychology of not watching TV is that I’m not looking for a deep comfort from fiction or TV in that way. I’m not looking for it to fill spaces in me or illuminate new sectors of life and the world for me. I’m looking for more specific fare/interests, probably by genre and mood.
I’m watching Toy Boy now—-a telenovela from Spain about a stripper who has been framed for multiple murders. It’s slick, earnestly acted and there is a dance number in every episode, a homoerotic couple that took TEN episodes to culminate in a kiss—-I had settled on their tentative hand holding as Spain's answer to same sex fucking.
I’m 10 episodes in——mainly because the episodes tend to be over 60 minutes. But it’s taken me all of 2022 to get that far—-they have since produced a 2nd season. What holds my interest—-I watch an episode every few weeks—— is that it has slowly become more and more complex and every episode involved this stripper being arrested for a new crime (lol) but it’s so earnest. Everyone’s motives are paper thing but believable and the writing has an honest quality to it that no one can keep a secret for longer than two minutes—-they all tell each other the truth. Constantly. Too much.
But that character honesty means that each episode I’m not just caught up but moved along. It’s like a really tawdry massive book that never resolves anything in a chapter but keeps it moving to the next one. Populated by excessively sexual and pretty people. Except for the Black stripper and the short one—-who are part time gigolos. But the mute stripper gigolo bisexual-homosexual gets a lot of frustrated almost-play—-yet his stripper pals have never treated him in any homophobic/judgmental ways—-as if they could with their murdering, drug dealing ways—-but still…..these are non-judgmental, supportive stripper bros.
And I have Season 2 to look forward to in a couple more episodes. No, I’m not sure who the murderer is of the original decapitated burnt to a cinder body on the strippers boat that got this all started but I do know that a lot of folk in Spain are pretty and going to both strip clubs and sex parties. lol
I am also slightly unsure who is the murdered body, who is the decapitated body, who is the pedophile and who is the real for real, totally real villain.
But it’s not so gargantuan in episodes that I don’t think by the end of the year, I won’t have my answers that spin dry me into a whole other mess with these pretty, always half dressed, angst ridden, highly sexual people in Spain.
Don't let me start talking about Johnny Handsome, Remarriage Desires, She or 365 Days. Perhaps with less budget, foreign products work harder to make good content that will draw you back.
Americanized/Westernized are star laden vehicles. At the end of Gray Man I expected Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans to hi five each other and yell—-”Got that check!” ( I ain’t mad at them.)
It’s not attention span, it’s quality over time and commitment to that. By the end, I think 7 years to watch a 5 year show, I still thought Breaking Bad was “meh”.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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