Here's an idea.
TV is getting more complex because of time shifting
technology.
[THEME MUSIC]
TV episodes are one of our fundamental units
of entertainment.
They allow always-evolving stories
to be told in manageable chunks and provide
discrete experiences into which we can tune every week.
But maybe they're a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, we get to spend tons of time
with our beloved characters and stories.
But on the other, at least until recently,
nothing ever got too complicated or involved.
This is the distinction between episodic and serialized
stories.
Episodic stories are self-contained.
Serials are told in episodes but tell complex, oftentimes
connected stories across them.
Think of "Friends" versus "Game of Thrones,"
or "Idea Channel" versus "The Sopranos."
Like, literally, versus.
Like in a cage match.
Oh, no.
Don't think of that.
I would lose.
The nature of serialized shows has meant that historically,
networks are terrified of them.
Before Hulu or DVR, which are called time-shifting services
in the biz, if someone tuned in for the first time at Season
2, Episode 4, here are all of these people talking
about stuff.
What is even going on?
I am out of here.
"Cheers" producer Les Charles said to "GQ"
that back in the old days, there was a rule
that every TV episode had to be complete in itself,
so that you could tune into that TV show for the first time
and be able to enjoy yourself and know where you were.
Clearly today, we're not out of the episodic woods,
and maybe we never will be.
And hey, that's fine.
But you can't ignore the growing presence
and critical acclaim for strongly serialized
programming.
Maybe it did start with "Cheers."
Or maybe "Babylon 5," or "Buffy," or "The Sopranos."
But the point is, we tell more more-complex stories
using television now than we ever have before.
Complex, multivalent, with strong progressions--
and if you tune in at Episode 7 for the first time,
you will be more lost than the first 18
minutes of the Watergate tape.
Or at least you'll have missed so much good stuff,
why not go back and watch it all?
It's fine.
We'll wait.
As long as you hit the Pause button.
And come back, because we'll miss you.
In my mind, shows like "Game of Thrones,"
"Breaking Bad," and "Homeland" owe at least part
of their success to the fact that new audience members--
and I'm not just talking about people
who know how to use a torrent tracker
or find a streaming site-- can catch up
without having to wait for a plastic disc to be released.
Also, who wants a plastic disc?
Like, Season 2 of "Orphan Black" is premiering soon,
and I would not be nearly as excited
if I didn't spend all of last Sunday catching up on Season 1
without having to leave my apartment.
I'm an adult.
You watch anything you want to, man.
Sort of.
When making shows like "OB" or "Homeland,"
I have no idea how much thought is
given to available time-shifty technology.
I do know, however, that Netflix hits "House of Cards,"
"Orange is the New Black," and "Arrested Development" Season 4
were designed to be marathoned.
For instance, on writing "Arrested Development"
for Netflix, creator Mitch Hurwitz
said people aren't going to spend the next six
months getting this doled out to them,
so the storytelling changed.
It was assembled knowing that it would be distributed
using a technology that allows you to ignore all
of your responsibilities so that you can just find out
what happens.
I heard really good things about it.
[THEME SONG - "BATTLESTAR GALACTICA"]
(CHANTING) Next one, next one!
Wait.
What?
That's the last one!
[SCREAMS]
And I imagine-- which is maybe another way of just saying
I hope-- this is a consideration that'll be made increasingly
for TV programming proper.
It wouldn't be entirely out of the ordinary.
I mean, one can posit a friendly if not intimate relationship
between narrative and the technology used to deliver it.
Technology gives us new transmissive mediums,
as Marie-Laure Ryan calls them in her introduction
to "Narratives Across Media."
Records, the bound book, radio, the newspaper-- all
new transmissive media that were or followed
important technological developments.
But some mediums, according to Ryan,
become distinct narrative mediums,
contributing meaningfully to the idea of narrative as a whole.
Radio brought us the first serialized drama supported
by companies hoping to sell more soap,
and so soap operas were born.
In the words of Walter Ong, print mechanically
as well as psychologically locked words into space,
thereby establishing a firmer sense of closure than writing
could.
Which, of course, gave way to the novel, a distinct
and, for some people, the most perfect expression
of the narrative art.
YouTube might have its own distinct narrative
contribution.
Maybe we can coerce vlogging, or things like "The Lizzie Bennet
Diaries" into a novel use of narrative.
Of course, narrative isn't just influenced
by narrative-transmitting technology.
It's also influenced by technology technology.
Like, all of it.
And I don't just mean in the sense of,
now that we have computers, we can write stories
about computers.
Yeah!
I mean more like, if narrative is
an account of connected events, then as technology
and the science related to that technology have grown up,
so too have our ideas about what is an account, what
counts as a connection, and what events are worth
accounting for.
Not to mention how all of those things
are useful in an increasingly complex world understood
more and more through science and technology.
For instance, wave particle duality and the double slit
experiment made people question whether or not
we'd ever really understand how the universe works.
This, in turn, changes how we tell stories.
It challenges and augments our ideas
about what narrative construction is for.
If science can't explain the world, what hope does art have?
Maybe none.
Maybe all of it.
Kurt Vonnegut famously said, "Scientific truth
was going to make us so happy and comfortable.
What actually happened when I was 21
was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima."
This exceptionally postmodern statement
contextualizes so much of Vonnegut's, and probably
Heller's and Pynchon's, ideas of what storytelling
was for after World War II.
If scientific logic is this potentially broken thing that
could lead to a perfectly calamitous event,
then what even is the purpose of narrative logic in a novel?
And of course, technology continues
to inform and influence narrative today.
Like, the fact a computer is just as easily used to write
a novel as it is to topple governments, design weapons,
or cure diseases, is the driving force behind the modern
forensic procedural, the terrorist action drama,
the sci-fi-slash-cyberpunk noir, the postmodern romance,
and tons of other genres spanning pretty much every
medium.
The simple but powerful interconnectedness of things
is a given.
And whether that interconnectedness
is the result of technology or not, its presence in our world
causes us to view and construct all manner of fictional worlds
on that foundation.
Which brings us, actually, right back
to the marathonable TV series.
While these shows aren't always about
the complex interconnectedness of things, maybe
it's fair to say that they are influenced by it.
Or that they at least to thrive in a setting
where that interconnectedness is the norm, where
the broadcast is connected to the stream is connected
to the fans are connected to social media, where
they can become interested, catch up, and get together
to plumb the depths of the complex universes
of these shows.
Or just make endless animated GIFs of that one scene
in "Breaking Bad" with the pizza.
JESSE PINKMAN: Yeah, science!
What do you guys think?
Is the narrative complexity of television
changing because of time-shifting technology,
or other technologies?
Let us know in the comments.
And if you subscribe, we will time-shift ourselves.
I wonder if earlier humans felt the same way
about cave paintings that some of us feel about image macros.
Let's see what you guys had to say
about the internet as an archive.
ToodlesX14 and Karl Mackle question whether or not
the internet is a thing that we should even consider saving,
and that maybe by its very nature,
it is a thing that is kind of fleeting and always changing.
You know, like you don't archive sand on a beach.
It's just-- by its nature, it will change.
And yeah, I wonder if maybe an attitude
of wanting to save these things comes from the way
that we talk about it, right?
Because it's like files and forms and pages,
all these things that feel, when we talk about it, permanent.
And then when they're gone, it seems wrong.
But yeah, good point.
Johan Abdullah Holm says that there's
nothing about an older object that gives it inherent value,
and that since nothing is permanent, including us,
there's no use in saving these things.
And I don't know, I maybe find this idea
like a little selfish.
Like, I'd like to think that the things that we're
doing now-- and maybe this is me being selfish--
that those things will be of some import
or interest to people later.
And it might not be around for forever,
but if it's around at all and is helpful, maybe it's useful.
I don't know.
Jonathan Cygan writes a really, really great comment
about the Greek roots for the word "ephemera"
and asks if maybe the best archive
is the one that kind of happens accidentally or automatically.
And I think that this kind of bumps into the question of,
like, do you lose the truth of something
when it becomes assembled into an archive?
If you're taking it out of its sort of natural existence
and putting it into this thing, is it then different?
I think the answer is yes.
Whether or not it loses something or changes
in some bad way, that's not a judgment
call I'm prepared to make.
srpilha writes an awesome comment, as always,
which you should read all of-- link in the doobly-doo--
but eventually gets to this idea of, if we're saving everything,
then we're left with this just massive,
possibly unmanageable piece of information.
And I'm reminded of Borges's "Library of Babel,"
where in the impossibly huge archive
is the impossible-to-locate index, which is itself
impossibly complicated.
And why did we even build this thing in the first place?
Strophios writes an amazing comment about the tension
that much of the internet experience
is about being a public space but also not a public space.
And I think that this is a tension that
informs not only questions about saving the internet,
but most of the way we use the internet.
So this is just a great comment that I recommend reading.
Maybe twice.
To Daniel Zawadzki, um, yeah.
Uh, I don't know if I would-- can you call it an archive
if it's kind of made, like, under people's noses,
or like in secret?
I mean, I guess it's not secret anymore.
But I don't know, I guess what I'm
saying is that I would rather call it something else,
like maybe a clutch, or a stockpile, or a horde.
I also miss GeoCities.
I typed out so many song lyrics.
And I don't think that Tumblr or Facebook
serve the same purpose.
I think that there was something that
felt-- maybe this was just because of how young I was.
It felt like GeoCities was mine, in some respect.
Whereas Tumblr, it feels like I'm
using someone else's service.
I don't know.
But yeah, me too.
I miss it.
Man, a lot of you guys spell GIF really weird.
What's with the J and the Y?
Why are you making fun of me?
You're the one spelling it wrong.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these true detectives.
We have a subreddit, an IRC, and a Facebook-- links
in the doobly-doo.
And the Tweet of the Week come from Josh Block,
who points us towards an article saying
that 49% of hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions
are now broken.
[HEAVY SIGH]
[THEME MUSIC]
And this week, like last week, there
will be no record swap, because I am dumb
and keep forgetting to just bring a record cover.
So we will do one next week.
I promise.
I'm sorry.
Forgive me.
Please.
Don't be mad.
Now I feel bad.