by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry:
Last week, I found myself staring down the barrel of about 35 hours of travel time, and I can’t sleep on airplanes. The solution to the problem was obvious. (OK, the solution to the problem that didn’t involve an overdose of melatonin was obvious.) I needed a show — one that I hadn’t seen before — that there was enough of that I wouldn’t be left wanting but that was also engaging enough to keep my brain occupied for a good, old-fashioned binge. But my search left me wondering: with the way contemporary television is being produced, how long before there are no more new, full-storied, character-driven shows to binge? Are the days of hearty, 13 plus-episode, five plus-season runs behind us?
Before I go on, it’s important to express that this does not mean that good shows aren’t being made in the now. This year alone has seen the likes of Shogun, Rings of Power and Interview with the Vampire’s second seasons alongside incredible adult animated series like The Legend of Vox Machina and X-Men ‘97. Good stories are being told. Still, it feels like the heyday of highly bingeable programming is coming to an end.
Knee-jerk comments insist that short seasons are what viewers want, and reactionary pundits will say the TikTok generation has no patience for long-form storytelling anymore, but it’s that very generation that led to Suits’ second-coming on Netflix after clipping the shit out of it on TikTok. It’s a behavior that I hate, for what it’s worth, but I’m starting to believe that is simply because I’ve crossed over into being An Old™.
And sure, the Suits/TikTok phenomenon is a one-off instance. But if you look at the Netflix Top 10, you’ll see Prison Break (5 seasons, 90 episodes) sitting at #10. It’s been in the overall Top 10 for 6 weeks. Grey’s Anatomy (21 seasons, 434 episodes) sits at #5 on the most recent Nielsen streaming data chart. It’s Fall, so of course Gilmore Girls (7 seasons, 153 episodes) is topping the charts again. And that’s just from the data available this week. Legacy data will show the same trend. So will future data, because the fact of the matter is that humans crave longform storytelling and reactionary responses to short-form content won’t change that.
At the end of the day, Suits is what I went with for my marathon of travel. And here’s the thing about the series: it isn’t even a great one. It’s good, and engaging enough, but ultimately just a perfectly passable series. The thing that it has going for it is that it is deeply character-driven, which is the absolute core of long-form storytelling and what an alarming amount of contemporary shows are missing completely. The fact that Suits is basically “if Batman and Robin (Tim Drake edition) were lawyers” certainly doesn’t hurt either.
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The point is that Suits’ long-running success isn’t because it won notable awards (it’s rightfully Emmy-less) or that it was a critical darling. It succeeded because it made the audience fall in love with a group of characters, and those characters then grew, evolved, and were challenged throughout the series’ nine-year tenure. You don’t care about Louis Litt’s (Rick Hoffman) heart growing three sizes until you know who he was before it happened. Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Donna’s (Sarah Rafferty) whole thing isn’t important without all of it. Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres) being a lowkey softie underneath all of that armor doesn’t matter unless you’ve spent seasons seeing her hide behind it…
Getting people to fall in love with your characters is an art, and it’s one that is on life support.
What’s missing in the anti-long season discourse is the lack of understanding that the length isn’t just because the plot necessitates it; the character arcs work in tandem to the story to make it impactful. The adage “you’ve got to give it a little time before it gets good” comes up so often because of that very reason. The writing, in most cases, didn’t just magically change. We just fell in love with the people we’re on the journey with. We, as viewers, are way less likely to care about a 10, 16 or 22-episode story if we don’t give a damn about the characters. A long-running series can survive a middling plot with exceptional characters, but it can’t survive an exceptional story and middling characters, mostly because it’s never going to make it to long-running series status if people don’t give a shit about the people they’re spending all of their time with.
Folks make fun of nostalgia plays and remakes, but part of the reason that they get so much attention from audiences is because we all crave that connection with characters that we love.
We’d all basically watch the two title characters watch paint dry and riff off each other if it meant we got to spend time with them.
You know why the CW’s Superman & Lois works despite happening on a much smaller scale than we’re used to from the Kryptonian? Because we’d all basically watch the two title characters watch paint dry and riff off each other if it meant we got to spend time with them, because we love them. Obviously, a lot of aspects come into play when adapting a fan-favorite like Supes, but thanks to Tyler Hoechlin’s and Bitsie Tulloch’s performances as Clark and Lois respectively, we put up with their bratty kids and tune into their small-town dramas because they are bringing two favorite characters to life.
The only area of television where the practice seems to be alive and well is in sitcoms which are shorter, more snackable episodes by their very nature, but tend to have longer seasons and more of them. We’re running dangerously low on long, hefty series that let us really settle into the drama because, at this very moment, way fewer of them are being made.
This all started because of a multitude of reasons, from quarantine to insanely inflated budgets to the decline of cable to last year’s Hollywood strikes. Ultimately, the “why” barely matters at this point. What matters is we get back to some kind of balance between eight-episode seasons every two to three years and actual, honest to gods television shows again. The format depends on it, the desire is still very much there from fans of the medium, and I’m probably going to have at least a few more long-ass plane rides that need filling.
(I am already on Season 7 of Suits. It’s barely been two weeks. Please make more longform television. Also please send snacks. And if you wrote on the show, please email me a can opener explanation immediately.)