Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers

(August 15 2006) - It might be worth checking for snow falling outside Satan’s windowpane. Or at least it could be time to buy a lottery ticket.

It’s a rare day indeed that a TV executive says something useful, let alone something that I actually agree with.

Yet Stephen McPherson, ABC Network president, couldn’t have been more right when he recently discussed the cancellation of his network’s erstwhile scifi series, "Invasion."

"The difficult thing about serials is that, you know, a lot of times you have these mysteries that are set up, and there is a loyal fan base, however small sometimes, that is watching," said McPherson. "It would be great to be able to close up all those mysteries when a show just isn’t working, but in the case of ’Invasion,’ we wanted to stick with it. We felt like the work was really good and stuck with it till the end."

These days, it’s de rigueur for the suits who run television to mouth such high-minded sentiments when giving a series the axe, especially ones, like "Invasion," that had attracted some critical acclaim or other extra buzz about them.

But, in this case, McPherson really did hit the nail on the head.

Although many fans can’t get enough of increasing serialization on their favorite series, it’s really time to recognize it for the double-edged sword that it is.

No doubt, story arcs enable writers and producers to tell deeper stories and develop characters that are more well-defined. Fans love it and eat it up. I know I do.

But they can be awfully tough to penetrate once the fun starts. It’s harder for a viewer who tunes in for the first time in the middle of an arc to figure out what’s going on. She may get so frustrated that she tunes out and doesn’t come back.

Some fans will shrug at that and say, "Who cares." They’ll say a serial-driven series is made for devoted fans and rewards them for their devotion.

Fans of "Invasion," however, may be singing a different tune, and it ought to be cautionary tale for the rest of us.

Sure, the series told a rich story in which one episode built upon the next. But now that story is over prematurely. If the producers had just created some more space in the series to more easily draw in casual viewers, devoted fans and casual viewers alike would have been even more well-rewarded with future seasons that are now not going to happen.

In my years as a fan, I’ve seen story arcs done well and others done poorly.

"Buffy The Vampire Slayer" is a good example of both, actually.

I only got into that series in the third season when a friend lent me some tapes and told me I ought to watch. I’m glad I did, and I quickly went from casual viewer to diehard fan. Although "Buffy" was highly serialized, the producers left enough space that new viewers could come in.

Without knowing too much about it beforehand, it wasn’t too hard in those early years to jump into the Buffyverse. Yes, the producers wrote with an eye to an overall story arc, but they also included enough stand-alone episodes that both offered something to long-time fans and gave new viewers a chance to get our bearings on how things worked and who was who.

The result is that series ultimately became impenetrable for new viewers, the episodes themselves suffered with no space for other stories to be told, and Seasons 6 and 7 were arguably the weakest of the entire run. Season 7, particularly, has been widely criticized for way too much speechifying on the part of the title character. So the lesson is, as with everything, too much of a story arc can still be too much of a good thing.