Whether comedy or drama, each installment of an episodic show uses the same characters, yet is self-contained. without having seen the previous episodes. Serialized TV is made for bingeing because the spectator simply hops to the next part of the big, season-long story.īy contrast, a viewer can understand an episode of Star Trek, Law & Order, Seinfeld (and the comedies we discussed in last week’s post about multi-cam sitcoms) etc. Each episode builds upon the previous one and is a slice of a much larger story (think: LOST, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things… even the Marvel Cinematic Universe, etc.). The recent decline in episodic drama series can be tied to the rise of streaming platforms where episodes tend to drop all at once rather than airing week-to-week.Įpisodes of serialized television are more like chapters in a book. When we talk about episodic television, we refer to shows like Scooby-Doo, where a character or group of characters is presented with (and fully solves) a new case in each episode. Over the years, television has evolved to be more serialized than episodic, but it’s helpful to understand both types of storytelling. Welcome back to TV Formatting Fundamentals – the blog series where we take a deep dive into the evolution and act structure of various TV formats.
