Filler

Agents of SHIELD is apparently tanking in the States, thanks to an already flagging viewership, causing its creators to sideline interesting plot in favour of uninteresting relationships in an attempt to at least hold on to the lowest common denominator, thus ensuring numbers flag further.

Full disclosure at this point: this is another post inspired by ol' MovieBob (but isn't all about this):



It's a shame because, slow as it was to start, I still enjoyed season 1 from the get-go thanks to the characters and general set-up. Once it really got going and went all-out in season 2, it was genuinely great, and I was excited to see where it all went in season 3 (though because I live in the UK, and didn't realise till last week it was on E4, I've been awaiting the opportunity to binge it elsewhere).

That said, I was perhaps fortunate in the fact I watched it on Netflix: I didn't have to wait a week at a time to see the overarching plot slowly develop amidst all of the slow, less interesting stuff. This is yet another in a long line of American series that are far too long. 24, Lost, Arrow, Dexter, House, Breaking Bad, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer: in the best of them, the characters and eagerness to see the plot develop keep you hooked, even during the many filler episodes, while the worst of them are an endurance test, if you stick with them at all (looking at you, Heroes).

I get it: the whole point of a 'season' is that it runs for a season, and there's less pressure on the various networks to keep coming up with new things to fill the airwaves, but when was the last time any show had enough plot to remain interesting over its entire 24 episode run? Even season 2 of Daredevil had to pad its run-time with the tedious and ill-conceived Elektra stuff, and that was only 13 episodes!

And the issue extends beyond drawing out a potentially interesting narrative until it becomes too thin for a Michael Bay movie. Though there's less pressure on the networks themselves, there's a lot more on the shows' creators to keep things interesting, and if interest flags just a bit, then the network will be less willing to commit another 24 weeks of scheduling to a follow-up season.

I'm not saying American shows should go the way of British shows, that only stick around for 6 episodes a year (or 3 every 2 years, in the case of Sherlock), but there's surely a happy medium.  

Take Game of Thrones: while not without filler (how many people watched the first 3 seasons eager to see what happened next to Sansa?), nor is it long enough to out-stay its welcome. At only 10 episodes a season, it's required by design to stay on point, without too often meandering into needless sub-plots (Dorn notwithstanding), or pulling the inane trick of having characters act completely out of character just to create conflict and drag a small idea out to a whole episode (Dear Arrow, there's a big difference between layering or evolving a character, and having them randomly act like a douche just to force an artificial epiphany later in the episode).

Another advantage is it opens up the schedule to more shows. How many ideas fall by the wayside because networks are handing out 24-week slots, rather than 10 or 12? How many shows could have been given a second chance? How many shows wouldn't have seen a dramatic drop-off if they weren't dragging on for the better part of 6 months?