The reason I get so upset with streamers who don’t give you all the episodes of a mini-series from the start finally occurred to me. I was writing a review of Surface when it happened.
I can happily watch Grey’s Anatomy for umpteen years and never be upset about waiting week to week for a new episode. But a series like Surface is different. What’s the difference?
In a series like Grey’s Anatomy, every episode is the second act. An ongoing, long lasting TV series is all second act. You know next week won’t be the third act, but another in a series of ongoing temporary plots and cliffhangers.
A series like Surface has three acts. A first act, a second act, and a third act that contains the resolution to the story. You know that the story will end, will resolve, in short order.
Being made to wait to finish the story is like going to the library for the latest Dana Stabenow mystery and being told you can only read one chapter a week. You know the case will be solved and everything will be resolved by the end of the book, and you just want to read a good story. But you can’t.
To liken it to music played on a guitar or ukulele, it’s like stopping a song in the key of C on an unresolved G7 chord and never taking the melody back home to the resolution of the C chord. You have to wait for the resolution, if you want to finish the whole song.
It’s the same with a mini-series. You just want to sit down with a good story. The beginning, the middle, the end. The story.
I know it’s about money and subscription rates and capitalism for the streamers. But it should be about story. When it isn’t about story, when you have to wait ridiculous weeks to finish a simple story, it makes me mad!
What are your thoughts on this topic?