5 ms·
> There is a reason people would complain that "every week is the same story!". There are many people who like series that are similar each week. Look at the p
by mfer 3y ago
> There is a reason people would complain that "every week is the same story!".
There are many people who like series that are similar each week. Look at the popularity of shows like Friends or The Office.
Maybe a question is, why doesn’t Netflix produce those series that have many episodes but little change each episode?
- voussoir 3y agoI just recently re-read David Foster Wallace's E Unibus Pluram (1993), so this is fresh on my mind: > Audience gets trained to respond to and then like and then expect trite, hackneyed, numbing television shows, and to expect them to such an extent that when networks do occasionally abandon time-tested formulas we usually punish them for it by not watching novel forms in sufficient numbers to let them get off the ground. Hence the networks' bland response to its critics that in the majority of cases – and until the rise of hip metatelevision you could count the exceptions on one hand – "different" or "high-concept" programming simply didn't get ratings. > But it's still not fair to blame television's shortage of originality on any lack of creativity among network talent. The truth is that we seldom get a chance to know whether anybody behind any TV show is creative, or more accurately that they seldom get a chance to show us. Despite the unquestioned assumption on the part of pop-culture critics that television's poor Audience, deep down, craves novelty, all available evidence suggests rather that the Audience really craves sameness but thinks, deep down, that it ought to crave novelty.
- mfer 3y agoI’m reminded that people like habits. They like comfort food. Always trying to be creative and different can be mentally taxing on viewers. Sometimes people just want comfort shows. With the usual.