Still Talking about Watching On-Line

When you watch television programmes on line you almost immediately learn the difference between the novel put to visual and the episodic programme.

When watching a programme which is a novel or similar to a novel put to visual, you have to watch in sequence.  You can’t ‘skip’ an episode, or else you lose the thread of the story.   For example, if you are watching The Crown you need to get each episode in perfect order so as to get the full understanding.

However, in watching an episodic programme, such as NCIS you can wind up ‘skipping’ an episode, even if it is accidental, without much dislocation.   There if very little connection between the episodes.  Hence, I wound up watching episode 12 then realised I had skipped episode 11.

When I went to watch it there was no disruption, as each episode stands on its own.  What happened in episode 5 is very rarely carried forward to episode 6 so unless you recall that you shut off the computer after episode 6 you might start again and watch episode 8, then, perhaps, maybe looking at your ‘history’ realise you’ve ‘skipped’.

Unlike a story arc where you know you’ve made a mistake within a few moments, episodic shows have no flags.

I usually wind up watching one ‘novel’ and two episodic programmes as it is painless and there is little to maintain.   I would not suggest trying to watch two ‘novels’ at the same time, because it detracts.

British drama, even when it seems episodic is not.  There are so many carry overs from one episode to another that you are forced to watch in sequence.  American dramas, from inception, have been ‘stand alone’.   It is that everything begins after the opening credits and ends just before the closing ones.

There seems to be an American tradition to go for episodic.

If one watches the Original Star Trek, it is all ‘stand alone’ and there is almost no carry over.   This continues until Deep Space 9 when the flirting with a ‘story arc’ begins.   If you watch Deep Space 9 you can almost mark when the idea of having an ‘Arc’ began, and how, with various interruptions continued to the last episode.

As this is an American programme there were deviations every season, where some character would meet, fall in love, then lose the beloved by the final scene, which could be dropped into the schedule at virtually any point, then a return to the ‘Arc’.

So watching a British presentation is wisely broken with American,  which will not conflict, as one need not ‘carry over’ any bit of the American, but must maintain the British.