@V2Blast Ash and I have an ongoing conversation about how the prevalence of shows with complex seasonal and multi-season arcs can create obstacles to viewing.

Ah

eg, Kipo's first season is pretty straightforward because it's a roadtrip: only the main characters repeat from episode to episode, revisiting locations is relatively uncommon, and there's no Big Secret to keep track of hints about.

Kipo season two is the exact opposite: it's all about revisiting characters and locations in order to be slowly fed hints about a Big Secret.

One of these modes takes a lot more mental processing power than the other in order to just understand the basics of what's happening scene-to-scene.

Very true

Ash and I both make the distinction between these kinds of storytelling modes very sharply, because the context of our viewing habits means sometimes we just can't spare the brain cycles for the more twisty, "hold lots of things in your brain" kind.

We were happy to find out that we both do this, because it often feels like the people around us don't even notice that distinction, much less need to make decisions based on it.

So now we give each other tips if one of us has seen a show the other hasn't.

Like, Ducktales is another tricksy one because it starts out very episodic with a very simple season through-line, and by the most recent season it's hauling out half-remembered guest characters from previous seasons for major plot points without so much as an "as you know" reminder of who the h*ck they are.

I see. I think I'm like that with some shows but not with others? I haven't observed a consistent pattern with regard to which shows I'm bad at keeping mental track of stuff with and which I'm fine at that with.

but there are definitely shows where I'll have basically forgotten everything about how/where the last season left off, but for others I have no problems at all remembering most of what has happened

And I dunno if Ash has this category, but I also distinguish between shows that expect me to watch them carefully the whole time, vs shows which use sound to convey information and cue me as to when I'll need to be looking at the screen too.

Oh thank dog I'm not alone in that.

And to a certain extent it's just a matter of the show taking the effort and skill to communicate effectively.

But there's also a distinct set of techniques that were developed for "housewife programming" (the viewer is moving around doing other tasks with the show on in the background) vs "prestige programming" (the viewer is sitting down specifically to watch the show without distractions).

Listening shows tend to be using housewife techniques.

They have characters comment aloud on what's happening on the screen, use specific musical cues to indicate that an important visual is about to happen so you can run over to watch, that kind of thing.

Exactly. Soap operas are the gold standard and proving ground for developing television techniques that let the viewer do other things while watching.

See also: game shows.

The traditional game show format is designed for bite-sized chunks of viewing without any context needed.

They explain what's going on every time, you're not expected to remember how the show works, there's no plot or through-line, just a contained emotional arc for somebody in thirty seconds to three minutes.

Shows like the Great Baking Show are "prestige" format and break that mold: there are only three emotional arcs over an hour of runtime, and they carry on through the whole season.

Totally! The editing in of the confessionals control the pacing of the emotional arc in a very carefully orchestrated performance.

But yeah, I often like prestige shows with complex multi-season arcs but I grumble about how they're dominating the medium.

After the double whammy of Twin Peaks at the beginning of the 90s and Buffy at the end, the trappings of prestige shows started getting mashed into everything.

And to be clear, soap operas are TOTALLY on board with massively complex multi-season arcs. But they use "housewife" techniques to communicate them rather than making figuring out the show a gimmick to keep people talking about it between episodes.

And then binging/streaming made it all messy.

Syndication made TV shows more aware of the need for re-watch value, but the nature of syndication meant that actually REDUCED a show's ability to count on people watching it all in order so the complex multi-season arcs were suppressed by syndication because they had no control over how their syndication partners would air the show.

But then shows started getting released on DVD and suddenly it was lucrative to craft shows to not just be re-watchable on a per-episode basis, but on a per-season binging basis.

But the shows were still being made for serial release on their original networks, and syndication, so balances were made. That's the niche Buffy carved out, proved successful, and became the thing to imitate: Buffy was making bank on first releases, syndication, AND home media.

Then... streaming completely changed the way shows are watched and I honestly don't think the industry has yet found a new normal for the current reality, in terms of how to craft shows based on how they're being watched.

Yeah.

And like, The CW's supers shows are designed specifically to be watched as they're aired, like the old Buffy/Angel series when they ran back-to-back in a single night so they'd stretch a single story over two different series in the same night.

But then Netflix posts them as separate properties in its "we assume you're going to binge a single series" mode and they stop making any sense.

On the other hand you know what's kinda weird? from 1963 to 1989 Doctor Who stories were ALWAYS multi-parters. Every story took at least two episodes, sometimes as many as twelve, to be told. But even though you'd have several stories in a season there was only ever one season in all that time which felt like a proper "season arc" was playing out.

Then you skip to the 2005 reboot and it's nothing but one-shot monster of the week episodes with occasional two-parters, but every season after the first has to have a big season arc.

I should look for more stuff like that.

...also I keep running into shows that expect me to be able to easily tell the difference between several fit brown-haired white guys with Generic TV Handsome faces.

And I'm like, can you color-code them? Maybe give them different haircuts? throw me a bone here.

(If color-coded clothing wasn't too good for the Power Rangers, it's not too good for your grim and gritty Nancy Drew reboot that's actually your Veronica Mars fanfic about what would have happened if the supernatural elements in season one had been reinforced in season three. I see what you did.)

@Ash The CW did a Nancy Drew show last year. It was weird.

@BESW I basically can't watch shows of the latter kind. I can only meaningfully focus on one thing at a time due to my ADHD - if I have it on in the background, I basically end up taking in none of it :P

@BESW Having only watched the 2005 reboot (I just finished season 6), it has been interesting to see that structure. Definitely makes it easier than some other shows to put down and pick back up months later (or years later, in the case of me having watched S1 in college 7 or so years ago, and S2 only a year or two ago)

@V2Blast Yeah, the thing is, Old Who can be even easier because you just gotta watch a couple episodes in a row. You can skip around from season to season and Doctor to Doctor with very little trouble so long as you watch each story in its altogether before jumping to the next.

(And for a lot of the show, episodes are less than half an hour each. A single story is often movie-length.)

@V2Blast I don't have ADHD but I can't split my attention. I either watch a show or I don't. Even with music. I can't listen to music I like in the background, because I'll either ignore it or focus on it.

If it has lyrics I'm very likely to focus on it

That reminds me: what is a good word (adjective, probably) for someone who doesn't live with depression, ADHD, anxiety, isn't on the autism spectrum etc.? Regarding the spectrum for a long while I thought "neurotypical" was a good term, but then I saw criticism of that too. (In any case I'd rather not guess terminology for fear of being inadvertently hurtful.)

@AndrasDeak What's wrong with neurotypical? It seems reasonably close to describing the deep meaning in a moderate-sized two-root word, and isn't really a bashing label either.

I don't remember the specifics.

Neurotypical is the word I know that's gonna be most widely understood by the general public and has implications of non-judgement, but it's still very much a medical term and a lot of communities that have a history of harm from medical institutions because medicine doesn't tend to value "nothing about us without us" principles. So they don't like seeing medical terms entrenched in common language because the terms carry that baggage.

I've seen allistic coming to broader use within some neurodiverse spaces but I don't think it's yet permeated general vocabulary yet.

But it's also important to note that these terms tend to be coming from autistic communities so their broad application as umbrella terms for other kinds of "mental disorder" is gonna be contentious.

The search for an all-encompassing word is, itself, fraught because it reifies barriers which don't actually exist; there's some schools of thought that the whole concept of NT/NAT terminology is harmfully binary and gets in the way both of "normal" people getting help they need AND of diagnosed people being integrated into wider society without judgement. This tends to be more common among groups which believe the medical model of disability is less useful than the social model.

So there's no "good" word, there's just words which cause different kinds of problems depending on the who and how of their use.

Me, I use the terms that are being used by the people around me at the time who are most affected.

@BESW that was my suspicion

@BESW I see, thanks for the insight

Right now the people I spend most of my time with are using NT/NAT, but there's another group I've started being around which is much more diverse and uses a spread of terms but mostly tries to avoid broad generic terms whenever possible.

That makes sense

Oh, another thing to note--at least some of my understanding of this comes from spaces where English is a common but not first language and American/Western/colonialist mental health structures are influential but from afar. So take that for what it's worth.

And of course, I'm neurotypical for all practical purposes so don't give my understanding precedence over the words of the people actually affected by this stuff.

@BESW I'd never think to :)

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