The Biggest Problem With Streaming Shows

Devs has an interesting story in there but it is slow-paced. Not unusually slow but slow in a way that's unfortunately common these days.

The Orville has some pacing issues here and there but having watched all the episodes out so far, overall it can go toe-to-toe with any Star Trek series.

The Cowboy Bebop live-action series wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. The worst part was that the ending of the live-action series flew in the face of the ending of the anime to leave open the potential for sequels...which never came anyway.

Though streaming shows could make varying episode lengths, I'm sure subscribers would complain about not getting their money's worth with short episodes.

Having the same issues.  Why I keep going back to old standbys and watching them every few years.  West Wing and Longmire are 2 favorites but at this point I almost know the dialog by heart.  Just finished Britannia, classic example of drawn out stuff but overall was worth watching.  Clarksons Farm season 2 was a waste of time but I bet they will go to a third season.

GameboyRMH said:

Devs has an interesting story in there but it is slow-paced. Not unusually slow but slow in a way that's unfortunately common these days.

I can deal with slow build up, as long as it's building the story. Episode 2 felt like it had maybe 10 minutes that built the story.

I think the bigger thing for me was, I got the impression that the show thought it was smarter than it is, and that I'm dumber than I am. It felt the need to take a bunch of time to slowly explain things in detail that I found to be obvious.

Like, the whole scene with Tech Mogul and Head of Security. I didn't need a long conversation telling me his motivations. It was obvious within the first 20 minutes that his daughter was dead, and everything he was doing was obsessing over that death he refused to move on from. I didn't need to be told he didn't care about money. Seeing him pull up to a modest house in an old Subaru clearly communicated that.

If it doesn't think I'm smart enough to figure out that a dude who builds a 60 ft tall statue of his dead daughter is obsessed with her, I don't trust that it's going to present intellectual concepts or explore emotional themes that will challenge and compel me.

I have a personal theory on storycraft - A scene can serve one of a number of functions:

• Advance plot
• Provide exposition, worldbuilding, or establish characters
• Explore themes, ideas, or develop characters
• Titillate (pretty images, sex, or high action)

A scene that doesn't do any of these should is completely pointless, and should be cut. The more of these a scene can accomplish simultaneously, the stronger it is. A scene that only does 1, is usually very weak, and it had either be exemplary of that (e.g. a Bruce Lee fight scene) or do its job as quickly as possible.

Why are the highpoints of Star Wars so awesome? Both fights between Vader and Luke accomplish ALL of these simultaneously.

Devs had a lot of scenes that do not accomplish any of these, or merely retread ground that was already established (his daughter is dead, and he's obsessed).

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

The number of episodes isn't the issue. It's the length of a single episode. For all of the shows I watch, one episode is a story. It may fit into a larger plot but the episode has to be capable of standing on its own or I won't watch it. A streaming show has no time limit. Take the Mandalorian, I thought it was terrible because the plot moved so slowly during an episode. Scenes were longer than necessary and added nothing to the story beyond dragging it out. After 3-4 episodes I stopped watching it. 

A network show has a time constraint. 22 minutes for a half-hour show. 45 minutes for a 1-hour show. They have to complete the episode plot in that time. To do that, they can't add 20 minutes of plotless video because the director feels it's important. 

The above is why I pretty much don't watch TV anymore. Networks bombard you with advertisements written for the dumbest of society and streaming shows spend too much time on useless scenes that don't add to the plot. 

The same thing happens to Youtube channels. Take Matt's Off-Road Recovery. His content used to be 10-15 minute videos shot on an iPhone. Great stuff. Not a second of fluff. Just a condensed story told with minimal words in minimal time. I watched every one of them. His last video, by comparison, is terrible. It's 47 minutes long. 15 minutes of great video so covered up by fluff that it's not worth watching. At 13 minutes I moved on to something else. Matt has forgotten what made him worth watching and is so wrapped up in creating more content that he is no longer making the great content that made him popular in the first place. I'll probably cancel my subscription if things don't turn around. 

Beer Baron said:

 

 I have a personal theory on storycraft - A scene can serve one of a number of functions:

• Advance plot
• Provide exposition, worldbuilding, or establish characters
• Explore themes, ideas, or develop characters
• Titillate (pretty images, sex, or high action)

A scene that doesn't do any of these should is completely pointless, and should be cut. The more of these a scene can accomplish simultaneously, the stronger it is. A scene that only does 1, is usually very weak, and it had either be exemplary of that (e.g. a Bruce Lee fight scene) or do its job as quickly as possible.

This. 

Frequently the difference between a great story and a mediocre story is the parts you leave out the great one because they aren't part of the story. 

In reply to Toyman! :

This is why it's actually the purposefuleness of scene choice/usage that makes a story solid, not the length of episodes or the length of a season/series.

There are SNL sketches that are bloated at only 2 or 3 minutes long because they only had 30-60 seconds of real material. There are hour long episodes of Breaking Bad that are super tight.

My biggest rant is people not just letting a show die. Like plenty of shows should have just rode off into the sunset after a good season or two but no it has to be kept going even though it is now crap.

I am not sure I fully agree that streaming shows are worse then TV shows though. I can think of a lot more stremaing shows I enjoy then new TV shows.

What the hell was Manifest??

In reply to Beer Baron :

Agreed, but I think the unlimited time encourages them to not critique their own work and trim the fat and fluff out of it. There is no reason to.

A ten-second scene doesn't need to be a minute if 10 seconds will do the job. More is frequently not better, it's just more. 

SV reX said:

What the hell was Manifest??

A ridiculously drawn out predictable attempt at a head berkeley. 

 Wife absolutely loves it, I made it maybe half an episode before I went and found anything else to do. 

To me, this subject is a little bit like negative political campaigning. We all agree that we hate it, but it works. So they continue.
 

Formulaic streaming works. It makes money.  LOTS of money. It doesn't matter if we like it or not, it works. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

Agreed, but I think the unlimited time encourages them to not critique their own work and trim the fat and fluff out of it. There is no reason to.

A ten-second scene doesn't need to be a minute if 10 seconds will do the job. More is frequently not better, it's just more. 

I actually suspect that creators are incentivized to pad out and add bloat to increase runtime. Evidence the latest season of Stranger Things and the Hobbit movies.

Happens in video games too where they advertise, "Over 100 hours of play time!"

No! I want to 5-20 hours of actual playtime. I have a life.

I stay away from them after Orange is the new Black and The Black List.  Start out OK, interesting story, then it gets all dark and creepy.  I did enjoy the Orville.

Half the shows y'all are talking about are network shows that happen to be on streaming services. 

Not trying to hijack but I have $.02 to thrown in that might be slightly relevant.  I don't do streaming.  Haven't had cable in 10 years.  I watch DVDs, usually borrowed from the local library, with my 15 y.o. daughter.  

My general position (arguably confirmed by previous posts in this thread) is that network TV has sucked for 20 years.  Most cable stuff sucks.  So I figured I'd get something "quality" and started re-watching "Hill Street Blues" from Season 1.   The only conclusion I can draw is the old axiom "You can't go home again" applies to TV.  Modern dramas have generally become so polished that even really good ones like HSB come off as second rate when viewed through contemporary standards.   The same observation applies to the original "Magnum, P.I." (which I tried watching with her last year).  I used to cruise the $5 bin at WalMart looking for DVD's, but it's been eliminated.  Short version is there isn't much for me to watch, anymore. 

Now if HBO (or somebody) did a really, really good 20 episode interpretation of "Red Storm Rising" or an alternate history (e.g. a failure of the the Manhattan Project and the projected invasion of Japan ala "Band of Brothers") I might be interested.  

stroker said:

Now if HBO (or somebody) did a really, really good 20 episode interpretation of "Red Storm Rising" or an alternate history (e.g. a failure of the the Manhattan Project and the projected invasion of Japan ala "Band of Brothers") I might be interested.  

Along those lines, one of Amazon Prime's first original shows was "The Man in the High Castle", which was an alt history show where the Allies lost WW2 and the Germans and Japanese were occupying the United States. I wasn't blown away by the execution, but it was a great concept.

But I thoroughly reject your contention that "most cable stuff sucks". There's a reason there's a whole article on Wikipidia calling the last ~20 years the "Golden Age of Television". Hell, just HBO alone has had so many bangers in that period it's hard to list them all.

In reply to brrsn0w :

Agreed. Really liked "The Banshees." If you haven't seen "In Bruges," it's another movie starring Farrell and Gleeson as an odd couple.

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

The Sopranos. Boardwalk Empire. Deadwood. That's it. 

People's tastes and expectations have certainly declined even faster than entertainment quality has though. 

While I said the dotcom boom before, I think we can trace the cliffdive of quality back to Survivor. Once that E36 M3 train left the station it just dragged a constant stream of sewage with it that inundated everything, from the billions of "reality" shows, to the rapid decline of sitcoms. Add in the beginnings of social media where everybody needs to talk about and love everything or else they get "haters" and we fall into the same loop as we have with everything else. 

Tell people it's painfully stupid and they'll scream about how great it is even louder. Like the Walking Dead, or Survivor, or any of those network trash "competition" shows. Or probably the biggest offender, The Office, American or British. So painfully dull and stupid, yet somehow held as a cultural masterpiece.

At least with cable you only had to scroll through a single guide to see that it was all reruns and idiocy, now you have to scroll through a bunch of apps that keep pushing the same titles in to a bunch of different categories so you think there are options. 

In reply to brrsn0w :

"Banshees of Inisherin" is still sitting with me. I don't know if I can say if I "liked" it or not, but it's definitely given me something to think about that I keep coming back to and chewing on. Good art.

It's a good example of the difference between "slow" and "bloated". 'Banshees' is slow. It takes its time with shots and scenes and leaves room for things to breathe and the audience to think. But it's not bloated. Everything feels purposeful.

stroker said:

My general position (arguably confirmed by previous posts in this thread) is that network TV has sucked for 20 years.  Most cable stuff sucks.

Most media sucks. Always has. Always will.

We just look at the past and remember the high points and ignore the mass of drivel.

With the current trends in streaming the issue is not that there is less of value than in the past. Rather, there is a lot more wasted potential. There are more and more shows that *could* be solid or even good, if they took the effort to edit them down.

Arguably, wasted potential is more frustrating than having no potential.

RevRico said:

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

The Sopranos. Boardwalk Empire. Deadwood. That's it. 

Personal taste, but... really? Hell, I wouldn't even include Boardwalk Empire in their top 10, and I enjoyed that show. But to just dismiss The Wire, Succession, Veep, True Detective, Barry, Chernobyl, Silicon Valley, Mare of Easttown, Watchmen, Hacks, and Big Love? Come on, man. Hell, you could even include The Last of Us, even though the first season isn't over yet. The entire TV industry raised it's game in the 2000s, and HBO was the prime driving force behind that.

Yes, there is a lot of reality trash. There's also a lot of really great stuff. Just because there is bad TV doesn't mean all TV is bad.

We absolutely hate reality TV.  To be fair, we hate most new TV.  However, a friend of ours turned us on to Lego Masters.  Basically, a reality TV show about building with Legos.  It's good, the kids love it, and it's helped them become more adventurous and creative with their building.  The show's host even sort of pokes a little fun a the whole reality TV shtik.  Episodes are about 40-50 minutes long, so we can watch them after dinner.

The kids have also really taken to Little House on the Prairie reruns.  I admit, I never watched these when I was a kid (when they were in syndication) but really enjoy them now.  

I have noticed that modern movies seem to be getting longer.  Used to be 120 minutes was a LONG film.  And yes, there were some long, older movies.  But, unless it's a comedy, everything nowadays is like 150 minutes, sometimes more.  That's a lot to commit to.  

We watch maybe 7-8 hours of TV a week, and most of that is the 30-45 minutes per night the wife and I watch before bed.  Every few weeks we'll watch a movie.  I can't imagine watching more, even what we do take in seems excessive sometimes.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

I have noticed that modern movies seem to be getting longer.  Used to be 120 minutes was a LONG film.  And yes, there were some long, older movies.  But, unless it's a comedy, everything nowadays is like 150 minutes, sometimes more.  That's a lot to commit to. 

The intermission needs to come back. I'm sure theaters would love the extra opportunity for concession sales.

93EXCivic said:

My biggest rant is people not just letting a show die. Like plenty of shows should have just rode off into the sunset after a good season or two but no it has to be kept going even though it is now crap.

Probably due to the more commercial nature, I've noticed compared to British shows, American productions ride the money train until it's out of steam, out of rails, and off the cliff.