Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

This entry started off as a comment replying to another comment by sodyera. I figured the entry it was attached to had probably scrolled off people's friends-pages by then, and copied it to post as a separate entry -- which I'm finally getting around to now (partly 'cause I feel like I owe y'all something more interesting than my money and health woes or how loud Baltimore traffic is, and I can post this without spending time I shouldn't spend right now writing).

I wonder whether Legend of the Seeker, a show I described earlier as a guilty pleasure because I enjoy it more than I respect its artistic merits, would work better if they didn't try to split the difference between "44-minute chunks of one epic tale" and "separate weekly episodes of a series", and just went one way or t'other. Either drop the "this is a long quest-type story" part and make the background epic more setting-and-theme than something that needs to be advanced ... or abandon the attempt to be a regular television show where new viewers are guaranteed "a story" if they catch a random episode unless there's a "to be continued" at the end, and concentrate on telling the epic at its own pace (with occasional side-quests, yes, but not a guaranteed one-per-week) and let the end of each episode fall wherever it may in the sequence of events (tweaked, of course, to come at what would be a good spot for a commercial break, of course, but not worrying about it being a 'wrapping up' point).

Buffy pulled off the rather unusual trick of telling three stories at once on three different time scales, and made each episode work as a normal telvision show, as a segment of a twenty-odd chapter miniseries, and as a contribution to a seven-season myth, but Buffy was unusual (and didn't start out shouting "this is an epic" right out of the gate -- awareness of the larger structure unfolded over time). Buffy also didn't seem as confined by the conventions of its genre. (It couldn't entirely disregard those conventions, but could invert, pervert, and subvert them as needed, in ways thet Seeker either can't or appears unwilling to.)

I like Seeker, but it ain't no Buffy. It might be interesting to see what a less convention-bound sword&sorcery television epic would look like.