| tbf television is a very limiting medium. If you tried "show dont tell" for that much exposition you'd be several episodes in. Ahsoka just requires too much backstory for non-Star Wars addicts. Its a show designed for casual fans, so it has to catch us up fast. Ahsoka is part of the larger canon of things like the clone war cartoons and a handful of random episodes in newer Disney shows. Most fans have no idea about her, the post-ROTJ world its set in, Thrawn, etc. Its a lot to ask to slow burn that. Also you can slow burn that if you truly wanted, but it comes at a cost. The writers weren't willing to make that sacrifice of other story elements, characters, sub-plots, etc to do this. I also would argue that 'origin story fatigue' is real. I get impatient with long origin reveals. Just get me into the story and flashback and explain whats going on. I'd rather sit through an exposition episode than a long origins narrative. Lengthy one-time exposition is perfectly acceptable in tv and film and we do it all the time. I just watched the first episode of Interview with the Vampire and there's a lengthy scene about a previous interview decades before that sets the stage. This isn't the most exciting viewing but allows us to catch up super fast on the story. Its a one-time price to pay that not only sets up the core conflicts but also introduces us to the basics of the main character, the tenor of the show, and the vampire mythologies of this universe. Novels and such have hundreds of pages to slow burn exposition. In normal script formats you have about 20-25 pages per episode for a 30 min show. Compare that to your average novel at 250-400 pages. Note those 20-25 pages are in screenwriting format, which are closer to 10 or less dense novel pages. |
an picture is worth 1000 words