[miki123211]

That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in.

If John dumped Jane at the beginning of the episode, they had to get back together at the end, otherwise the viewer who had to go to her son's wedding that week wouldn't know what was going on. There was no streaming, recaps were few and far between, and not everybody had access to timeshifting, so you couldn't just rely on everybody watching the episode later and catching up.

Sometimes you'd get a two-episode sequence; Jane cheated on John in episode 1 but they got back together in episode 2. Sometimes the season finale would permanently change some detail (making John and Jane go from being engaged to being married). Nevertheless, episodes were still mostly independent.

AFAIK, this changed with timeshifting, DVRs, online catchup services and then streaming. If viewers have the ability to catch up on a show, even when they can't watch it during first broadcast, you can tell a long, complex, book-sized story instead of many independent short-stories that just happen to share a universe.

Personally, I much prefer the newer format, just as I prefer books to short stories.

[allturtles]

> That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in.

This is not true as a generality. e.g. soap operas had long-running stories long before DVRs. Many prime-time dramas and comedies had major event episodes that changed things dramatically (character deaths, weddings, break-ups, etc.), e.g. the whole "Who shot J.R." event on *Dallas*. Almost all shows that I watched as a kid in the 80s had gradual shifts in character relationships over time (e.g. the on-again/off-again relationship between Sam and Diane on Cheers). Child actors on long-running shows would grow up and the situations on the show changed to account for that as they move from grade school, to high school, to college or jobs.

[PaulRobinson]

Parent comment was (I think), specifically talking about sitcoms from what I understood.

Sitcoms are - and I know this is a little condescending to point out - comedies contrived to exist in a particular situation: situation comedy → sitcom.

In the old day, the "situation" needed to be relatively relatable and static to allow drop-in viewers channel surfing, or the casual viewer the parent described.

Soap operas and other long-running drama series are built differently: they are meant to have long story arcs that keep people engaged in content over many weeks, months or years. There are throwbacks to old storylines, there are twists and turns to keep you watching, and if you miss an episode you get lost, so you don't ever miss an episode - or the soap adverts within them, their reason for being for which they are named - in case you are now behind with everything.

You'll find sports networks try to build the story arc around games too - create a sense of "missing out" if you don't watch the big game live.

I think the general point is that in the stream subscription era, everything has become like this "don't miss out" form, by doubling down on the need to see everything from the beginning and become a completist.

You can't easily have a comedy show like Cheers or Married... With Children, in 2026, because there's nothing to keep you in the "next episode" loop in the structure, so you end up with comedies with long-running arcs like Schitt's Creek.

The last set of sitcoms that were immune to this were probably of the Brooklyn 99, Cougartown and Modern Family era - there were in-jokes for the devotees, but you could pick up an episode easily mid-series and just dive in and not be totally lost.

Interesting exception: Tim Allen has managed to get recommissioned with an old style format a couple of times, but he's had to make sure he's skewing to an older audience (read: it's a story of Republican guys who love hunting), for any of it to make sense to TV execs.

[phantasmish]

Soaps had publications in checkout lanes that’d catch you up on anything you missed.

[watwut]

Soap operas use entirely different tactic - every information is repeated again and again and again. They are meant to be half watched by people who work while watching them. So you need to be able to miss half the episode and still caught up comfortably.

That is why slow graduate changes.

Neither of these could afford serious multi episodes long arc with nuance played out the way current series can have.

[miki123211]

The Polish "paradocumentary" format is like this, but taken to an extreme. Such shows are mostly dialog interleaved with a narrator describing exactly what just happened. There's also a detailed recap of everything that happened in the episode so far after every ad break, of which there are many.

It's basically daytime TV, to be watched at work, often as background, and without looking at the actual screen very often.

[Izkata]

Many many years ago... it was already changing in the 90s and 2000s to slow changes per episode, with a callout for a little bit afterwards for anyone who missed the episode where the change occurred.

I think the slow changes in the 2000s and early 2010s were the sweet spot - a lot of room for episodic world and character building that would build to interspersed major episodes for the big changes.

[TeMPOraL]

> That was the principle many years ago, you had to leave the world exactly in the state you found it in.

This doesn't make sense; no show I know from that time followed that principle - and for good reason, because they'd get boring the moment the viewer realizes that nothing ever happens on them, because everything gets immediately undone or rendered meaningless. Major structural changes get restored at the end (with exceptions), but characters and the world are gradually changing.

> If John dumped Jane at the beginning of the episode, they had to get back together at the end, otherwise the viewer who had to go to her son's wedding that week wouldn't know what was going on.

This got solved with "Last time on ${series name}" recaps at the beginning of the episode.

[watwut]

I remember when slight hint of multiepisode story was revolutionary and everybody was tallking about it as a great thing. By today standards, nothing was happening.

[dpark]

I remember Deep Space 9 having big story arcs was very novel.

[dpark]

> Major structural changes get restored at the end

This is the point. There persistent changes in these shows tended to be very minor. Nothing big ever happened that wasn’t fully resolved by the time the credits rolled unless it was a 2-part episode, and then it was reset by the end of the second episode.

[Steuard]

How old are you? Because I promise you, that description was pretty much spot-on for most shows through most of the history of TV prior to the late 1990s. My memory is that the main exception was daytime soap operas, which did expect viewers to watch pretty much daily. (I recall a conversation explaining Babylon 5's ongoing plot arc to my parents, and one of them said, "You mean, sort of like a soap opera?") Those "Previously on ___" intro segments were quite rare (and usually a sign that you were in the middle of some Very Special 2-part story, as described in the previous comment).

Go back and watch any two episodes (maybe not the season finale) from the same season of Star Trek TOS or TNG, or Cheers, or MASH, or Friends, or any other prime time show at all prior to 1990. You won't be able to tell which came first, certainly not in any obvious way. (Networks didn't really even have the concept of specific episode orders in that era. Again looking back to Babylon 5 which was a pioneer in the "ongoing plot arc" space, the network deliberately shuffled around the order of a number of first-season episodes because they wanted to put stronger stories earlier to hook viewers, even though doing so left some character development a bit nonsensical. You can find websites today where fans debate whether it's best to watch the show in release order or production order or something else.)

By and large, we all just understood that "nothing ever happens" with long-term impact on a show, except maybe from season to season. (I think I even remember the standard "end of episode reset" being referenced in a comedy show as a breaking-the-fourth-wall joke.) Yes, you'd get character development in a particular episode, but it was more about the audience understanding the character better than about immediate, noticeable changes to their life and behavior. At best, the character beats from one season would add up to a meaningful change in the next season. At least that's my memory of how it tended to go. Maybe there were exceptions! But this really was the norm.

[PaulRobinson]

I even seem to recall that when Babylon 5 came out, a lot of people hated it in part for this reason.

And when older format "nothing ever happens" shows like The Simpsons did try to go story-arc ("Who Shot Mr Burns?"), likewise: outrage.

[dpark]

South Park even made fun of the standard “reset” with the Kenny death gag.

[Izkata]

Babylon 5 was mostly in order, if you want to see something really screwed up check out the spinoff Crusade. On top of what the network did it was written more serially than Babylon 5 was.

[coryrc]

> Again looking back to Babylon 5 which was a pioneer...

Heh I was going to reply "B5 is better than TNG", but thought "better check all the replies first". Wherever there's discussion of extended plots there's one of us nerds. (If anyone hasn't seen it... yes half the first season is rough, but you get a season's worth of "The Inner Light"-quality episodes by the end and for all the major characters; TNG, while lovely, has just a few because there's so little character development besides Picard)

[liveoneggs]

The Simpsons are all pretty much self-contained

[dpark]

Most shows were like that. Yes, there was some minor character growth and minor plot development over seasons most shows basically reset every episode. You almost have to when you’re targeting syndication because reruns don’t always happen in order and they often run so frequently that viewers can’t catch them all anyway.