[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)