Did The Sopranos do more harm than good?

Ryan McGee wrote a worthwhile essay in the A.V. Club, Did The Sopranos do more harm than good?

"Broadly speaking, you can pinpoint the start of the modern TV era with The Sopranos, a show wildly hailed for taking a novelistic approach to the small screen." He goes on to talk about the difference in show produced to tell a long story vs those that have self contained episodes and how various series are trying to walk in the middle of that line.

He gives a number of examples. A Game of Thrones, Deadwood and (obviously) The Wire really require you to watch a whole season. The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad tell a story over a season but each episode is a self-contained chapter. Alcatraz and Grimm are procedurals with an overarching (mythology) story.

Obviously there are other examples he could have cited, even before The Sopranos. Wiseguy introduced arcs and Murder One extended it to a whole season. But when I look at Alcatraz I see the influence of X-Files and Lost, not The Sopranos. The X-Files was mostly stand-alone episodes with a strong series long mythology. Lost was the same way, a little further on the mythology scale. I always wanted more mythology from Lost and it adamantly wanted to be a character driven drama. I think the ending made that too clear. Alias pulled it off a little better.

There are lots of bad examples too. "David Goyer, who created the show Flash Forward, bragged that he and his writing staff had built out the show’s first five seasons before the pilot even aired. But what Goyer and company forgot to do was build five characters the audience could relate to." I'll agree with McGee on The Killing and will add Rubicon. He cites The Walking Dead but I think that show is doing fine (particularly the last few weeks which have been great).

I agree with him on Justified. "FX’s Justified offers a master class in how to achieve both. Graham Yost and his writing staff have found the sweet spot where an episode has a shape unto itself while informing the larger 13-episode season and the ever-growing series, while at the same time focusing on world-building, something television is fantastic at doing." My one gripe with it is I often have trouble at the start of an episode trying to figure out if a character is new or someone mentioned previously and I've just forgotten.

He ends with "That’s perhaps the best way to describe what HBO’s success has stunted. A meticulous attention to detail on the part of both those who create television and those who consume it has stymied a desire for the kind of experimentation and exploration working in the microcosm of episodes allows."

"Showrunners are too often trying to fool the audience rather than entertain it. Audience members are too busy trying to solve the show and being disappointed when reality doesn’t line up with theory. Amid all of this, the episode has suffered under the weight of crushing expectation over where a story is going to go as opposed to what it currently is. Shows can’t think about how they’ll fade to black at the end. They need to focus on burning bright in the present. "

I think that's just wrong. There are more TV series now than ever before and plenty of them are great (A Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Good Wife, Downton Abbey) and plenty of them are just fun (Justified, True Blood, The Walking Dead, Treme, Boardwalk Empire) and plenty fail.

I agree with him that "Creating a layered, lengthy narrative is really fucking hard." He did miss what I think is an obvious distinction. Cable shows have short seasons and BBC "series" are even shorter. It seems to be much easier to sustain a dramatic narrative with appropriate arcs for 10 or 13 episodes than for 22 episodes of a network season. It makes much more sense for network shows to be modeled after The X-Files than The Wire. The Good Wife is the best (and perhaps the only) example of a network getting the balance exactly right. Each episode works and each one advances most of the characters just a little bit. There's a series long mythology but there's no mystery to figure out; just characters to follow.

He also left out half hour comedies. Maybe Seinfeld was the first to do this but now plenty of these are starting to have season long arcs. On cable there are series like Weeds, Californication, Nurse Jackie and House of Lies which all have character driven arcs. On network television the arcs are a little weaker but Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and Community aren't afraid to change their characters situations over the course of a season. All of these seem much better at making the individual episodes entertaining. Maybe it's their length, maybe that's easier with comedy (laughs are laughs), or maybe the creators are just trying harder.

And as for experimentation, I think there are two examples worth looking at. American Horror Story on FX is trying to become a season long anthology series. Each season will have a different characters (and only some returning cast) and tell a different story. I don't think there's ever been a show like that.

The other is Louie, also on FX. It's billed as a comedy but I think of it more as a drama. Louie CK has complete creative control and you never know what you're going to get in an episode. It might be a half hour comedy. It might be two or three vignettes that are related or not. It might be a conversation with another comedian that in real life Louie accused of stealing material. It might be an hour long travelogue about a USO show in Iraq. It's sometimes funny and sometimes sad or tragic; but it's always interesting.

And if you haven't seen The Wire yet, go do so. Right now.