But movies don’t do this very well these days, either. The critical thing to a story, as Roger the story writer knows, is not so much merely a beginning, middle and end, but a setup, a conflict and a resolution. The best stories present a character and a given situation (beginning,) pose a moral, or at least existential, or character-defining, crisis (middle,) and then resolve it, traditionally either heroically or tragically (end.) That happens rarely today.

I think the reason is that resolution of such dilemmas was always accomplished from the perspective of discovering a deeper truth about oneself and either “dying” to the old self that did not see that truth and transcending the old, limited self through heroic actions in accordance with the discovered truth, or failing to do so and suffering the consequences. Since our culture no longer believes in truths or transcendance, or indeed anything beyond the immediate shallow personal self, this notion is now unintelligible in our culture. So, most movies set up very interesting premises, and often pose very intriguing crises or dilemmas. But there is rarely a true heroic transcendence or resolution, just a muddled petering out of the dynamic tension that makes a story.

Yes, I realize accountants and MBAs and other studio fools superimpose focus group reactions, or other business- or ego-based changes on scripts. But I think the bigger issue is the inability to see what a real story would even be these days.

For which side? Not everyone watches your TV show, or even knows what it is.

Anyway, I think the long form is fine if it too has a sense of a beginning middle and end; it’s just a 13-hour movie. The first season of The Sopranos is superbly shaped, and really climaxes not with any of the Mafia stuff but with Carmela and the priest– her flexible morality being the center of the show as much as his more active role. The first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica were fairly self-contained; the first season of 24… hmm, maybe I begin to detect a pattern here? It’s when the shows go on and on with no clear sense of where they’re headed that they lose that novelistic focus.

I still loved that in the 2nd to last episode 2 characters got to refer back to something that had happened between them 6 years prior — in the pilot, no less. 1 continuous “tv novel” if you will.

And the sheer number of “quotable quotes” from the show is amazing also. I still think my favorite is when a security guard says “I don’t watch TV. It’s a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite.” And of course, the lines written by a liberal atheist and we’re watching it on TV. So many layers of irony…..