How many times have you heard (or said) “you just have to get through the first few episodes, and then it gets good”? I know I have often been guilty of using this not-so appealing phrase, but lately I’ve been asking myself: in this new golden age of television, with award-winning and fan-amassing series constantly building up on our DVRs, why should we waste time on shows that can’t spark our interest from episode one?
There’s just too many shows now overindulging the “slow burn,” wherein character and (especially) plot development ooze like molasses from your TV, and you have to wait until it’s up to your neck for things to get interesting, or worse, merely comprehensible. I’m all for establishing place or mood, but not at the expense of setting up interesting characters, much less a compelling plot. After all, I return to shows week after week for the characters, to see how they’re getting on in their lives. And I don’t need for those characters to be involved in car chases or gun fights—I can appreciate the more mellow plots, the more deliberate progressions toward a meaningful finale, especially for those shows where the journey, as the saying goes, is more important than the destination.
It’s just that more and more, those journeys take forever to get started.
As of now, for every slow-burning series that I stuck with long enough to start caring about its characters, there’s one that I dropped after just one lackluster or meandering episode. So while I don’t regret persevering through Orange is the New Black, Game of Thrones, Sense8, or practically any murder mystery, I do find myself increasingly unable to employ what I will call my “suspension of disinterest” when starting a new series. This is the case no matter how many promises are laid upon a show’s horizon—I gave up on critically acclaimed series like Legion, Succession, True Detective, and Killing Eve after just one episode apiece. Had I continued on, there’s every possibility that I would have learned to love these shows, but I must place the blame on these series’ pacing rather than any impatience on my part. Sure, we all have individual tastes when deciding what’s worth our time to watch, but frankly, I’m sick of having to face that decision, instead of simply being enraptured by story. As Kelly Lawler summarized in USA Today, “A long windup can be irritating or gratifying, turn off viewers or reward their patience.” And, in the case of slow-burning series like Mindhunter, “when early episodes obscure the true intentions of a series, it may be hard to wait, or not worth it at all.” Give us a reason to care, TV; that’s why we’re spending time with you instead of our friends!
Now, none of this is to say that there aren’t plenty of series that do utilize the slow burn effectively. Their pilots are crafted into microcosms of the series as a whole, setting the tone and the pace for what’s to come, and doling out the exposition so as to sustain just the right level of intrigue throughout the season. Moreover, these series know how to capture our interest by showing us a compelling or mysterious character, by starting the story at the right moment, and by presenting us with a riveting, ongoing, not-easily-solvable problem.
Take Westworld, Jessica Jones, The Handmaid’s Tale, or Big Little Lies (minor spoilers to follow): (1) The Teddy-as-host reveal at the end of Westworld’s pilot sets the stage for the many reality-flipping twists and smoke-and-mirror deceptions in the season to come. (2) The noir-esque investigation into Hope’s disappearance introduces Jessica as a haunted yet reluctantly heroic PI, starting down a path that will force her to confront her very-much-alive demons. (3) The premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale is laced with Offred’s sardonic musings as she travels between past, happier memories and her present-day nightmare, her voiceover equal parts infuriating and depressing as Gilead’s inner workings (and their real-life comparisons) come into focus. (4) Big Little Lies’s pilot hooks you with the promise of a murder most foul, thus hanging a veil of suspicion over the present-day timeline, which takes you on a journey of the seedy underbelly of a not-so-perfect coastal community. The point is, series like these prove that there is a very happy medium between the overstuffed and/or cookie-cutter pilots of many primetime series, like Legend of the Seeker or Supergirl (not to disparage either, as I have an affinity for both), and the sparse, “what is this even about” pilots, like those for True Detective or Mr. Robot.
The deliberate narrative unfurling of the slow burn extends beyond the pilot, of course, but even for those series that have shirked episodic structure in favor of the “10-hour movie” aesthetic, the premiere episode still carries that attention-hooking responsibility. And as the four aforementioned series (and many more) show us, it is possible to throw viewers into the middle of a story, not present all information up front, and still have viewers willingly enthralled; I suppose you could call it an expositional Goldilocks zone. We don’t immediately need to know, for instance, why Jessica is haunted by Kilgrave, or how Gilead came to exist—it’s enough that those characters and those worlds intrigue us, inviting us to (happily) stick around and accumulate those answers over time.
Most often, series featuring this slow burn (including the ones I mentioned above) are examples of what is now considered “prestige (or peak) TV.” The problem, though, is when shows adopt this slow burn technique to fit under the “prestige TV” banner, without giving thought to the story elements that are actually responsible for drawing the viewer's attention. For instance, after a humorous (but so, so true) rundown of the signifiers of prestige TV, Vulture writer Kathryn VanArendonk observes that “unbearably dark, humorless, overly baroque ‘movie-like’ TV or series that take forever to get to their points, become a shorthand for prestige without necessarily including the basic storytelling building blocks or essential humanity that make a story work.” Indeed, though these series are marketed as serious, high-quality masterpieces, the more that premiere, the more are revealed to be half-hearted imitations of the industry’s breakout hits (hey, who wouldn't want four Game of Thrones spin-offs?). “TV is nothing if not an endless Xerox machine of ideas that have either garnered high ratings or won Emmys,” Todd VanDerWerff writes on Vox, “And we’re currently living through an era when many TV dramas, even some with substantial acclaim, feel like the latest variations on forms that were introduced by The Sopranos and The Wire, then further codified by Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. So-called prestige TV, even when it’s good or great, is often just as formulaic as any given CBS crime procedural.” (Again, see the Vulture link above for a rundown on these formulaic elements.)
Compiling this problem, as VanDerWerff puts forth, is that entertainment writers tend to cover the same handful of follower-heavy shows, thus perpetuating the (over)hype around those series, and further relegating equally good but much-less-viewed series to the backdrop. And as viewership and media coverage converge, it can be increasingly difficult even to consider that great TV exists outside of, say, HBO or Netflix.
I admit that I often fall prey to this mentality, reading, writing, and watching primarily those shows that are on major networks or that dominate national conversation. (Even as some of my all-time favorite shows, like the short-lived Better Off Ted or cult hit Orphan Black, were never as popular as I truly believe they deserved to be.) But in light of this realization, I would like to call out one more show—far from unknown, but also somehow completely off my radar for a full year after it premiered on Netflix.
That show is Godless, and it also happens to be an example of an effective slow burn:
Godless infuses classic Western elements—train robberies, marauding outlaws, horses, shoot outs, drawls, dust storms—with more modern TV storytelling techniques and themes, like flashback sequences, feminism, and sympathy-inducing backstories that humanize the hero(es) and villain(s) alike. With only seven episodes (granted, six hour-long episodes, plus an 80-minute finale), there’s little time to waste. (Minor spoilers ahead.) We get just enough snippets of backstory to understand Roy’s misplaced loyalty to Griffin, Alice’s trust issues, the Griffin-Roy/Roy-Truckee father-figure foil (say that five times fast), and the impact of the mine explosion on La Belle. Each scene is telling us something we need to know about key character relationships or psychologies, building on the show’s themes of redemption, courage, and (self-)acceptance. Each of the self-made men and women must decide for themselves whether to give in to their past and present grief and million-ways-to-die-in-the-west reality, or to forge ahead and make the most of their time on this dusty earth—which in one way or another, usually means being with the ones you love (Roy and his brother, Alice and her son, Maggie and her girlfriend). Though some subplots may play out in predictable or disappointing ways, this character-driven drama captures your attention as the inevitable Griffin gang vs. ladies of La Belle showdown looms closer.
But beyond Godless, and beyond all the series contributing to what Valeria Ettenhofer on Film School Rejects calls “slow burn fatigue,” the good news is that there are showrunners and writers constantly trying out new aesthetics, new storytelling techniques and plot structures, and more diverse characters and settings. This is the case for American, British, and Canadian TV (shout out to Space/Syfy’s delightful supernatural/Western/horror/comedy Wynonna Earp). Such shows don’t make us engage our suspension of disinterest—they just engage us, period.
So what does this mean for all of us avid TV viewers in the world? I’d say the main lesson is to consider more carefully what we’re watching, and why. For one thing, we need to look beyond what’s dominating headlines for ideas of what to watch next; we all have individual tastes, and the good news is that in this era, whether it entails a deep dive into your preferred streaming service or simply taking a gander at non-major networks, there’s almost certainly something curtailed just for you—to make you laugh or think, be tense or relaxed, or anything in between. For another, we need to be more cognizant of what merely looks to be serious and quality and prestige, versus what actually incorporates those factors into an engaging storyline. Slow burn or not, give a show an episode or two and then ask yourself, “do I care about these characters? Am I curious to see what will happen next?” If so, great! Keep on watching. But if not, don’t feel obligated to finish what you’ve started, not when there’s so much else out there. Don’t hesitate to move on to another show, one that can actually ignite a fire in your soul.
