The just cause is arguable, I think they were a bunch of entitled fools myself. Not to mention, the whole thing mostly happened because Robert was angry about Lyanna not liking him as much as Rhaegar.

This is just wrong. Most films are not able to tell a long-form story equivalent to a novel, for instance. Only TV-shows are able to do this, and it is the greatest strength of the medium. The episodic nature of some (bad) tv shows are a hold over from how TV was structured in the bad old days, before the golden age…

A unit of what, though? I mean, it is a part of the story, so it should be good, but I for one find "compelling" episodes to be grating in the way they try to drag me into watching the next one. The narrative should be confident enough to not need cliffhangers or hooks in every unit. Books written that way are…

Well, I didn't dislike Dexter until season 5 (didn't love it before that, but it was decent enough). A consequence , perhaps, of watching the show in a binge (on Netflix) rather than episode by episode.

Most of the power of those episodes comes from their place in the series, at least for me. They are not as effective if viewed in a vacuum, which I feel supports the idea that even great episodes of television are great mostly because of their part of a greater whole (like the best chapters in a book). The episode, as…

This kind of themes are a consequence of TVs unparalelled power as a storytelling tool, but many critics dislike Boardwalk Empire because there are so few, or slow moving, story arcs contained within each episode. If you are not following the show online and discussing it, it is actually much better if viewed as a…

Indeed, treating each episode as a chapter is the way to go, and what I am advocating. Chapter structure and organisation is an important part of the presentation of a novel, nor is there anyone saying "this novel is not a good novel, since I could not read chapter 1-5 and get a satisfying conclusion to the plots".
Ea…

Good point. But even great episodes of great TV-shows fall back on the continuity to make them great, I feel. Without knowing Tony and Meadow through a large amount of backstory, the episode loses some of its power. Similarly, an episode like "The Fly" in Breaking Bad is an amazing episode of TV, but it is nearly…

There is a certain group of TV critics that seems to put the concept of the TV-episode on a pedestal (Ryan McGee is particularly enervating on the subject). But the traditional TV-episode is a concession to commercialisation, not art, from it's length to its structure. 42 minutes in an "hour" to allow plenty of…