Which again goes to prove that in TV, it's all in the writing.

And yeah, Showtime fucking sucks. But they're getting a healthy number of subscribers, so they're not complaining. Showtime's business model with regards to making original programming is exactly the opposite of HBO: While HBO often will contract showrunners and have them come up with an idea under contract with the…

John From Cincinnati is really a great example of a network totally trusting its showrunner. OK, it didn't work out this time, but it's such a great fiasco. You won't see anything fail quite like that on any other network, and that's because it was about the creative talent overreaching, rather than the network…

Yeah, that's true. But Ryan's essay reads more like a criticism of the heavily serialized format in general; how the focus on the overall story makes the appeal of a single episode lesser. I think that's true for The Wire, a show you have to see from the first episode. Just watching a random episode of The Wire…

Yeah. A good test for how serialized a show is is to ask yourself what you remember from the show: Is it single episodes, seasons or both? With The Sopranos, it's a mix, which goes to show that the show was serialized from season to season, but also had many excellent stand-alone stories.

I think we should restrict this to dramas. Of course an episodic comedy can be as good as, if not better than, the more episodic ones. Seinfeld is my favourite sitcom of all time, so I agree with you there.

Well, I don't think it's true that many showrunners are as rigid with the storytelling as this article leads us to believe. I remember both Simon and Milch talking about new plot elements developing when they were writing episodes, and Simon just had a rough draft of what he wanted to see in each season. Everything…

The point about trusting the showrunner(s) is excellent. That's much of the reason why Showtime is such a shitty network. It has never trusted its showrunners, and prefers to just hand over a popular show to a new guy when the original showrunner wants to end it. Let's hope for a better fate for Homeland, at least.…

It's not episodic in that it's a continuing story, without big episodic hooks for single episodes. The show will be talked about in seasons (hopefully it gets more than the two, but it's not looking good in terms of ratings) more than in episodes, and that's the ultimate sign of serialized TV.

I think that's more down to you not liking the characters/writing than the format, to be honest. Would you like the show more if it had an episodic feel? Probably not. That's my problem with the premise of this essay: It seems to be more about bad writing than about the format.

I really don't see what's negative about this, at all. I generally think serialized drama is better than more episodic drama because 1) It's easier to develop good characters that way and 2) if there's good writers, there'll be a better overall story at the end of the season.

I just hope the developers stop trying to use the tilt and touch screen as much as they seemed to use it on the launch games. Seriously, having to keep your balance in Uncharted by tilting the device…I thought they gave up on that shit after the first UC.

Wasn't 3DS announced when DSi was released? If so, the people who bought it should've known that the 3DS wouldn't be that far off.

4 player split-screen.

Well, all I really care about is if the game plays good, and it does. I don't really give a fuck about the fiction of TM because it was always incredibly dumb with awful voice acting. Are the cars still awsome? Yep, so why should anyone care about the drivers not being tied to the cars anymore or whatever?

Well, to be this show's E.B. is not something to be ashamed of in my book, as he was one of the best things about Deadwood. I can totally see where Todd is going with comparing those characters, because Joey seems to be the "observer" in this show as E.B. was in Deadwood.

He should just stick to betting on horses, because that's something he knows how to do. Unfortunately, for a gambling addict like Jerry, that's not nearly enough.

That's how Ace took it too.

Well, people should really be used to watching HBO dramas by now: Most of them use the first 2/3 episodes building the world and introducing the 10+ big characters. That doesn't make those episodes bad, but maybe slower than the later episodes. The Wire is a great example of this, and shows that those first few…

Oh, you're suck a troll @avclub-60ac1337dd425567f906179964e55e96:disqus. Good job bringing up Enlightened again.