this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
211 points (93.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35393 readers
2 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Season 1s are great, setup, some payoff, a bit of lead into the overarching story. Then season 2 to X. The heroes win and then lose in the final episode, cliffhanger to next season. People get bored. Final season is announced and they wrap up the show.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think the shows with long term success either have multiple independent or semi-independent story arcs or they have a well defined story arc that lasts for the entire run of the show. The characters grow and change as the show progresses which keeps the audience interested.

Where they run into trouble is when the constraints built into the structure of the show limit the number of possible stories, but success leads to them trying to keep the show running after all possibilities have been used. At that point, the show becomes repetitive and boring.

Writing this, I'm reminded of the show, Scrubs.

Scrubs was an excellent show for the entirety of it's 8 season run. The concept allowed for a story arc that lasted the whole run, specifically the story of JD and his friends learning and developing as doctors from first year residents to attendings. There is a natural progression during that process that allows for individual growth of the characters and accommodates natural shifts in storylines to allow for new topics for episodes. In addition there are countless opportunities for different individual smaller story arcs to make each episode able to stand alone as it's own tale.

Because there was a built-in plan creating a structure for the life of the show, they were able to maintain quality and audience interest for all 8 seasons.

If the producers had foolishly tried to squeeze more seasons out of the show after they had exhausted the original concept, they would have inevitably failed. The result would have been a weak and pathetic shadow of the previous seasons and would have rapidly lost the patience of the audience.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh, Scrubs suffered a lot from trying to find ways of keeping the characters somewhat together and on the hospital. Also, even if not relevant to the topic, flanderization utterly fucked Scrubs from season 5ish onwards.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Flanderization? And in what way regarding Scrubs? Genuinely intrigued by your point.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll leave you with two links:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Flanderization/LiveActionTV (search for Scrubs there)

Careful, don't get sucked into the TVTropes website, it's a black hole.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think they're asking for examples of it. Not what it means.

I can think of a few with Dr Cox and Dr Kelso in the later seasons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't agree with the example of Kelso. In the latter seasons he goes from being a horrible human to a somewhat empathetic and cool sage. I love it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Potatos_are_not_friends

@delitomatoes @NABDad @danielbln @fartsparkles

There are examples in the second link, but I can paste them here for you:

Scrubs:
J.D. started as fairly emotionally needy due to him wanting a father figure to replace his own dysfunctional family. Fast forward to season five where J.D. is an appletini (light on the tini)-swilling "sensey" (that's "sensitive person") who can't hold on to his "man cards" (which would be taken away from him if he did something girly) for a full day. This is lampshaded by Zach Braff in the bloopers to Season 8.
"You haven't been here in a while, my character's really gay now."
Carla was initially a tough cookie Team Mom. As the seasons went on, the writers Flanderised her obsession with gossip and her domineering tendencies over Turk. She also went from giving advice to forcing her opinions on everyone else and admitting that taking the moral high ground "is like crack for me".
Elliot went from being a pretty normal, slightly quirky, girl with no interest in kids and a high degree of efficiency coupled with no personal skills to highly neurotic, obsessed with getting married and having kids, and the most compassionate doctor in the hospital that was only there because she wanted to help people. The family part is at least somewhat justified by the fact that she as she got old she had a stronger desire to settle down.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think those are good examples of flanderization. Looking at JDs example, he was always that way, but was less confident in himself to show that side. A core character growth point for him is embracing his lack of masculinity while his father figure continually lambasts him for it. As he becomes more comfortable in his new job as a doctor, it would make sense he would be more comfortable being himself.

Flanderization is when a character becomes fully defined by what was initially just a quirk or feature of the character. I don't think you can summarize JDs character as 'feminine dude' . JD continues to be complex and grow throughout the series. It's not perfectly linear growth, but it shouldn't be.

I think a big reason it shouldn't be considered flanderization is he gets serious when it's necessary, he does still struggle with his masculinity some, and he grows as a character in other ways. Hell, he ends up as a strong and responsible leader while maintaining his lack of masculine traits.

Elliots example you copied is just weirdly self-countering and kinda sexist. Elliots growth was heavily centered around self confidence and self acceptance. She started out as a shallow, rich kid, know it all who couldn't take the pressure and couldn't handle when she wasn't good at something. I don't think any of those traits ended up flanderized.

There are plenty of shows that flanderize characters to a pretty extreme level. I find it weird that you would call out scrubs of all shows for flanderization.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@PlatinumPangolin

@delitomatoes @NABDad @danielbln @fartsparkles @Potatos_are_not_friends

Fair points, I have only watched a few episodes myself and was merely copying the source since others weren't seeing it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Man, Scrubs was great. Still one of my favorite shows ever

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hot take: Scrubs Season 8 was weak. Dr. Cox as chief was lame, the new interns were lame, the Janitor’s wedding was lame.

Season 9 was actually a bit of a dead cat bounce.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

dead cat bounce

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Scrubs had its problems too. It just didn't matter as much because its a comedy first.

For example: Elliott took like 6 seasons to gain confidence. Probably because JD kept trying to get with her then being an idiot and breaking up.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think the point of the question is that the producers get greedy midway. And stop the progress so they can go indefinitely. Then when the show is cancelled the finish the story arcs in the final season.