The Limited Arc TV series

For all its trite and melodramatic delivery of the dialoge, I LOVE Babylon 5. I have likely posted about this before, but I don't feel like digging up the older post as I have yet to go back and add subject links to all my old posts (now that Google has provided this option) so it would take quite a bit of time.

One of my favourite things about the show was that J. Michael Straczynski, the creator, envisioned this series, his story, to have a definitive beginning, middle and an end. I had once heard that he wrote the scripts in order to have the series completed in 5 season. How long did it take the series to complete? 5. It made for very satisfying TV watching because the major plotlines and most of the subplots were resolved by the end.

Unlike Lost, where it seems like the current story's being dragged out because it's become popular so news execs want to milk it and stretch the series for all as long as possible. Consequently, the story's suffering from its poor storytelling and irrelevant plot twists; it's hemmorrhaging viewers to other shows because nothing's being resolved.

The solution of course is to have series like Lost be written with a limited number of seasons in mind, with a definite beginning, middle and end. I'm not the only one who believes this would work:

"Viewers would be both more willing to sign on at the beginning (knowing their investment will pay off) and more inclined to buy DVDs later (either as catch-up for newbies or as a satisfying boxed set)."

"But which would you rather tune in to next fall: a brand-new mystery from the creators of Lost, that entirely satisfying and thrilling limited-run series you loved? Or yet another season of Lost, that show that started out so well but is now meandering all over the damn place? Puzzles are meant to be solved, not prolonged. You can only tease viewers so long before they feel like they’re being mocked."