More, More, More

Abstract

This article examines both the advantages and challenges of the ongoing serial narrative in contemporary American TV series. How did such series manage to spread beyond premium cable TV like HBO and Showtime to mainstream networks like ABC, despite the economic risks involved? How do such narratives hook their audiences, and play with every convention from opening credits to the cliffhanger, from ensemble casts to subplots, in their reinvention of formulaic soap opera into sophisticated new soap? How do they avoid the pitfalls of too-obvious serial progression, disrupting their timeline, and renewing their aesthetics of surprise? How, in an attempt to satisfy very different viewer expectations, do they play on identification, reflexivity, metatextuality, and remediation to guarantee different levels of “engagement” with the series? Finally, if serialization is based on the desire for more, more, more, who determines when the story must end, and can there ever be a successful finale?

Keywords

• contemporary TV series
• serialization
• new soap
• episode
• season