I’ll try to do more of a write-up on the new episode of ‘Murderbot’ later (I really want to dissect Mensah and Murderbot’s evolution throughout the episode leading up to the cliffhanger), but for now I wanted to report back on my experience treating the episode as the next installment in an adventure serial.
I loved it! The pacing suddenly felt familiar and considered, and it really worked for me. I was certainly left wanting more, but that’s a good thing. And I was grinning ear-to-ear the entire episode, as the show really felt like it turned the corner from Act 1 introductions into Act 2 action. Knowing that another cliffhanger was incoming made it something I was eager to see, and happy when I got there. I really embraced the giddy, joyful frustration of seeing that ending, knowing that I will get to dissect it for a week waiting for the conclusion.
I half-expected an announcer to come in over the end credits to say “How will our heroes possibly survive?? Tune in next week to find out, on the next exciting installment of ‘Murderbot’!”
And that? That’s fun! Engaging in an older method of storytelling, an older pace, an older way of experiencing a long-form story is fascinating. It’s such a different experience to bingeing, or to getting long feature-length episodes over a few weeks. It feels like a window into an era of television viewing when you needed to make sure you parked yourself in front of the television each week so you didn’t miss the next conclusion to the last cliffhanger, or the next step in the adventure, or the next moment of fraught peril. There’s an immediacy to the adventure serial, a frentic pacing that is really captivating me.
Even knowing the rough outline of what will probably happen next week doesn’t stop the cliffhanger from doing its job. Because I do want more! I do want to find out what happens in the next exciting installment!
Going old-school adventure serial was a risky choice, I’m sure. Not everyone is going to love it (clearly), but for me? It’s scratching an itch I haven’t felt in years, and genuinely making me treat each episode as appointment television.
