Keeping an entertainment franchise alive

I've been watching the Tina Fey sitcom 30 Rock, and been disappointed by how stale its seemed this year. In the first season, it was about a single female 30-something producer struggling to keep together an NBC comedy show, and who has sexual tension with her boss. 3 years later, its...about a single female 30-something producer struggling to keep together an NBC comedy show, and who has sexual tension with her boss.

That was fine before, so why not now? Well, in the beginning, the show was a pretty good loosely autobiographical take on the early career of Tina Fey, who was the head writer of Saturday Night Live. But the problem is that nothing ever progresses. My favorite episodes were when she had the boyfriend from Ohio, who was in the running for a big job at NBC. But soon he was gone, and everything was back to square one. That's okay to see once, but after a while it gets frustrating. Its obvious now that she's never going to find the right guy, or get a better job, or move on to movies, or have a baby, or become a star in her own right. At this point, I'd much rather see a show based on Fey's current life than her previous one, or at least a show that gradually moves in that general direction and keeps some kind of momentum. But that will never happen. Life is frozen in one spot, and after a few years it gets old.

This seems to be a problem with a lot of TV shows. It's almost as if they have a reset button at the end of every episode; no matter what happens in 30 minutes -a new job, a rival lover- by the end, everything is back to the way it was. The Seinfeld gang remained in their single early 30's for 10 years, hanging out in the same coffee shop talking about nothing. Bobby on King of the Hill comes close to reaching puberty, getting a girlfriend and coming out of his shell, but never quite seems to move beyond the sixth grade. Other shows change things with a reckless abandon that breaks the dynamics that made them interesting to watch in the first place. Soaps like Melrose Place have the characters coming and going, changing jobs and families and sleeping with one another in every mathematical combination.

The similarity with both types seems to be that neither seemed to have any plan of where to go beyond the first season. Its seems like the producers put all their energy into getting the pilot made and on the air, and none into what they would actually do with it if it was a success and lasted for more than a couple seasons. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this in recent times is Lost. JJ Abrams spiced up the pilot with all kinds of bizaare, unexplainable mysteries. When the show became a success, they had no choice but to invent new mysteries to keep the atmosphere the same. Trying to figure out the mysteries in Lost is like trying to chase a rainbow. No matter how far you follow it, you never quite reach it.

Its funny, because movies, which are usually one-shot deals and have much less incentive to worry about these things, seem to be figuring it out. Let me list off a few famous movie franchises-

Rocky, Rambo, Police Academy, The Karate Kid, Back to the Future, Scream

The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter

What's the difference between them? In the first case, you had a single movie that did really well and stood on its own. Then, they attempted to milk it by making more, with diminishing returns. In the case of some of them, you probably forgot that they were even supposed to be franchises, because history has forgotten all but the first. Occasionally a sequel will beat the original, but its up and down, and in the end, they all trail off into nothing. In the other, you have movies that had an overall arch that followed the characters for more than one movie. This is the reason star wars held up so well through the first two sequels, because the story had a momentum to it.

TV series, which are designed to last several years and for several hundred more hours of footage, have much more reason to think this way, not less. Obviously, the writers cant script out 3 years of shows before it even gets picked up. But they should at least have a general idea of where its going to go in advance, even if it takes years and years to get all the way there.

I think the best way to do it is to dole out small, incremental changes every other season or so, just enough to give the show fresh material to draw off and give the sense that the characters' lives are progressing, but not enough to break the dynamic that made the show a hit in the first place. The best example of this that I can think of right now is Entourage. Slowly, Eric is branching out on his own and finding other clients, Ari has started his own company, Johnny has gotten a part on a pretty successful TV show, and Turtle has a girlfriend. But the show still revolves around Vincent and the ups and downs of his career, which moves along at a satisfactory rate, but never quite takes him to a level of fame where he doesn't have to worry anymore.