A Long Time Ago, There Used to Be Twenty-Two Episodes
Should we mourn the simmer, or let it go quietly?
I’m rewatching Veronica Mars. It’s so good. And there’s so, so many episodes.
If you’re not familiar, Veronica Mars is a 2004 hour-long drama that aired on USA (USA?!?!?1). It’s a Neo-noir about teenaged detective Veronica Mars, played to absolute perfection by an obviously already brilliant Kristen Bell. One of its greatest acts of service was that it gave us the confusingly irresistible and since massively underutilized Jason Dohring. And it served up some brilliant mystery.
Over the course of twenty-two episodes, all of these mysteries are untangled. Of course, twenty-two episodes would be too long to solve only these three mysteries. So each episode has its own stand-alone case of the week. These vary slightly in quality, but the show does a good job of choosing entertaining mysteries.
At the time, this was groundbreaking. It retained the classic procedural “case of the week” element, but the characters grew and changed, and each episode mattered to the overall story of the season. That doesn’t sound unusual now, but a procedural like that on a network in 2004 was so strange, that USA made the creator, Rob Thomas,2 break the second season up into two mystery halves. The show suffered because this is obviously a terrible network-fueled compromise, and the only truly great season of Veronica Mars is the first, though what a great season it is. And truly astounding that it was allowed to exist.
What I’ve realized is that season one of Veronica Mars is, in retrospect, a historical artifact unparalleled in its rarity. We have plenty of television now that tells a season-long story, though not in twenty-two episodes. And we have plenty of television from the pre-peak-tv era that have twenty-two pretty-good episode seasons.
There was such a small window of twenty-two episodes where a story is unravelled over the course of all of them. Seriously, this was like a six/seven year window, maybe from 2003-2010. I’m not an hour-long drama expert, but I often hear examples like Fringe, The Good Wife, and Lost (though I personally think that show is a failure and Lindelof went on to prove himself, twice, in a less restricted format on HBO). Also, for the record, it seems to me that Buffy, X-Files, and Star Trek fit in this category and were very early adopters. Still, there really was this small window for network procedurals with truly ongoing stories that had beats in every episode.
When tv first started shifting, when HBO let show runners take risks that shows with commercial breaks simply couldn’t withstand, structure-wise, I was so happy. Artistic freedom, I thought. Breaking Bad and Mad Men really shook things up on cable, nothing procedural about them at all3. I think peak tv probably peaked with Watchmen in 2019 (Lindelof masterpiece #2). I’ve known that the hour-long twenty-two episode season was more or less on its way out for years, but I haven’t thought to stop and mourn it until now, Veronica Mars reminding me of what we stand to lose. I’ve wanted twenty-two episode seasons of mediocre sitcoms back for a long time now because I like them and find them valuable and comforting, but I had forgotten that dramas like Veronica Mars very much existed in excellence.
The thing that I’d forgotten, is part of what makes Veronica Mars so good, is the simmer. At some point, around episode 5, you start thinking: “Wait. Do Veronica and Logan…have chemistry? Am I making this up or is it there?” The writers have since confirmed that they planned this from the start. And that question sticks in your brain and you slowly watch it unfold…it draws you into the world of the show. In my rewatch I have both remembered and re-experienced the feeling of LIVING inside a show. The characters are so cool and interesting and funny, the world of Neptune is so disgustingly alluring, with its seedy California wealth, that you can’t help but want to cocoon into the show. This hasn’t happened to me with any new television lately, at all.
Maybe we’re losing more than I realized, artistically, with what is now clearly the total ascension of streamers. We’re losing the chance for a truly exceptional show runner to give us a world big enough to get lost in.
What if twenty-two episodes was less an advertising-fueled format and more a perfect little art form unto itself? And why didn’t I ever consider that this was true at the time? Why, like so many commercial things, am I only finding the sweetness in the constraint of it as I get older? Like romance and mystery novels? I don’t think albums really sell anymore, but man, an album certainly makes sense for pop music as a unit, and artists keep making albums.
Can you imagine waking into Max and demanding they buy twenty-two episodes of anything? Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe that’ll be my bit from now on. I’m the twenty-two episode writer. Give me five seasons and I’ll give you that sweet, sweet syndication that literally no one cares about anymore.
Or maybe it’s better to just let twenty-two episodes ride off into the sunset, and be fine with that. Maybe I’m just nostalgic. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll let Severance season two decide for me. More on that soon.
Maybe, what I have, is a pretty fun question. What is the best twenty-two episode season television of tv ever made? I think it might be season one of Veronica Mars
PSA: USA does not currently have any original programming!!! What a world.
Nope, different guy.
Like all good episodic stories, these two shows actually do have something of a procedure to all of their episodes, but I’m talking the classical definition of procedural here.