TV’s buzziest shows aren’t trying to trick viewers anymore
Thoughts on TV’s slow embrace of the anti-mystery-box show. https://t.co/aqT1zwWrYT
- Emily St. James (of the South Dakota St. Jameses) (@emilyvdw) January 17, 2022
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TV viewer who grew up watching The X-Files and Lost are still looking for clues and theories in evey show today
but a lot of shows today don't operate like that anymore. what you see is what you get. what they tell you is what is happening
[the Mystery Box is the term that J.J. Abrams uses to explain the structure of a good mystery story: you drop people into the middle of a mystery-in-progress that leaves them wanting to know answers]
On Yellowjackets Adam is just a random guy, spoiler really is dead, spoiler is the antler queen. All things that were pretty obvious from the start but fans were sure there must be more to it
Succession has very straightforward storytelling but fans were sure that there must be some kind of surprising twist.
Yellowstone is not a show that kills of people but the last season ended with everyone's life in peril and fans were worried. ofc no one died
our world in 2022 is so full of conspiracies already, we don't need that stuff on tv as well. And people are burned out from mystery box shows.
[interesting side note: Emily said she interviewed Chris Carter (X-Files) for a book and he is very troubled about the show being ground zero for a lot of american conspiracies today]
This is very good. I’ve seen a lot of overthinking of Yellowjackets’ mysteries, in part because we’ve been trained by serialized TV to theorize about even the most straightforward things. Lots of looking for zebras when the horses are right there in front of us. https://t.co/UExAN95N7Z
- Alan Sepinwall (@sepinwall) January 17, 2022