What an exciting scene! And who are all you people?
A copy of "Battlestar Galactica Season 4.0" landed on my desk today. And, as has been the case with some previous "BSG" on DVD, I asked myself if it was finally the right time to start watching the show. Especially if I started watching without going too far back into previous episodes. … (Also, another "BSG"-related item is here.)
"It's far too late," says Sepinwall, who contends that the show's narrative is too dense to allow jumping in so late in the game. And there are shows like that, which are so deeply immersed in their own history that a belated arrival can cost you a lot of nuances.
I think "Homicide: Life on the Street" was like that, and there's no question that "The Wire" was. Indeed, when I asked Sepinwall when he thought it was too late to get into "The Wire," he flatly said, "Episode 2." "The Shield" felt a little more accessible, but you obviously got more out of it when you watched from the beginning. "CSI," with the events leading up to Grissom's departure, certainly expected people to remember some old storylines, but it offered some explanation along the way; something like "Grey's Anatomy" has a lot of backstory on its characters but drops in enough references to who previously slept with whom to let new viewers catch up.
And up to now I've just been talking about dramas. Comedies, though, have their serialized aspects. Could a new viewer of "HIMYM" get the "Let's Go to the Mall" joke at the end of this week's episode? Or would a newcomer to "The Office" have been totally at sea last week, especially with things like Michael's reference to Jan?
So here's my question for you: When is it too late to join a show in progress? Any memories of trying to watch a show and just finding it impossible? And are there shows that are especially friendly to new viewers? (Other than "Law & Order," the monarch of drop-in-anytime series.) Your thoughts are welcome.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It depends on the show. It's WAY too late to start Battlestar Galactica without having seen the previous seasons. Nothing that happened would have any meaning for you. However, I started watching Homicide: LOTS in its sixth season, got hooked, and searched out the older episodes that were being rerun on Lifetime. And the 6th season isn't exactly H:LOTS' best! We started watching How I Met Your Mother at the beginning of last season and loved it, so we Netflixed (then bought) the DVDs for the first two seasons to catch up.
Both H:LOTS and HIMYM were episodic enough that most of the show could be deciphered by a new viewer. BSG is great, and might be intriguing to a new viewer, but they would miss a lot and the show would lose a lot of its impact.
On the other hand, we started watching The Shield at the start of its third season without knowing much about what had happened earlier on the show. It was easy enough to follow and we liked the show, so we borrowed the DVDs of the earlier seasons to catch up on what we had missed. BOY HOWDY, were we surprised by what happens at the end of the pilot! We knew the Strike Team did some questionable things, but we didn't realize just how much important information we were missing!
The "Shield" premiere was one of the great kick-offs to a show for exactly the reason you discovered — not only in what happened but in what it said about the Strike Team's ruthlessness.
My wife picked up BSG in 2006, and I'm STILL lost on who many of the characters are when we watch, despite my having now watched most of the first season on Netflix. As for HIMYM, I only really started watching that this season, but I got the joke since I'd seen some reruns from last season, and the full video on YouTube and elsewhere. And I started watching Homicide about midway through the third season, and always felt that I was fairly well-versed in the show (except for Crosetti's death, though I guess everyone was confused over that with NBC airing it out of sequence).
I think it would be very difficult/impossible for me to start watching Lost or Heroes right now, though thanks to Wikipedia and such, anyone can catch up with virtually anything before diving in. My wife caught up on 40+ years of Doctor Who history this way before the new show made its way across to the US.
You reminded me of another issue in all this. How much refreshing should we do with serialized shows before they start a new season? For instance, I'm probably going to have to go back to a couple of episodes of "Lost" from last season before I dive into the new one…
Well, Rich you could always put the Battlestar Galactica 4.0 in my mailbox.