Death to the limited series, long live network! A ‘9-1-1′ case study
In the opening episodes of season eight of “9-1-1,” a storm of killer bees (affectionately dubbed “beenado” by fans, à la “Sharknado”) descends upon Los Angeles, wreaking havoc across town. A casual or first-time watcher of the show might be taken aback by the absurdity of this situation, but long time viewers know it’s just par for the course; the previous season opened with a cruise ship disaster, the one before it with a blimp accident, and the one before that featured a city-wide blackout and heatwave, leading animals from the L.A. zoo to run free downtown. Network television — and “9-1-1″ in particular — has never shied away from the ridiculous or the unrealistic. And in an industry that is becoming increasingly risk-averse, maybe absurdity is the answer.
Created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear, “9-1-1″ follows the lives of first responders in Los Angeles. Although it primarily focuses on the firefighters and paramedics at the fictional 118 firehouse, the ensemble of characters also includes cops, dispatch operators and the first responders’ families. “9-1-1″ aired on Fox until 2023, when it switched networks to ABC ahead of its seventh season. As of publication, the show is in a mid-season eight hiatus, and scheduled to return to ABC in early March of 2025.
“9-1-1″ is, by definition, a network television show. While new episodes first air on ABC and are available to watch on Hulu the next day, the show still has to follow the Federal Communications Commission’s rules for network television. But in an age of TV where shows such as “Game of Thrones” found millions of fans and didn’t have to follow the FCC’s content rules, more and more people are cutting their cable in favor of streaming subscriptions.
And yet, despite the online popularity of many made-for-streaming shows, when you take a look at the numbers, there’s a bit of a baffling conundrum that arises; the highly-anticipated “Succession” series finale last year garnered roughly 2.9 million live viewers, and in contrast, the “9-1-1″ mid-season eight finale that aired this November had about 4.6 million live viewers. In terms of online impact and critical acclaim, “Succession” made far more waves than “9-1-1″ currently is. So who is watching this show?
Well, I am, for one. I would say it’s a generational thing (I’m of the older bunch of Gen Z who still remembers when Netflix was only a DVD service), but almost none of my friends are watching a network television show that’s currently on air. But to me, network is what I know, and what I was raised on. Growing up, lazy afternoons in my household consisted of my grandma and I watching “Bones” or “The Mentalist.” My parents and I eagerly awaited new episodes of “White Collar” each week, and as I got older, I picked up “Parks and Recreation” and “New Girl.”
Even in college, when I only had streaming services at my disposal, I found myself finally finishing “Downton Abbey,” re-watching “The West Wing,” or starting shows such as “House” and “Gilmore Girls.” As someone who quite universally loves television and film, I’m willing to try almost anything once. I’ll watch all of these shows and more, and still make time for more critically acclaimed series like “The Wire.” But there’s just something about the format of network television that keeps me coming back, and keeps me interested.
There’s a certain beauty to a long-running television show that’s almost impossible to find in any other medium. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed recent limited series such as “Baby Reindeer” and “One Day,” but despite how compelling they might be in their format, I always wonder what the same story would look like as a feature film instead.
It’s an old way of thought, but television is widely regarded as a character’s medium, whereas film is for exploring plot. There have always been exceptions, but there is truth in the idea that a multi-episode series simply has more room to explore the intricacies of a character than a film does. Long-running shows, then, get the full benefit of this concept. When you watch a character change over the course of seasons, you get the feeling that you’re growing with them, and that you’re looking into (and to an extent living in) another world. You see this character once a week on your television screen for years at a time, which is more often than some people see their families. It’s no wonder we get attached.
Which brings me to my case study: “9-1-1.”
The thing about “9-1-1″’s Evan “Buck” Buckley is that I would die for him. That’s hyperbolic, and far too dramatic of a thing to say about a fictional character, but in truth, I am quite attached. I started watching “9-1-1″ in 2020, right before I was sent home from college due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show was in the middle of its third season at the time, and when my spring semester ended and I was still stuck at home for the foreseeable future, I had caught up to it. This show, perhaps because I absorbed it in a time of great uncertainty, perhaps because I just love network television and perhaps because of Buck, got stuck in my brain. I’ve been a regular watcher ever since.
Buck has a trajectory like no other over the course of this show so far. We meet him as a hotshot firefighter, an arrogant player who steals a ladder truck for a hookup. At the beginning of “9-1-1,” he’s a bit unbearable. But we soon learn his backstory, and we then see him grow, learn and use the lessons he’s learned to not only better his life, but the lives of the people around him. He’s not without flaw, but the growth he experiences by virtue of the years he’s existed on this show was only achievable by just that: Time.
If “9-1-1″ had ended years ago, I can’t say whether we’d have seen Buck assess his injuries and reconsider his life as a firefighter. I can’t say whether he’d have been allowed to be welcomed into his co-worker Eddie’s family and at times essentially co-parent Eddie’s son. I can’t say whether the arc of reconciliation after he sues the fire department would have even been explored, let alone to the degree that it is. I also can’t say, as has become evident with season seven, whether the subject of Buck’s sexuality would have been fleshed out.
Limited and short series necessitate a firmness in characters and their growth. As a writer for a limited series you want your characters to evolve, but you also know certain key facts about them and how those facts impact the way they respond to and interact with their world. They evolve the way the writer(s) predict and want them to; there’s little room for other factors to play into this evolution. Like a movie, really.
Character arcs on network shows, on the other hand, while still determined by writers’ choices, allow for a level of play as a result of acting choices and audience reaction. Buck, for example, while not explicitly said to be anything other than straight prior to the episode in question (episode four of season seven!), displayed hints in his entire time on this show. The allowance for exploration given to a character like him means that all of the double-meaning sentences, looks of implication and loaded body language are no longer a case of queerbaiting, and suddenly a case of foreshadowing. (Which is perhaps a can of worms on its own, but that’s for another day).
While I do praise the storytelling flexibility of a long-running show, it’s important to note that a series isn’t inherently better because it’s on for more than three seasons. I (perhaps infamously, at least within my circle) wrote a 6,000+ word blog post about “Supernatural” after it ended, covering many subjects, but also how the show’s quality was negatively affected by how long it ran (15 seasons!). Beating the dead horse until it stops spitting up money is never a good plan of action, and a series should end when it feels right to end it — “Schitt’s Creek” did a great job of this. However, when a show only gets two seasons and then is unexpectedly canceled, there’s lost potential. When series are repeatedly made with single seasons only to not be continued, there’s even more lost opportunity.
“9-1-1″ is not immune to the pitfalls of a long-running show. In its 115 episodes thus far, there have been countless dropped storylines, continuity errors and shallow or rushed plots as a result of pacing and screen-time constraints. More doesn’t equal better, but more does equal more — more room for growth, exploration and play. As season 8B of “9-1-1″ approaches and seasons beyond are potentially made, it will be interesting to see how the show continues to reinvent itself and stay interesting.
Continually making one-season shows with a single, overarching storyline feels like an affront to the medium of television as a whole, because it likens television to film. TV stories aren’t inherently low-brow in comparison to film (a commonly-held thought of the past), but taking the format of movies and slathering it over the format of television isn’t the solution to prove otherwise. Some of the most acclaimed shows of all time, from “The Sopranos” to “The Wire,” from “Breaking Bad” to “Succession,” all ran for many, many seasons. A show like “Maniac” made waves when it was released, but is anyone talking about it now? How about “Baby Reindeer,” or “Say Nothing” — will they make waves beyond this media cycle? Even if a show receives new life via awards nominations or wins, where does it live in the public’s imagination or memory, just one year later?
All this to say: the kind of evolution and exploration seen in network television shows, to me, feels nearly impossible to achieve with the current made-for-binging streaming model. This model creates a different kind of work ethic than network television does, as “Supernatural” and “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke alluded to in an interview with Vulture. The “downside of streaming,” Kripke said, “is that a lot of filmmakers who work in streaming didn’t necessarily come out of that network grind.” There’s a distinct mentality that’s borne out of network television, that goes beyond the writer’s room and onto set with the actors.
Streaming shows and limited series are generally shot all at once, meaning that actors can schedule more projects in a given year (perhaps a necessity given that they receive less in residuals from streaming shows than network, but I digress). The big argument against network TV, from an actor’s perspective, likely boils down to the fact that being on those kinds of shows locks you in for ages. Having most of your year taken up by filming a show week-by-week not only means less time for other projects, it also means that jumping from television to film is quite difficult — a jump that’s been notoriously and historically hard to pull off.
But there’s also a “bootcamp” quality to network shows that shorter streaming series lack. Charles Melton, show-stealer of Todd Haynes’ 2023 film, “May December,” told Entertainment Weekly that his many years acting on the CW’s “Riverdale” prepared him for his future in the film industry: “I learned so much about the filmmaking process, and I had fun. It was my academy of acting — exploring and taking risks.”
And that risk, the kind that comes with seeing weekly audience reactions and having to keep people engaged over a long period of time — well, that only comes with network shows. Dropping an entire season of rushed television into the void of a streaming service is the television equivalent of pushing for remakes and stories based on pre-existing intellectual property; it’s all less risky.
The film industry in a big way and TV industry as well, now, doesn’t encourage risk and experimentation, because doing so means there’s a lot — namely money — at stake. And the problem there is that this is a loser’s industry. When films flop and when TV isn’t well-received, it pushes for growth. Art on the whole improves when artists are allowed to fail every now and then. Instead, shows are hinted at having second seasons only to be canceled, maybe before they would have organically found audiences. And audiences themselves are tired; I can’t count how many times I’ve heard friends say they hesitate to start new shows for fear that they’ll get attached or invested only for the show to get canceled.
Audiences deserve the payoff of years-long slow burns like Josh and Donna’s relationship on “The West Wing.” They deserve complicated and compelling plots like those on “The X Files.” They also deserve layered and continually-evolving characters like Buck on “9-1-1.” This is all possible to achieve through made-for-streaming shows, but in lieu of that, given the current state of the streaming industry, maybe the answer is taking cues from network television and its tried-and-true methods of storytelling. I don’t think streaming and shorter series are inherently bad, or that we should go fully back to purely network (though with the way streaming services are currently consolidating and becoming more expensive, who knows). But I do think the industry as a whole needs to learn to take risks again, and maybe people going back to the good old days will help with that. If there’s anything the 2023 “Suits” resurgence taught us: the people yearn for network TV.
