Last night’s Heroes was the last in the current batch of sweeps episodes, before it heads into six weeks of reruns. I won’t spoil anything for those of you who haven’t been watching, but there were a couple of twists that took me by surprise, as well one that clarified a lot about who the “good guys” are in the current storyline. They’ve laid the groundwork for the rest of the season, and it seems clear from the story that they’re going to build up to a big climax this season and shift into new territory next year. If you missed it, you can catch it on NBC’s website — all of the episodes appear to be back up and streaming freely.

On the “Heroes Revealed” blog, a recent interview with series producer Tim Kring was linked and discussed — the big point being that Kring views Heroes as more like 24 in structure than a show like Lost, with its drawn-out, occasionally frustrating storyline. The author of that blog wonders that, if Heroes is analogous to 24, who the “Jack Bauer” is in Heroes. I find that an extremely weird question. Why in the world would someone take Kring’s statement so literally?

What seems like a more reasonable read is that Kring’s saying Heroes will reach a pretty solid conclusion to this season’s stories (presumably: the explosion in New York, Sylar, and maybe even Mr. Bennet/”The Company”), then move on to a new set of stories in season 2. Rather than look for how the characters in Heroes map onto characters in other TV shows, I find it interesting to contemplate how knowledge of the narrative structure of a show affects how fans might participate with and theorize about the show.

For example, I believe there’s been far too much whining online lately about how Lost has faltered in its third season, and how Heroes is the future of this new breed of not-quite-genre-not-quite-mainstream television. I suspect that much of the discussion has been based not on the merits of the two shows, but on the viewer expectations of what the narrative structure should be. This has impact not only on TV ratings, but how DVDs have impacted how people watch television. Do people view television series differently on DVD than on a weekly basis? Do they view shows differently when they expect conclusions will come sooner rather than later? Does this impact how fans participate online in communities discussing the shows?

First, I’ll just lay out the continuum as I see it, where what I interpret as the “important story” (yeah, vague, I know) gets put in these stories. Moving from TV series in which the stories are largely self-contained within each episode to series in which the “important story” stretches out over multiple seasons, I’ll describe what I view as the various kinds of shows in between.

• The Star Trek Model: This model is much broader than just genre TV, including everything from Dragnet to Walker: Texas Ranger. For our purposes, though, Star Trek: The Next Generation, much of Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the first two years of Enterprise fit into this category. It encompasses most of the original Doctor Who(collapsing over individual episodes to storyline), Lost in Space, The Prisoner, you name it. Episodes of these shows feature a single plotline, little (if any) connection to recurring storylines, and most all of the “important story” is wrapped up neatly by episode’s end. There may be larger storylines that drive the plot of the whole show (e.g., Quantum Leap, The Fugitive, Kung Fu), but elements of those rarely show up other than at the beginning and the end of a series.
• The X-Files Model: Shows like this are largely episodic with with occasional dips into larger, recurring mythologies. The X-Files‘s DVD marketing even banks on knowledge of this model — separate “mythology” DVD sets exist for the show, for those DVD purchasers who wish to ignore the self-contained “monster of the week” episodes. I also put series such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly (maybe, we never really got to see with this one), Veronica Mars, and the new Doctor Who series into these categories — though an argument could be made for the latter two fitting in the next category.
• The 24 Model: These shows have largely self-contained “season” storylines, with relatively clear season-specific plot points, often a blurring of story from one episode to another, and even season-specific actors. The first show I can recall that did this in the U.S. was Murder One, but perhaps Twin Peaks loosely fits into the category with its two “important stories” (the murder of Laura Palmer, and the conflict with Windom Earle). Presently, we can see that Heroes is following 24 as another prominent example. Veronica Mars is an odd case — there are season-specific mysteries to be sure, but each episode’s emphasis on a “mystery of the week” detracts from the narrative drive of the “big story,” in my opinion. Better examples of season-contained series include The Wire, Deadwood, and many British TV shows (Life on Mars a recent genre example). I suspect that the HBO/Showtime/BBC/ITV focus on season-contained series often have to do with the mechanics of how those shows get produced as well as broadcast format differences between cable/UK television and American broadcast TV.
• The Lost Model: These shows each feature an overarching “important storyline” that is less recurring than slowly choreographed — the way that Lost has dropped nuggets from the beginning of the series points toward a large, slowly-unfolding story more than season-specific contained arcs. That is, a story that’s been developed by creators from the outset and is plotted over several years, with a specific end in sight. Shows like Babylon 5 sort of fit in here, even though each season had specific themes. In this category, each season is, essentially, a chapter in an unfolding novel. These shows have been few and far between, and the nature of how television gets made (actors, writers, producers leaving, new blood coming in, involvement of TV networks on production, etc.) mitigates more of this ending up on our screens.

So, there’s going to be a tension between easily-digestible episodic TV and the arc-driven TV that results from the economics of television production — I’d wager that’s been established by someone (though, not being a media guy, I don’t know who). What I don’t know is how significantly all of this is changing due to the presence of DVDs and, presumably, online viewing. Does being able to watch a season of a TV show in a marathon change one’s expectations if they later view it in weekly installments? Are there differences in the ways that viewers approach a show if they expect it is one model but the creators view it as another?

Like I’ve said a few times, I’m an academic in the learning sciences, not in media studies. However, I’m becoming increasingly interested in what fan communities do with various kinds of media, and I have a gut feeling that these structural issues must play a role in the kinds of fan involvement in these series. In my next post, I’ll explore a little about how I think these structural issues might influence learning and participatory culture in these TV fan spaces, focusing on Heroes and Lost.