Ryan McGee wonders if the channel commonly credited with ushering in TV's "Golden Age" has actually damaged the medium:
HBO has shifted its model to produce televised novels, in which chapters unfold as part and parcel of a larger whole rather than serving the individual piece itself. Here’s the problem: A television show is not a novel. That’s not to put one above the other. It’s simply meant to illuminate that each piece of art has to accomplish different things. HBO’s apparent lack of awareness of this difference has filtered into its product, and also filtered into the product of nearly every other network as well.
James Poniewozik counters:
It’s true that a TV series is not a novel. But it’s also not a movie. Every medium works best when it takes advantage of what’s distinctive about it. TV is linear and cumulative, allowing a story to unfold over weeks, months or years. There were good business reasons to structure TV stories that began and ended within one episode, and many of them are still best told that way, but the ability to spread a story out is part of what makes TV TV.
Jason Mittell and Kathryn VanArendonk pile on McGee.
The Dish 