A reader writes:
The television vs. novels comparison is amusing but seems uninformed. Weren't a lot of the great novels originally published as serials? Dickens comes to mind. Just a few off the top of my head: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Madame Bovary. Most didn't feel the need to make each chapter completely self-contained just because they came out one at a time. Why shouldn't television producers?
Another adds, "Our biggest literary hits today are series of novels – Game of Thrones, Harry Potter – not single-volume novels." Another reader:
Before VCRs, let alone DVR and streaming video, it made sense to keep episodes more self-contained, since you had to wait for rerun season to catch one you missed. Soap operas were an exception, though there were print publications to keep readers up to date, plus the plots could move so slowly you wouldn't get lost missing a day or two. But now? If audiences like long-term storylines, go for it. If I miss a few, I can always catch up on Hulu before I watch the series finale.
Another:
The problem with "The Sopranos" was not that it didn't fit the medium of television. The problem was that the medium was constantly redefined relative to the show as it became more and more successful. Storytelling relies on an understanding of the beginning and end in order to make the middle coherent. This is axiomatic. If you begin a story with a narrative arc of one or two years, but you keep pushing the ending out in order to cash in, you're going to hurt the work. That's not a TV problem; it's a greedy-storyteller-selling-out problem – not that I have any problem with that.
Regarding the above video, which highlights the most maddening plot holes in "Lost":
Both [the 3rd and 4th] seasons had their problems, but most of them were related to the unexpected success of the show itself. Like any network, ABC was ready to milk "Lost" for all it was worth. That meant that the loose "five year plan" for the series had to be stretched out, and the writers struggled to keep the momentum going.
The Dish 