Quote:
Originally Posted by Goofle
Also Homicide: Life on the Street is the show that made it all possible.
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No. Shows like H:LOTS and Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue were gritty as hell, and they maintained all of the key characters, but they added new main plots with each episode. Yes, Sippowitz was an alcoholic during an entire season, but that was just a side bar to the new **** they'd bring in every week - that had nothing to do with the previous week in most cases.
Breaking Bad, The Wire, Sopranos, etc. kept pretty much a singular take going on for multiple seasons. They'd add new little arcs but the story line stayed solid to the origins of the show.
Unlike previous episodic dramas, these shows basically took an extended length movie with a solid fictional story premise, and then chopped it up into sections - leaving you with bated breath waiting for the next episode to take up where the last one left off.