Wow -- that is my rating for this episode If you the reader will indulge me I want to repeat a rant I have made before.
Early TV dramas in the 50s and 60s did indeed have two arcs. The short or episodic arc and the long or "impossible" arc. The point of the impossible arc was that, once resolved, the series was over. Literally.
When The Fugitive proved he was innocent, the series was over and there was no interest in residuals. When Ben Gazarra in RUN FOR YOUR LIFE stopped running, so did the series. When David Carradine found his brother in KUNG FU, it was curtains.
Some shows avoided the problem entirely by making the long arc "romantic" and therefore trivial or forgettable. Look at the CSI series.
This changed in the 1990s when Joss Whedon for a brief period of time ran two hit series on two networks. The writing changed the face of TV, although it took 20 years for everyone to catch up. Whedon showed how the long arc, if teased, could be potentially more interesting than the short arc.
Which was heresy at the time. But he did it nonetheless.
Which is why Whedon is managing the Marvel library -- and you aren't.
I was watching this episode, with really interesting stuff happening, the Tom Keene character killing someone for the sheer joy; people injecting themselves with the deadliest toxin around; a major scientist in a looney bin; some sort of apocalypse coming, and I realized to my own amazement I was more interested in the Lizzie-Reddington connection (will she stay mad at him?) than the end of the world.
The long arc had me hooked. The end of the world I could live with. But I wanted to know who Red was to Lizzie.
My oh my has TV changed.
Where is the credit to Joss Whedon?
