Why are show runners like this now? They openly belly ache about it now. Something like Rick and Morty has made two or three episodes specifically to complain and piss and moan about continuity.
Harley Quinn show can not keep continuity between episodes, let alone seasons. Characters have major character shifts from episode to episode and season to season. Clayface in season 1 is not the same as season 4 and there isn't a real plot reason given. Its pretty clear they just wanted him out of the show so they could have b***h pudding Nora.
American Animators have been b***hing about this at least as far back to 95 with the Get a Life foundation bit.
Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon are two of the biggest hypocrites on this, because they constantly reference shows and movies that have continuity. Its clear that they both like it in the stuff they like, and yet they get so pissy about being beholden to it in their own stuff.
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They love to have their cake and eat it, same reason why multiverses are huge. It's all fun and games with no pesky rules or established lore to bog you down where you can write whatever you want
Pretty sure Rick and Morty has a lot of continuity, it just doesn't want to commit to a long term storyline.
You really have to wonder if Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon are both bipolar or both do a hilarious amount of coke because they are so hot and cold about this shit.
They establish so much lore. They do so many callbacks. They do so many old media references. Dan Harmon even made twitter posts about how he does stories, using the hereos journey.
Then they'll do episodes like the train episode that is just pissing and moaning about this stuff or just nuke 2 seasons of lore with mr. frundles or some shit. They just cycle back and forth between "hey guys, watch our show, its super neat, get invested." and "oh woopsy doodle pussy feathers, yolo mother frickers, its all garbage, put it in the trash"
its like that old 80s joke artist character that would put all their paintings in the garbage every 12 months because they had a mental break and thought everything they ever made was garbage. I vaguely remember there being one in Batteries not included and probably two other movies I cant remember the name of.
From what I can tell, the original Rick and Morty didn't wanna commit to an overarching story because they viewed the story as largely being the chaos that Rick brought into the family. This is why Rick's backstory was fully written yet deliberately vague, because what mattered more was where he is now, he'd already given up on the vengeance quest and what was more important was "deadbeat grandpa suddenly shows up."
To go further into this, the new writers then started committing more to overarching story and continuity but kept the kinds of jabs the original show took while no longer having what made those jabs so funny. If you look back at old interviews, the original writing staff said they had the backstory written and never planned to reveal it, as seasons 3 and 4 came around, that slowly changed as the new writers came in.
The result is the joke went from "the audience is laser focusing on stuff we have little to no plans of using in any meaningful capacity and we're being totally honest about that" to "the audience is laser focusing on plot points we set up so we'll make fun of them for getting invested in stuff we told them to take seriously."
rick and morty went to shit in season 3
many a writer would rather have fun and be cool than be bogged down by frequent "reminder that this happened too" stuff
that and sometimes the corporations they're writing for aren't good at communicating further details (as explained here)
>many a writer would rather have fun and be cool than be bogged down by frequent "reminder that this happened too" stuff
funny thats what a lot of them want while they also are big fans of serialized media.
I don't know what happened but in America, constraints and limitations became evil.
And having continuity became "oppressive", but if anything is everything then it's nothing.
This is one of the reasons I dislike the spider verse thing.
Yeah, they also get really meta to complain about it.
The second reason I don't like the spider man thing. (Canon events, more like I don't want to do my job)
If continuity and canon are eliminated, or made flexible beyond the point of having any impact, then corporations and creators can throw out whatever shit they want and it will be equally valid as the actual stories and character histories that came before it.
>Why do show runners now hate Continuity?
Because it's something that requires them to actually know the material instead of being free to make shit up as they please. They hate it because they don't like putting in effort.
It was originally because cartoons were just silly little moving comic books for kids. It evolved into a production issue where different writers would be working on different episodes at the same time and sometimes those episodes would go into production at wildly different times. Sometimes the network would just air episodes whenever they could, so attempts at continuity would get muddled. Then it was because syndication meant episodes would be aired out of order, so self-contained writing became the easier way to do things, with 2-parters being a rare treat, instead.
Now it's gone on so long that we've got generation after generation raised on that format and raised on shows that were influenced by that format to the point the continuity-driven, serialized storytelling is more of a novelty or a breaking from tradition, than the norm. And it doesn't help that the majority of people working in the entertainment industry have zero skill for planning out long-form storylines, let alone just planning out a production and organizing a team. It was already pretty rare to have a single minded showrunner who could wrangle things for an entire season, let alone several of them, and most of those guys end up working for "respectable" companies like HBO making shows like Breaking Bad.
AMC and Sony did Breaking Bad.
It's probably because the next season isn't guaranteed for most people and studios execs probably like the idea of being able to air shit out of order.
Then there's the possibility of a SpongeBob situation where it takes years to finish a single season because new episodes are only aired when Nickelodeon feels like it.
they are not making shows per se, they are trying to promote a franchise.
Because "creators" don't like reading up on shit.
Shows having heavy continuity has pretty much taken over television, it shouldn't be surprising that there would be an eventual backlash to it. Not every piece of media needs to fit a specific mold to be creatively fulfilling.
I'd say one major downside to long-term storytelling in television/streaming is that if your planned story is for multiple seasons, you never know if the network/streaming service is going to cancel your show before you finish. An episodic series won't feel incomplete if you don't get renewed for a second season.
As a viewer, I generally prefer serialized storytelling, but I can understand why a creative might not want to pursue that.
Live action TV is a different can of worms, there are a number of issues, look at the MCU or the ending of How I met Your Mother. You have to consider how the actors will age, who you can get to come back as they need to, actors getting into scandals/injured/arrested/dying, actors who take off from their roles in the show and are more expensive as time goes on. And that's just the actors. You also have to consider the maintenance of props and the plan for the original show almost always changes between seasons due to all the cooks in the kitchen.
Keep in mind, you have to pace that stuff perfectly. If it goes too fast the audience loses interest, if it goes too slow the audience loses interest.
Get to the ending too fast and it will lack the impact, get to the ending too slow and people will start tuning out.
The reality is serialized stories are just way easier to do now because people don't have to worry about time slots or missed episodes, which is why all the stuff you see on cable is still largely episodic