The biggest mystery on TV is how every show became a puzzle box

March 30, 2019 7:52 AM

There's never been a better time to be an enormous dork who loves puzzles. Late-2010s television has been dominated by the puzzle box, a narrative form that centers on unpacking a central mystery, exemplified in zeitgeist-capturing shows like Westworld, Russian Doll, and The Good Place.
posted by Etrigan (69 comments total)

Now can anyone deduce the secret that connects them all?


(and does Good Place World come before or after the crisis in WestWorld?)
posted by sammyo at 8:23 AM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Now can anyone deduce the secret that connects them all?

I won't lie, I honestly think the popularity is tied to the fact that at least with a television show, you can expect things to get wrapped up in a neat little bow, or hope to anyway.

In real life, truth is nearly dead and we all struggle to make sense of the modern world. Having a story you know has a resolution, no matter how confusing it initially might be, is likely very cathartic in chaotic modern world full of propaganda, marketing, and lies (not to say lies aren't part and parcel to propaganda and marketing, they are).

It's honestly the same reason people get caught up in conspiracies or long-form-news/documentaries that attempt to root out "the truth of the matter" (no matter how biased that truth might be). Same reason I assume stuff like "Making of a Murderer" is popular as well, because people want to tease out the details and get an answer to the mystery.

I mean, just the other day at work, DB Cooper came up randomly, and everyone, regardless of age, had something to say about it. Mysteries are just something that pull people in general, and we're at a fever pitch in history of mysteries because we have grown up with an internet that has basically exposed the dark underbelly of basically every major world institution (corporations, governments, religions, all their dirty laundry is out to dry these days), leaving the populace to be reasonably very skeptical about a lot of issues.

It's kind of like how I think Universal Healthcare will help solve the anti-vaxxer problem, because a large majority of anti-vaxxers don't trust pharmaceutical companies because they exist to make a profit, not to help people. The problem is they are not wrong about pharmaceutical companies focusing on profit over the health of the people of the world, and they use their correctness about that to extend the conspiracy to include all vaccines. (Remove the profit motive, they'll have to come up with another conspiracy for why vaccines are bad.)

So we live in a duplicitous world that gives basically everybody what they think is a valid reason to believe in SOME sort of conspiracy or another, because why would you believe anything when all evidence points to basically everyone on the planet lying to you for their own benefit?

And I think living in that duplicitous world is why people are being more and more drawn to mysteries that can be "solved." It's been shown conspiracy theorists have a positive sense of feeling like they "know" something that others do not, that they feel special for knowing a truth others don't. I mean god damn if I don't get the same feeling when I've teased out a detail on a show no one else has noticed. I hold a TRUTH no one else has caught. I absolutely believe both feelings stem from the same source emotional state. (Take that other Over the Garden Wall theorizers!)

TL;DR: Mystery shows are popular because our modern world is one big open-book conspiracy where everyone is gaming each other and jockeying for position over one another, in an endlessly confusing cascade. TV mysteries are just easier to digest but still give the same feeling of touching on a "truth" that no one else has seen or understands.
posted by deadaluspark at 8:23 AM on March 30, 2019 [25 favorites]

Yeah, I do not love this trend. I'm much more wired to glom on to characters than plot, and honestly my memory is so shitty and already overburdened that I can't keep all the salient flashbacks within flashbacks within alternate timelines straight. I have to rewatch the previous season immediately before the new one drops to get anything out of it at all. (Just about to start this project with Legion, recently finished with the Game of Thrones prep.) I have to study for my TV shows and that seems like maybe not the greatest use of my time.

I think what I've discovered is that because of my abject badness at solving the puzzle boxes, I have had to develop a pretty keen eye for what (if anything--often it's not anything) the creator is actually trying to say about the human condition. If a puzzle box show also has that going for it, and it's reasonably interesting/not horribly offensive, I'll ride along (being happily confused the entire time). If not? I'm out. (Points for style may also be awarded.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:27 AM on March 30, 2019 [19 favorites]

Also, I blame the X-Files. The tragedy is that the mytharc episodes we're always just the worst,v and in the rebooted episodes with Chris Carter still trying to make fetch happen, they continue to to be the worst, and everyone learned the wrong lesson from the popularity of that show.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:29 AM on March 30, 2019 [29 favorites]

@soren_lorenson

Totally with you on both points. Not a big fan of the puzzle box shows, definitely also lean toward strong character development over plot.

I often say about "spoilers:" If something is spoiled by telling me the plot, and nothing about the characters, it likely wasn't very well written to begin with, and so you didn't spoil anything for me at all.

and everyone learned the wrong lesson from the popularity of that show.

Could not be more apt of a statement.
posted by deadaluspark at 8:31 AM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

and does Good Place World come before or after the crisis in WestWorld?

Both. Jeremy Bearimy, baby.

I like these shows and this trend makes me happy.
posted by a hat out of hell at 8:35 AM on March 30, 2019 [22 favorites]

Mad Men dealt with this well by solving the “who’s Don Draper” issue for the audience pretty quickly and focusing on the mystery’s impact on the characters (as well as expanding the story far far beyond that).
posted by sallybrown at 8:36 AM on March 30, 2019 [13 favorites]

3) After all that, you’re basically let down

That's the thing. I wouldn't mind the mystery box if there was anything interesting in it once it's finally opened but there seldom (or ever) is.
posted by octothorpe at 9:08 AM on March 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

soren_lorensen and daedaluspark, if you need character-driven stories, then The Good Place and Russian Doll are the shows for you. Both use their puzzle box conceits to illuminate the human condition in general and their uniquely drawn protagonists in specific. In both, the characters drive the puzzle and not the other way around.
posted by ejs at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2019 [22 favorites]

wouldn't mind the mystery box

Ever actually worked through a reasonably good chinese mystery box? Some are really subtle and clever/hard!! Well unless the smartass uncle left a coin that at first glance might be a super valuable indian head it's empty inside, it's just a box. (and the indian head is worth 5-6 bucks at most anyway).

Which is to say, sometimes the hunt is all there is, and that's good too.
posted by sammyo at 9:18 AM on March 30, 2019 [6 favorites]

The puzzle box is a lot of why I've loved Roswell, New Mexico so much. Every bit more of the mystery let's us get to know these characters a bit better and try to figure out both what's going on and what have they been living with. (They all need lots of alien-friendly therapy, honestly.)
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:19 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

Which is why these series are better when they try to grapple with mortality and morality and trauma

Strong disagree. The weakest parts by far of The Good Place and Russian Doll, imo, have been the incredibly hackneyed character arcs where someone realises they have to stop kicking puppies and learn how to love, or similar, and the best bits have been when the shows have been visually / formally / narratively inventive or just plain funny. I'll take a twisty stylish plot-driven puzzle box over a touchy-feely 'the universe has brought us together to teach us IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS' one any day, just so long as the plot is actually coherent (a high bar, admittedly).
posted by Panthalassa at 9:21 AM on March 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

The tragedy is that the mytharc episodes we're always just the worst

The really appalling thing is that this was widely recognised at the time, yet the new series leaned into it any way like Carter had something to prove.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:27 AM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

(He did succeed in proving that he's not nearly as good at making decent television as he ever got credit for.)
posted by tobascodagama at 9:28 AM on March 30, 2019 [7 favorites]

Yeah, he proved pretty conclusively that there's a reason he did nothing substantial after the X-Files. He had one good idea one time and that was apparently his lot.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:31 AM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

> Now can anyone deduce the secret that connects them all?

🤨

Tommy Westphall, of course.
posted by glonous keming at 9:44 AM on March 30, 2019 [19 favorites]

Honestly, Dallas was probably the first supposed puzzle box show, without any real solution to be sought but lots and lots of water cooler talk about what went on every week and who had what underlying motive and where things would go next.

I mean, even getting back into Twin Peaks days, we're still in the universe of very limited channel choice. People were all watching the same thing, and were talking about it. Now it's rare to know someone IRL who is watching what you're watching, but you can find them online. And you have people getting paid to write summaries and recaps that work through details and help speculate "with you" about the show...

It's an interesting ecosystem. The show feeds the watchers and the watchers feed the watchers. And all of that feeds into the success of the show. There are shows that are wildly popular that have been on for over a decade that I have never watched (Supernatural, I'm looking at you. Well, okay, not). The whole media landscape is so vast that it's impossible to do it all.

So series creators need to make something that keeps people watching. Puzzle boxes are a good way to do that. I'd say that a series like Doc Martin accomplishes it through character interaction, which is a lot harder.

The perfect sweet spot for appointment television for me for every single episode watched live first-run broadcast for me was NYPD Blue. Long overlapping personal character arcs combined with investigative police procedural in which some cases were solved in an episode but some stretched out across several. It wasn't a puzzle box, but it was really addictive for me.

I've been afraid to rewatch it because I don't know if it holds up. But man, it was a total journey for me, S1E1 to the end.
posted by hippybear at 10:03 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

I love puzzle box stories in any medium, print, game, tv, or real life (more ARGs, please).

I'd add Babylon-5 to the puzzle history, with its stack of mysteries (until s5).
posted by doctornemo at 10:18 AM on March 30, 2019 [10 favorites]

I guess I like puzzle box shows, but what I don't like is shows that come on and say "I AM SO DEEP! I AM SO MYSTERIOUS! MY CHARACTERS ARE TORTURED AND EMOTIONAL!", as these are always the shows that have wonky writing and then get cancelled before they can finish their puzzle. Like, say, that Stargate show that happened on a spaceship, or that one where some of the dudes from Lost didn't get raptured.

Puzzle box shows that have intrigued me mostly start off as thing-of-the-week and then evolve, organically, into a puzzle. Fringe is interesting in that it started off as BIG DEEP PUZZLE and found that original puzzle to be a complete dead end. It found other puzzles after a while, but thank god it didn't try and stick with it's original themes.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:27 AM on March 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

Not convinced that Twin Peaks was intended as a puzzle box. I think the original premise was that the investigation into the death of Laura Palmer gave Cooper a reason to snoop around the town uncovering secrets, most of which had nothing to do with Palmer. But TV viewers are used to having their mysteries resolved, hence "Bob." And did the introduction of "Bob" solve anything? Not really, no. I don't think that Twin Peaks has a solution; it was never supposed to, any more than there's a solution to "life" or "the world."
posted by SPrintF at 10:29 AM on March 30, 2019 [6 favorites]

I don't think that Twin Peaks has a solution; it was never supposed to, any more than there's a solution to "life" or "the world."

It's open to interpretation, but the end of Twin Peaks: The Return suggests that a solution happened.
posted by hippybear at 10:34 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

I feel like there's an elephant in the room here: Bachelor/ette, Talent brackets, racing around the world, contest series in general...Puzzle TV seems like a flipside of this, except instead of pulling for a winner on the show, each viewer competes with the writers to see if they can figure it out before it happens.
posted by rhizome at 10:36 AM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

Television is a serialized medium that, like comic books, wants the story to keep going forever (actors age, so it's harder to do on TV). Show creators and actors like having steady work, so a long-running show is better than a limited-run series. In a TV landscape of fewer choices and weekly episodes leading into syndication it made a lot of sense to have very little continuity--every episode returned to the same starting point. If you had to keep track of a lot line through too many episodes, it was seen as "soap opera-y" (and that was usually thought of as a bad thing).

But unless the characters are really funny or the format is compelling, such a static setup is only going to keep people watching for so long. In the 90s, everything from Friends to Buffy were moving from interchangeable episodes to long-format story arcs. The puzzle box is a great way of building in suspense and releasing it crumb by crumb.

The problem is that a puzzle box, to really fit together, has to be planned out in advance. That's not the way TV shows are written. Hence the infamous intro to Battlestar Galactica: “The Cylons were created by man. The rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan.” It became embarrassingly clear over the later seasons that neither the Cylons nor the writers had anything resembling a plan. Orphan Black had a great concept, and limped to a semi-plausible ending, but would have had a much tighter plot if they'd ended a season or two earlier. Still, that would have robbed the audience of a lot of great times with the characters.

Stranger Things is another great example. Plotwise, I felt season one was a perfect structure. Bashing out some walls to create space for a second season did damage to that shape, yet I felt it was a worthwhile tradeoff to spend more time in that world with those characters. Will the next two seasons keep that tradeoff worthwhile? Who can say? If I were to make a popular thing and people wanted more of it, it would be hard to say no (just look at Arthur Conan Doyle!). I didn't love the characters in the OA enough to want a second season. It seemed like the puzzle was as solved as I needed it to get.
posted by rikschell at 10:37 AM on March 30, 2019 [13 favorites]

I would say that Fringe is a puzzle that did a pretty good job of resetting every season without making the viewer feel cheated. Up until maybe the last season, where they decided to re-set to “nonsense.”

Puzzle shows, in a lot of ways, have the same problem with shows where the central tension is a “will they/won’t they” romance; if that’s the hook that you’ve hung all your efforts on, it’s going to completely fail once it’s resolved or if it resolves badly. Too many puzzle shows are built around conceits that can’t live up to the expectations of the audience. I’d like to see more that were just built around a single season; tell your story, show the mystery, and, if people like it, do a new one. Ambition is the near enemy of the puzzle plot.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:47 AM on March 30, 2019 [4 favorites]

And yet there is the counter-example of the Doc Savage series, where each individual book is sort of just stupid and fluffy, but if you read a lot of them (there are over 180 volumes, I think), the characters end up being fully fleshed out and all of the stories take on deeper meaning. What previously was just pointless banter is actually referring to something significant.

It's entirely unlikely to be able to do this in television, but it's a really interesting effect. I don't know if it's ever been done quite like that before or since.
posted by hippybear at 10:47 AM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

he did nothing substantial after the X-File

Don't be talking smack about Millennium or Harsh Realm. (Also puzzle boxes)
posted by jkaczor at 10:48 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

shows where the central tension is a “will they/won’t they” romance

Moonlighting
Remington Steele

Oh god there are others, but those two spring immediately to mind.
posted by hippybear at 10:49 AM on March 30, 2019 [4 favorites]

It's open to interpretation, but the end of Twin Peaks: The Return suggests that a solution happened.

Really? Do you remember how it ends? What year is this?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:50 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

I skipped school (elementary school) to watch Luke and Laura get married.
posted by hippybear at 11:13 AM on March 30, 2019 [4 favorites]

This is an interesting article because it kind of dances around talking about the J. J. Abrams "mystery box" concept, which is some years older than the modern "puzzle box" show as defined in this essay, but so closely related that you could confuse the two.

Abrams' mystery box is something which he describes himself in a decent amount of detail. In that talk he omits one crucial point which we see over and over in his work: when he begins telling his story, he has no clue how it will end, and likely no intention of seeing it to its conclusion at all. We see this in Alias, Lost and The Force Awakens. Setting up a mystery and fostering water cooler theorising is great, it's audience engagement dynamite for all the reasons mentioned. The problem is that the conclusion of a mystery box story - if it ever even reaches a conclusion at all instead of simply getting cancelled - is invariably dissatisfying, because it was never properly planned out. And audiences are gradually getting wise to this "narrative Ponzi scheme" structure and demanding/expecting better arcs with more satisfactory conclusions.

A "puzzle box", as defined in the essay in the OP, fixes this problem in the most logical way, by having a defined endpoint in mind from the start, and actually getting to that endpoint in a timely fashion. This gives the show a much better shot at telling a complete story and leaving the viewer satisfied. (Although it's still as much of a roll of the dice as anything in any creative project, of course.)

The point I make is that only some shows are structured in this closed "puzzle box" fashion. Some shows genuinely are still winging it in an Abramsian "mystery box" way. True Detective tells a complete story every season. Mr. Robot is going somewhere. Whereas I strongly suspect that Westworld isn't. Meanwhile, as I understand it, Twin Peaks is in a different category of its own, because it was originally intended that the show's core mystery would never be resolved at all...
posted by qntm at 11:22 AM on March 30, 2019 [26 favorites]

Wow, that division of "mystery box" vs "puzzle box" makes so much sense. The former method is why I got so tired of Steven Moffat's version of Doctor Who. So many great setups, so many terrible resolutions. At least JJ generally has the good sense to abandon his projects before the payoff!

I've also found as a Dungeon Master for D&D that it's much easier to come up with compelling plot hooks for the players to investigate and follow than it is to tie them up in narratively satisfying ways. So I guess I'm just as prone to this kind of trap as anyone.
posted by rikschell at 11:43 AM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

I’ve been burned by too many of these shows over the years, going back to the second season of the original Twin Peaks. I know The Author is Dead and all that, but if everything about the narrative you’re telling is open to interpretation you’re not telling a story, you’re giving your audience tea leaves to read. It’s like how when little kids ask you something and you say “What do *you* think?” except the goal is to stall until the show is no longer profitable instead of helping people think things through on their own.

/rant
/just, like, my opinion man
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:47 AM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

I've also found as a Dungeon Master for D&D that it's much easier to come up with compelling plot hooks for the players to investigate and follow than it is to tie them up in narratively satisfying ways

Is that like the difference between "you see a trap door with no apparent way around it," and "you fall through a trap door?"

I have to think the "mystery box" way is driven by shows only ever getting one-season orders, with their own puzzle box of how to make sure you can get an order for the next season. I feel like in the old days it was "you're on until you're cancelled."
posted by rhizome at 11:49 AM on March 30, 2019

As to mystery box shows, after the IMHO “idiotic” “ending” of Lost, I decided that is wasn’t worth the effort to get involved in any long form TV show. They are like reading a mystery novel. It starts with a murder, characters and events are introduced, and then you teach the last chapter where the murder has been forgotten and the characters just wander about in a seemingly different story. The endless story isn’t a story. Stories have endings. The arc of the story leads you to the ending. You close the book. The end. You may be satisfied or disappointed with the ending but at least you have feelings about it other then “huh?”
posted by njohnson23 at 11:51 AM on March 30, 2019 [5 favorites]

In my experience, the end of a D&D campaign was generally "you got to the place / you killed the monster / you accomplished that thing, and now you get this treasure and yay and we'll do something new next week". Actually having a narrative ending to the campaign which gave some kind of emotional (or even plot) closure to what you've been rolling dice about for weeks or months was never a part of it. It was just "okay, here's loot, the end".
posted by hippybear at 11:52 AM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

One of my favorite things about Orphan Black is that it has the trappings of a puzzle box show but the plot is more or less complete nonsense that the writers are just using as an excuse to put Tatiana Maslany in fun acting setups.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:10 PM on March 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

I bailed on Orphan Black right when I realized that there was no actual overall plot.
posted by octothorpe at 1:56 PM on March 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

I like a well-done mystery box show and hate one that's poorly done. But for me, unlike the author of this piece, the difference is not the philosophy of the show. The difference is whether or not the showrunner and writers continue to develop the characters and their relationships, or if they let the mystery box take over. This is why the second season of Westworld was so unwatchable for me: the timelines got so confusing that there couldn't be character development, because you often had no idea which timeline you were in or what had already happened to the characters as you were watching them. And in the case of characters like Dolores, you didn't even really know who they were or what they wanted, so how were you supposed to care about them?

I think this is why shows like The Good Place, Russian Doll, and even Mr Robot* (which the author seems to lump in with Westworld) work a lot better for me. Yes, there's a mystery box element and it keeps you on your toes, but each of these shows is about interesting, complexed, flawed, but loveable characters and their relationships with each other. The plots of these shows are rooted in the characters; the characters aren't just there to be chess pieces moved around by the writers in service of ever-more-outlandish plots.

*I gather a lot of people gave up on Mr Robot in the beginning of the second season. I watched the whole series so far this fall in a massive binge, which I suspect is a better way to watch a lot of these shows. But the second half of the first season and the whole third season are excellent, so I definitely recommend giving it another try before the final season airs this fall.
posted by lunasol at 2:08 PM on March 30, 2019 [7 favorites]

I've actually found that bailing on shows before they end is a reasonable strategy since there's no point in slogging all the way to the end of the last season just to be disappointed again. I should have stopped watching Galactica at the end of the second to last season but pressed on thinking that they really had some surprise planned out and learned my lesson the hard way. I mean, if the show is still good, I'll keep watching but I've given up on watching shows that have turned to crap just in the lame hope that they'll pull some amazing narrative rabbit out of the hat at the last minute.

OK, I'll admit that I'm still watching Game of Thrones but that's so culturally universal that I can't really avoid it. I'm very prepared to hate the end though.
posted by octothorpe at 2:08 PM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

So I have only watched the first two seasons of the Good Place, what is the mystery I was supposed to be engaged by? Did I completely miss it by binging it on Netflix?
posted by DoveBrown at 2:32 PM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

If you play with the same people week after week, and you play with creative people, yes D&D can have a lot more going on than traps and monsters and loot.

Some of these shows are impossible to watch season to season because so much time has passed I've forgotten half the plot (the Magicians, I'm looking at you). Then again, some are so good I don't mind rewatching all the previous seasons before the next season starts (Stranger Things, The Expanse). That's going to get harder as there are more and more seasons, though.
posted by rikschell at 2:34 PM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

A mystery box is any show that you get mixed up with a video game and think it's something that the characters can win if you play correctly which is done by guessing what's going to happen or re-writing whatever is happening.
posted by bleep at 2:35 PM on March 30, 2019 [5 favorites]

Wow, bleep, yeah. My husband has a much better memory than me (like, bordering on eidetic) and the first thing he wants to do after we watch an episode of one of these shows is makes predictions about what's going to happen and to talk about what, exactly, plot-wise is going on. Which I have zero interest in. What I want to know is what the creator thinks is going to happen. That's what matters to me. I love shows with a strong authorial voice, where I can kind of use the show as a window into the mind of another person. I don't want to really be a part of that creative process. I understand death-of-the-author, but I've concluded that I like my authors living and opinionated.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:02 PM on March 30, 2019 [6 favorites]

Related to puzzle box shows (I think of the crime version of those puzzle boxes as being offshoots of Scandanavian noir stuff), I am so thoroughly _done_ with 'omniscient nigh-omnipotent evil conspiracies' in shows. (eg, Blindspot, The Following, The Mentalist). It ends up with the show using far too much deus ex machina that leads to cheap bad storytelling.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:25 PM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think the article over-extends the "puzzle box" concept. But, anyway, one of the first PBs on TV was The Prisoner.
posted by CCBC at 4:06 PM on March 30, 2019 [18 favorites]

This is why I got into anime and for the longest time only liked things that were *over* in 13 episodes. Some were worth 26 episodes. But if it wasn't over and done quickly I get tired of even trying to keep up. It's best when it's based on something that's complete with a resolution and keep it quick. I've managed a couple of 3 or 4 season things, but that's pretty much the max.

Spoiler

Spike dies!

posted by zengargoyle at 4:51 PM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

And The Prisoner had a real ending! My favorite show. Period.
posted by njohnson23 at 7:21 PM on March 30, 2019 [8 favorites]

Riverdale feels like a mystery box trying to be a puzzle box. It's just so random at times that it feels like the showrunners are making parts of it up as they go along and suddenly went "oh shit we have to solve this mystery whoops"

Homestuck was more blatant with its retroactive foreshadowing but it feels more satisfying somehow, probably because of how character-driven it ultimately was. I know the ending was frustrating to the puzzle boxers (a lot of things were left unanswered) but the characters made a big deal of breaking out of the idea of A Narrative Arc and I think that showed.
posted by divabat at 8:25 PM on March 30, 2019

This is why I got into anime and for the longest time only liked things that were *over* in 13 episodes. Some were worth 26 episodes.

I would LOVE for there to be shows that are just that, and say they're going to be just one season, but they don't, because they might want to make action figures and "$CHARACTER'S Guide to Facebook" low-effort holiday gifts. It's the other side of the mystery bag coin where you never knowing if they're going to have another season.
posted by rhizome at 8:50 PM on March 30, 2019

I would truly love 10-13 episode television stories that have a beginning, middle, and end that is planned for, and few sequels.
posted by hippybear at 8:56 PM on March 30, 2019 [9 favorites]

Many shows start as a puzzle box, morph into a mystery box, and end with an empty box. But I think the mistake is to treat serialized fiction in the same way we treat single-shot, single-author fiction. I think of serialized shows more like a series of collaborative sequels with different authors -- which indeed is close to the truth, since even as show-runners may remain, the ensemble changes significantly from year to year. As such, you can neither view a whole series as some coherent unified whole, nor view any season or even episode as a purely stand-alone thing. Rather, even though it's totally linear, you are free -- or even obligated -- to choose which portions are "canon" for yourself, or even better, admit that in reality there are many different overlapping shows with a single sequence of serialized episodes and seasons. It's not so much the death of the author as the death of a single author -- but in any case, even if there were a single unified writer pumping it all out Bablyon-5-style from beginning to end, we are free to consider segments however we like.

The great thing is that once you do that, you can talk about different shows within the show. For instance, for my money, the show Lost [season 1] is one of the greatest single-season shows in network tv. Heck, Lost [seasons 1-3] is pretty darn good too, or Lost [season 1 plus the first ten minutes of season 2], or even Lost [fades away somewhere in the middle of the last season, like a song fade-out]. All of these are in my mind their own shows with their own varying merits, and the fact that "the" ending of Lost was kind of dumb doesn't really affect my love of the other Losts.

This sort of thing seems especially, and increasingly, true for shows with great puzzle-box first seasons that then get extended into mystery-box seconds and empty-box cancellations. Legion [season 1] was a great single-season show, and that's untouched by the sequelae, even if they turn out to get better after the pretty steep decline. Same goes for Westworld [season 1], or in my view for many years, Twin Peaks [season 1]. And The Leftovers is perhaps the best example: a very good stand-alone Season 1 show, plus a great "complete" show that is nevertheless a very different thing from Leftovers [season 1]. Both Leftovers-s are great, and both are different.

Anyway, if this leaves the world too undirected for your taste, that's understandable. But it allows me to enjoy all these big ambitious intellectual plot-driven shows without the worry that they will inevitably drop the ball. Because while that may happen, those first-season or even first-few-seasons arcs will remain great works in themselves, and can be enjoyed as their own thing without the dread that "the" ending will spoil it all.
posted by chortly at 9:58 PM on March 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

Legion is actually following the story arc of the comic book character, and is going to wrap up after its next season so it's going to have an end. I think.

I think Legion is one of the more interesting shows I've encountered in a long while. And I don't watch many shows, but I did and will watch that one.
posted by hippybear at 10:19 PM on March 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Ha ha, no. That's when you get Legion Babies.

For shows I like, I'll totally try to think about it in terms of figuring out what they're trying to do with an episode or an arc, and whether they're successful at it.
posted by rhizome at 10:23 PM on March 30, 2019

Are Legion Babies like Muppet Babies, so young versions of the original characters? Because I'm not sure that's series worthy.
posted by hippybear at 10:47 PM on March 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

That's exactly what it is.
posted by rhizome at 10:48 PM on March 30, 2019

Oh dear god no.
posted by hippybear at 10:54 PM on March 30, 2019

This is why my favorite show is Better Call Saul, and why it's one of the greatest TV shows ever made, if not THE greatest.

We already basically know the ending. Jimmy sells his soul and becomes Saul. But what causes this? What, specifically pushes him over the edge?

We wondered that for a couple of years, and in the end, the answer is too complex to sum up in a couple of sentences like "his brother died," or "something bad happened to Kim."

Instead, it's a gradual, inevitable series of escalations. He learns over and over again that the deck is always stacked against him, and that duplicity seems to work better than sincerity. That people don't seem to want the truth, they want lies and tall tales.

Saul is like Trump; there are secrets, but no mysteries.

I'm assuming that there is one more season, and I cannot freaking wait to see it.
posted by Chronorin at 12:53 AM on March 31, 2019 [9 favorites]

I just want to mention The Lost Room. Its mystery was so interesting that it didn't need to have deep characters, or fully explain itself. I kept watching more because I wanted to understand how it worked. That's an anomaly for me because I normally prioritize character over almost everything else.

If you look at what's being taught in television writing courses now (as I just did), you'll see Lost named again and again. So it could be that there's so much of this on TV because it's what a lot of new writers are latching onto.
posted by heatvision at 3:33 AM on March 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

Lost, of course, was the most unsatisfying puzzle hatch.
posted by mmmbacon at 8:30 AM on March 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

I like series with a long arc with a surprising end (or at least one with unforeseen twists) but I never thought of that as a puzzle box. Just...plot?

Series like LOST that are nothing BUT puzzles bore me. Once i realize the writers are just going to fuck with you constantly I lose interest. I feel the same way about Walking Dead, which not only fails to solve the central mystery but is just a series of horrible things happening to any character you happen to like with no real concern for how actual humans might act, for the sake of shock or edginess. How boring.
posted by emjaybee at 10:15 AM on March 31, 2019 [10 favorites]

I’ve been burned by too many of these shows over the years

That's why I don't even watch a show until it's completed it's entire run - or each season is a standalone (Fargo, True Detective) or an anthology (Black Mirror). (Can't wait to start Game of Thrones soon... never seen an episode...)

Myself, I have had too many things I enjoyed just get cancelled or fizzle out... Firefly, Strange Luck, Harsh Realm, Pushing Daisy's, Jericho, Millennium, V (80's), The 4400, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Jericho, Flashforward, Terra Nova, Falling Water, Space: Above and Beyond, Fringe (that was not an ending - neither was Dexter), Dark Angel, Hero's, Star Trek: Enterprise, The Event, The Highwayman, Misfits of Science, Dead Like Me, Otherworld, Voyagers, Manimal...

Basically, all the 80's and 90's ever taught me was that if I got into a show on TV that I liked, it would inevitably be cancelled. Things are better now that we are in the "golden-era" of long-form TV with actual decent budgets/actors/writing/direction and cinematography, in fact - there is such a glut to watch, that while I wait for one show to complete, there are plenty of others to view.
posted by jkaczor at 11:12 AM on March 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

Im kinda with emjaybee here. It Just seems like a lot of what people are describing as Puzzle Box is just stories with an overall plot? I mean, when people are tossing soap operas like Dallas (add by extension All My Children) into the category, I have to ask if its ary all a meaningful term.
posted by happyroach at 1:52 PM on March 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think this is a result of Lost and BSG, first and foremost, but not in a bad way.

Rather, this is a result of folks seeing the hope that people had for Lost and BSG, and how disappointed they were that They did not, in fact Have A Plan.

Russian Doll, The Good Place, etc? They have plans, and take their audiences cool places to get there. Puzzleboxes are awesome when done with respect for the audience, which the ones we're getting today have.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:43 PM on March 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

Yeah I feel like with TV we have a habit of divorcing plot and characters and not seeing them as a holistic unit. So if something isn't a sitcom, where it's 100% about the characters and plot doesn't matter that much, then it must be a puzzle box, where it's 100% about plot and characters are mannequins who have to do everything right, whether or not it makes sense for them as characters, to maximize Plot. As a culture we have forgotten how to think about stories and studios churn out the crap they think we want.
posted by bleep at 2:46 PM on March 31, 2019

Rather, this is a result of folks seeing the hope that people had for Lost and BSG, and how disappointed they were that They did not, in fact Have A Plan.

I wish more people could do like they did on Babylon 5. I really wish. That is probably just not realistically doable in television any more, I would guess, but I was always impressed at how that show handled things. They weren't all just gonna be "Hey, let's throw out some Opera House and some polar bears and let Future Ted and Future Marshall figure out what they are!" That is what drives me nuts. If you set up a mystery, you need to at least have SOME IDEA of what the answer might be. You can change it later if you like, but don't write blind and hope you get it later. TV doesn't always work so well if you pants it like a novel.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:10 PM on March 31, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'll give another shout for JMS's Babylon 5, the almost perfect puzzle piece series of television history. They struggled with tight budgets & tight production schedules, and also some 90s CGI that now looks a bit dated. Within these constraints JMS crafted a fascinating multilayered long plot arc (despite a wierd schedule crash before the end). I especially like the little bits of telepath prophecy, which dropped hints of foreshadowing, but never quite unfolded in the way you would expect.
posted by ovvl at 5:34 PM on March 31, 2019 [4 favorites]

with respect for the audience, which the ones we're getting today have

I think that is key - today we actually have series/seasons that have full arcs - there is no overriding mandate to drag something out "forever" - characters can grow, or shrink - or even die - stories can proceed to actual conclusions. Many shows are even marketed as knowing that they have a finite life, a "limited run" and an end-game in view.
posted by jkaczor at 7:39 PM on March 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's funny to me that the original TV puzzleboxes actually had no forethought in how they would play themselves out. Even something like HIMYM gave itself several outs in case it got cancelled at certain points. That we've now got series locking themselves into numbers of seasons, etc. shows that we're evolving on this. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, for instance, ins't a "puzzlebox" but is something that is better for knowing it's stopping point and endgame.

Basically, if we're being real, puzzlebox shows are in fact rare, but they make tv as a whole better.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:48 PM on March 31, 2019

Yes, debt imprisonment evil, but if there were some analog to that for TV series with shitty or completely ignored "resolutions" I think the world would be a better place (and would J. J. Abrams be out yet?).

Note: Any TV series where "A wizard did it" is an acceptable resolution is jurisdictionally exempt.
posted by "mad dan" eccles at 9:16 AM on April 1, 2019