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A Storytelling Machine: The Complexity and

Revolution of Narrative Television

Article May 2016

DOI: 10.13125/2039-6597/2081


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Alberto Nahum Garca Martnez

Universidad de Navarra



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A Storytelling Machine:
The Complexity and Revolution
of Narrative Television
Alberto N. Garca

After asking his students to work on The Awakening, by Kate

Chopin, Creighton Bernette takes his leave with this declaration at the
end of the first season of Treme (HBO, 2010-2013):

I want you to take your time with it. Pay attention to the
language itself. The ideas. Dont think in terms of a beginning and
an end. Because unlike some plot-driven entertainments, there is
no closure in real life. Not really. (Wish Someone Would Care,

Employing an air of realism, the series created by David Simon

intones a harmonious ballad about regeneration of New Orleans,
adopting a slow, measured pace and a contemplative tone that allows
the locales and music of the city to breathe freely. Diametrically
opposed in style is Community (NBC, 2009-2015), a crazy, intertextual
sitcom replete with metafictional winks. In the most famous episode of
the third season, all the characters are gathered around a table for a
game of Yahtzee. Before throwing the dice in order to decide which
player must abandon the game, Abed Nadir warns, Just so you know,
Jeff, you are now creating six different timelines (Remedial Chaos
Theory, 4.3).
In both the scene that reveals the premise of the episode
Remedial Chaos Theorysix variations on a single storyas well as
in the subtly self-referential commentary of the tragic protagonist of

Between, vol.VI, n.11 (Maggio / May 2016)

Alberto N. Garca, A Storytelling Machine: The Complexity and Revolution of Narrative Television

Treme, the evolution that television narrative has undergone in the last
fifteen years is condensed: sophisticated, innovative, complex, long-
term and aimed at a viewer schooled in narratology. From
complementary, though sometimes conflicting, perspectives, gambles
such as 24 (FOX, 2001-10), The Wire (HBO, 2002-08), Arrested
Development (FOX, 2003-06; Netflix, 2013), Lost (ABC, 2004-10), Mad
Men (AMC, 2007-15), Fringe (FOX, 2008-13), Louie (FX, 2010-) or Fargo
(FX, 2014-) have boosted the Anglo-Saxon television to the top of the
narrative Olympus, converting it into a privileged, constantly-evolving
mechanism a perfect storytelling machine. Throughout the course of
this analysis we will examine how and why this has occurred.

1. Narrative in the Golden Age of Television

Contemporary American and British TV fiction has achieved an
exemplary balance between art and industry, including products that
combine a density of plot, aesthetics and even ethics with a
handcrafted flavor accessible to every type of public. Economic
success, massive public response and high critical recognition marry
the current golden age of television series with the Hollywood classic.
The elements which explain the current prominence of the Anglo-
Saxon series include, first of all, industrial ingredients (Lotz 2007)
such as an increase in competition and the consequent need to find a
brand image through its own productions. There have also been
revolutions in the distribution of content: packs of DVDs, online
streaming platforms and downloads that individualized the collective
viewing experience and unidirectional pace set by the networks. And,
finally, the configuration of a complex story1 unequaled in mass
culture. This latter provides the focus of this article, which will be
divided into two parts. In the first, armed with narratological and
poetic elements, we will define the serial story, stripping away the
husk of its principal forms and explain why it is the best media for
telling lengthy stories. In the second part we will pause to examine

Cfr. Mittel 2015.

Between, vol. VI, n. 11 (Maggio / May 2016)

specifically variations on the traditional story: alternate universes, time

jumps, coincidence between diegetic time in the story and real time
and other mechanisms that have made television fiction the most
daring way for telling stories.

2. The specific nature of TV narrative

In order to frame the specificity of television narrative, it is worth
noting two elements which make it unique when compared to other
types of narrative: the rigidity of the format and the structural
possibility of lengthy, serialized stories. Unlike film and current
literature, TV fiction has very strict institutional constraints which,
while there are variations from one country to another, condition and
unify the way its stories are told. In the United States, a comedy
broadcast on any one of the major networks lasts 22 minutes, while
dramas last 43 (47 on some basic cable channels like AMC or FX). The
rest of the time is for commercial breaks, which also serve to structure
the story into the usual four acts2. Only the premium cable channels
(which now include Netflix or Amazon) can play with making the
length of their episodes as long as they wish, although the margin is
not very broad: an episode of an HBO drama usually lasts from 50 to
60 minutes. In addition to their duration, the number of episodes
produced per yearsomething that is being questioned more often3
is also regulated: 22-24 episodes for series on broadcast networks
(ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, The CW), and 10-13 for both basic and

Cfr. Newman 2006: 21.
The ability to capitalize on a product with international sales as well as
the constant competition between the cable and commercial broadcast
networks has led it to become increasingly more common to find, on the
traditional networks, 13-episode seasons, anthology series and even
miniseries such as 24: Live Another Day (FOX, 2014), Rosemary's Baby (NBC,
2014) and The X-Files Miniseries (FOX, 2016).


premium cable.4 This institutional rigidity, contrary to what it may

seem, has spurred creators to develop new narrative formulas,
stretching their creativity to the limit to attract and maintain consumer
Alongside these limitations, the other big difference with the rest
of the narrative arts lies in the systematization of the expanded story,
which is applied in films only occasionally: sagas such as Star Wars, The
Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, or long-form episodes of the James
Bond series and the recent, stand-alone superhero films. By its very
nature, television allows for a narrative that can unfold over many
hours, something which also gives it the freedom to develop a plot
density that is unique among the visual arts. This enables the medium
to delve into narratological territories that had previously been
explored only in comics and graphic novels

2.1. Sherezade and the forms of seriality

To prevent having his head cut off, Sherazade invented seriality in
the One Thousand and One Nights (Ros 2011: 23-24). The narrative
anxiety that distinguishes modern tele-fictionthe I-need-to-see-
another-episode sensation connects with this story halfway through
when maid ensures she has the attention of the sultan and one more
day of life. As Xavier Prez has studied, it is possible to trace a
genealogy of seriality that, based on Greek myths and biblical figures,
was born in the Arthurian world of Chretien de Troyes, traverses the
Commedia dell Arte and the Shakespearean dramas, and leads to the
nineteenth-century melodrama that serialized literature proper to an
industrial and urban society (Prez 2011: 13-19). By then, the two basic
structures of the serialized story could already be found: the stand-

In Britain, television series are usually shorter; it is rare to find one
longer than ten episodes. In addition, it is relevant to note the fondness of the
British for the television miniseries format. To learn more about the
peculiarities of the production system of the British television drama, see
Arthurs (2010) and Dickason (2010).


alone series and the continuous narrative (serial)5. That is, Conan
Doyle as opposed to Charles Dickens; The Adventures of Arsene Lupin
versus Balzacs Human Comedy; CSI (CBS, 2000-15) versus The Wire.
Transferred to the television format, the former is born of a
balance that is broken at the beginning of each episode, so that the
peripeteia of the protagonists involves restoring the lost order: solving a
riddle, finding a culprit, curing a patient, winning a court case or
learning a lesson. Each of the cases solved by the hero of Baker Street
offers the same type of closure as an episode of House M.D. (FOX, 2004-
12). As a result, in series with stand-alone stories

each episode is relatively independent characters, settings and

relationships carry over across episodes, but the plots stand on
their own, requiring little need for consistent viewing or
knowledge of diegetic history to comprehend the narrative [itself].
(Mittell 2007: 163)

This does not imply that episodic series make a clean sweep of
what happened in previous chapters and lack memory. The important
thing is not a characters memory which, although it may be very
slight, obviously has to exist in order to ensure the internal coherence
of the text, but of the spectators, who need no memory of the previous
episodes to understand and appreciate the present one (Newman
2006: 23).
The Dickensian model, linear and cumulative, stands in contrast
to this cyclical structure, in which the episode is a measure of length,
never a reset. On television, this protracted narrative, with extensive
arcs divided over several chapters, was traditionally reserved for the
miniseries and, from a low-brow perspective, reached its culmination
in the British soap opera, with a potentially infinite number of

Series refers to those shows whose characters and setting are recycled,
threads are picked up again after a given hiatus (Kozloff 1992: 91).


episodes. However, in the last fifteen years without disdaining the

pioneering advances of Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-87), St. Elsewhere
(NBC, 1982-88) and Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990-91) the soap-operization
of American primetime has been taken even further, leading to a much
more convoluted and challenging narrative form for the discerning
consumer. The serial story, explains Mittell, provides continuing story
lines traversing multiple episodes, with an ongoing diegesis that
demands viewers to construct an overarching storyworld using
information gathered from their full history of viewing (Mittell 2007:
164). In short, stories with the ability to construct open, rather than
closed, narrative forms with each episode (Creeber 2004: 4).
Today it is almost impossible to find these two narrative
structures in all their purity. Even the legal and crime dramas contain
conflicts which cross episodes, advancing slightly in each season or
even throughout the entire series: in CSI, for example, Grissom is
facing increasing deafness and Warrick amasses a number of problems
relating to a gambling that will eventually lead to his death in the
eighth season. In The Mentalist (CBS, 2008-15) the ghost of Red John,
Patrick Janes traumatic nemesis, makes occasional, recurring
appearances. Similar reflections can be found in the Law & Order
franchise, in Without a Trace (CBS, 2002-09), Cold Case (CBS, 2003-10),
Bones (FOX, 2005-) and many other legal and crime series. Not
surprisingly, in a show as resoundingly successful as House M.D., a
series with a markedly episodic content, Houses relations with Cuddy
and Wilson were one of the keys to its success, an emotional cut and
thrust which the cumbersome and tormented personality of the
protagonist could play. In the last several seasons, while the cases
suffered an obvious narrative fatigue, it was the aforementioned
emotional triangle that along with the irresistible aura created by
Hugh Lauries performance kept the series alive.
At the other extreme, we find shows with a strong serial
component. The Wire would be the epitome of such examples: an
anticlimactic story that transcends the detective genre to establish itself
as a sociopolitical portrait. The tragedy of David Simon and Ed Burns
presents the viewer with a single case per season and a naturalist


attempt to reflect the everyday life of a contemporary Western city, as

if aspiring to be a 60-hour film divided into episodes. But even in a
proposal as novelistic in its approach it is possible to findbeyond
the narrative and aesthetic unity tying each episode togetherplots
limited to a single installment (a paradigmatic example from the first
season is that of Santangelo in One Arrest, 7.1).
In addition to the series and serials, there is a third possibility
proper to the television narrative: the anthology and its comedic
offspring, the vignette or comedic sketch. Despite such notable
precedents such as The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959-64) and Alfred
Hitchcock Presents (CBS/NBC, 1955-65; NBC/USA Network, 1985-89),
the anthology is quite rare in contemporary television, due especially
to the production demands of the format: each chapter requires a new
stage, actors and plot. Still, one of the surprises of recent years on
British televisionBlack Mirror (Channel 4, 2011-), a dystopia imagined
by Charlie Brookeroffers a collection of three separate stories each
season, united only by certain generic theme and feel.
However, in recent years a new combination of the characteristics
of the anthology and traditional seriality has erupted on television: a
miniseries-series or anthology series. American Horror Story (FX,
2011), True Detective (HBO, 2014-), Fargo and American Crime (ABC,
2015-) are the most successful examples of this trend. The novelty of
this format lies in three elements: a stand-alone story that opens and
closes in 8 to 10 chapters, to make way for a full reset of the plot and
the acting cast the following year; a story that, as a result, does not
require a commitment of several years that other series do; and the
exhibition of several generic characteristics visually, thematically,
and narratively which act to link and unify each of its seasons.

2.2. Elasticity and the flexi-narrative

Dates (Channel 4, 2013) is an unusual hybrid of the three great
possibilities offered by the medium: the serial story, the stand-alone
episode and the anthology. That is, a slight continuity is maintained in
the background stories of some of the characters (Mia, David, Jenny),


there are conflicts that open and close each installment (the dates
themselves) and, finally, the constant variation of settings and
characters that characterizes television anthology. For its part, the
unclassifiable Louie mixes fragments of stand-up comedy with a couple
of stories in each chapter. However, this constant break in continuity,
where there is even an actor changing characters from one episode to
another, clashes with a third season in which the same story extends
for six chapters (Elevator, 4.6-9.6).
Without reaching the organized chaos of Dates or Louie, it is
customary that the most ambitious contemporary series combine, from
an artistic point of view, elements of both the serial and stand-alone
episodes. Robin Nelson has called this hybridization flexi-narrative,
and Jason Mittell has studied it under the category of Complex-TV.
Both authors examine the prevailing narrative architecture of
contemporary narrative seriality, knowing that some lean more
towards the serial in nature and others the stand-alone episode. Thus,
the current television narrativeif we may be permitted the
metaphorresembles a cyclists racing tour: there are stages (seasons)
which, in turn, have several goals and mountain passes (episodes), in
which the immediate effort of the sprint is rewarded, without losing
sight of the ultimate victory at the end of the course, after all of the
stages have been run (the series finale).
There are currently several series with an atmosphere similar to
that of The Wire, series that favor backstory and utilize the entire
season as the main narrative unit, such as Friday Night Lights
(NBC/Direct TV, 2006-11), Sons of Anarchy (FX, 2008-14), Breaking Bad
(AMC, 2008-13), Boardwalk Empire (HBO, 2010-14), Downton Abbey (ITV,
2010-15), The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010-), The Hour (BBC, 2011-12),
Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-) or Homeland (Showtime, 2011-). Some
stand-alone plots can be found in all of them, but their approach is
novelistic, and their explicit goals from the pilot onwards is that of a
long-distance runner.
By way of contrast, there are a handful of top-tier series which
give considerable weight to their episodic elements without neglecting
strong serial conflicts, unlike shows such CSI, NCIS (CBS, 2003-) and


the like, where they are very secondary. As Innocenti and Pescatore
explain, narrative formulas now go through a process of mutation
and hybridization, and many series [the stand-alone ones] are
serialized, moving closer to the structure of the serial (2011: 34). This
twist, they assert, creates a kind of story in which there is always a
central story that concludes in the episode (the so-called anthology
plot), but also a framework (known as the running plot) prolongs
itself over many episodes (ibid.). Thus a non-permanent progression
and partial opening narrative absent in the traditional formula is
added (ibid.).
The series that took this hybridization to the limit was The Shield
(FX, 2002-08): the adventures of Vic Mackey fascinated viewers with
their careful narrative composition, one of the most refined examples
of the stand-alone narrative, combined with extensive story arcs. The
police officers of the Farmington district are faced with cases that last a
single episode, stories that run for three or four episodes, seasonal
villains and a conflict that crawls along, twisting and turning, for the
shows entire seven season run, from the mark of Cain in the explosive
pilot episode.
This mixture of the two narrative axes was also employed to great
effect on Dexter (Showtime, 2006-13). Showtimes serial-killer exhibited
an iterative cadence by means of two elements: the victims the
protagonist has to execute each day, and the villain that refreshes the
plot each year by offering a new season arc. Southland (NBC/USA
Network, 2009-13) also exemplified this narrative elasticity, offering
viewers another novelty. To the traditional two or three cases per week
and the handful of transverse lines that unfold in full each season, were
added the brief vignettes of everyday police life: minor clashes with
crime in a city wounded by fear and filled with nutcases. Naturally, the
larger conflicts of the protagonists are settled in the season-long arcs,
but are suitably spiced up by the other two narrative structures present
in the series.
Among the arsenal available, there are two series that stand out
for the elasticity of their narrative structure, which can vary greatly
from one season to another without losing the hallmarks of identity of


the story they are telling: Justified (FX, 2010-15), and Hannibal (NBC,
2013-15). The first, a kind of western-noir, managed to oil the episodic
elements with the background pattern, making both elements feed
back into one another. So, the first season was, above all, a crime
drama that hinted at the painful background conflicts in Harlan
County, Kentucky: an ecosystem of ancient quarrels, parent-child
struggles, impossible redemptions, racial tensions and coal-mining
corruption. In the second, third and fifth season, without ignoring the
case of the week, there were large background villains to be fought
every year. In the fourth, they went with a mystery to be solved, and
finally, in the sixth season, the story confronted the love-hate triangle
between Boyd, Ava, and Raylan Givens, paying back debts and
bringing to a close latent conflicts in an agonizing and vibrant manner.
The riveting Hannibal, meanwhile, spent two seasons following the
same formula: the murder of the week overlapping with the game of
cat and mouse that Will Graham and Jack Crawford fought with Dr.
Lecter in Baltimore. However, the third season dynamited the formula
and opted for seven chapters set in Italy, and six dedicated to a single
case: the Red Dragon.
In order to complete the possibilities of the flexi-narrative, it is
necessary to refer to a final group. These are products that are
procedural in principle, but which, as their stories progress and a
considerable degree of viewer loyalty builds, progressively become
more serial in nature, allowing them to delve into the mythology of the
series. The X-Files (Fox, 1993-02), to recover one mythic example,
devoted barely three episodes of its first season (including the pilot) to
investigate an alleged plot by the US government related to the
abduction of the Agent Mulders sister. However, in later rounds, the
monsters-of-the-week took a back seat in favor of conspiracy theories.
Something similar happened with Supernatural (The CW, 2005-),
originally a horror and adventure road-movie. As the story progressed,
the number of episodes devoted to a direct struggle between the
Winchesters, Lucifer and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
increased, to the point that the fifth season (the last commanded by


Eric Kripke) spent more than half of its episodes widening this
diabolical conflict.

2.3. The wound of time

Later we will examine how Lost, 24, Heroes (NBC, 2006-10) or
Prison Break (FOX, 2005-09) favor the serial over the episodic, in the
process winning the devotion of fervent viewers by putting pressure
on their narrative commitment with the promise of solving the riddle
at the end of the road. However, as already described in the shows
mentioned above in order to explain the flexi-narrative, the medium of
television has also learned how to evolve toward narrative forms
separated from the agitation caused by events, at the relentless speed
of vicissitude. A considerable portion of the best contemporary TV
fiction stands out for its simmering narrative, proposing a different
pact with a viewer, who is more committed and intellectually engaged.
Series like Mad Men, the hermetic Luck or the poetic Rectify (Sundance
Channel, 2013-) exhibit a story where the how is imposed on the
what, shows whose storylines unfold without haste, looking for the
hint hidden in a look, the key contained in a revealing gesture or the
violence of a landscape; proposals that transform action into
something less significant than reaction and interaction (Newman
2006: 19). Thus, contemplation becomes, at the same time, a
characteristic style and narrative device. The viewer enters into the
downtime, in intimate setting, shaping a universal, naturalistic story
which aims to capture the wounds of time in the lives of the
characters, according to the felicitous expression of Xavier Prez (2011:
27). Creeber sums it up in this way:

With its combination of a continuous narrative structure

contained within a clearly defined narrative, it [the hybrid series-
serial] allows television to exploit its tendency towards intimacy
and continuity yet without dispensing with the power and
possibilities offered by its gradual movement and progression
towards narrative closure and conclusion (2004: 9).


The term TV novels has been minted for series such as these. The
hive of characters, relationships, political alliances, family lines and
conflicts of all kinds in premium products like Deadwood (HBO, 2004-
07), The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007) or Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-)
would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Consistent with their
artistic ambitions, these series can develop over ten plot lines per
episode, exhibiting an overwhelming narrative flow that recalls
elements of nineteenth-century literature. In addition, by having more
footage to develop plots and without having to spend time on
repeating intrigues and motifs, conflicts and dilemmas multiply,
enriching the moral and political diversity of the stories. As Nelson
writes, this longer time to develop the narrative allows for more
complex storytelling and character-developing in relation to changing
circumstances; it can, in short, deal with shifts in fortune and the
consequences of actions over time (2007: 121).
Along with the ability to deepen plots, themes and characters, the
other grand narrative novelty that seriality provides regards the form,
as we will discuss in the second part of this article.

3. Playing games with the story

As we have noted, narrative anxiety is a characteristic of serial
fiction. Following the structural and rhetorical strategies of literary
melodrama from the nineteenth century, numerous cathodic fictions
become addictive by exhibiting interwoven stories: monumental
cliffhangers, dramatic effects, unexpected characters, narrative traps,
endless novelties and impossible twists. One of the major discoveries
of fiction made in the USA has been to domesticate and popularize
playing with the story, elevating narrative experiments to become the
most sophisticated expression in contemporary popular culture. The
constant boil in narrative forms has generated a virtuous circle:
viewers are becoming ever more erudite in dealing with daring
puzzles. Pilots such as Revenge (ABC, 2011-15) and The Event (NBC,
2010-11) were criticized for being predictable despite the deranged
temporality they employed. What was once surprising has now


become merely a formula, a soggy dj vu. This vitality spurs on

creators who want to take risks, since narrative originality is now
much more difficult to achieve. Lets examine one by one the most
successful and daring breaks with formula.

3.1. I am we: the multiverse

One classic narrative device of science fiction and fantasy involves
parallel universes, a sort of warped mirror in which the events in a
second possible world (universe B) present us with variations on facts
and historical figures already known to the viewer in the universe A.
On television, with the permission of incombustible Dr. Who (BBC,
1963-89; 2005-) the purest example this device was found on Fringe
(FOX, 2008-13), J.J. Abrams most sci-fi offering to date. Among the
hidden premises tapped by the story, we find that, following the death
of his son Peter, the scientist Walter Bishop (the protagonist of the
series) manages to travel to a neighboring universe and steal his
firstborn from there, in the process releasing an unforeseen chain of
destruction on the other side which, from the pilot onwards, also has
unforeseen consequences in universe A.
The best stretch of Fringe from Jacksonville (15.2) to
Marionette (9.3) develops a highly serialized storyline: a battle of
mirrors and espionage between the two parallel universes, with the
story acting as a hinge between the two worlds. The characters in each
universe maintain some of the same features and deform others,
making the reflection a delightful, comparative puzzle. The fourth
season6 alerts us to the problems in this narrative strategy: confusion.
Given the need to innovate to meet the narrative demands of each
episode, the writers end up confronted with the rules of the game their
narrative has created, and find their premises self-destructing in the

To further complicate the possibilities, the fourth season introduces a
variation which doubles the narrative universes: both of the known worlds
adopt a new version where a key character (Peter Bishop) has never existed,
causing events to vary considerably once more.


process. This renegotiation of the spectators contract (Krutnik 2006:

5) is a flammable strategy: it produces a very attractive flash of
ingenuity in the beginning but, ultimately, it is extremely toxic to the
internal coherence of the plot, as with this science fiction series from
FOX. The limitations of the multiverse for serial narrative also
demarcated the narrative path of Awake (NBC, 2012). Detective Michael
Britten suffered a car accident while traveling with his wife and son.
Upon awakening, he sometimes appears in a world where his wife has
survived, and other times in one in which it is his son who has.
Confused and mourning in two parallel realities, Britten uses his
position in the gap between realities to solve crimes on both sides,
obtaining information in one that complements the other. If the
hairstyles and sets on Fringe help distinguish the narrative universes,
in this paranormal crime drama the chromatic palette serves as a
mooring: the reality in which his wife has survived adopts the hue of a
reddish photograph, while the universe of Britten with his son is
colored blue. The series was canceled after thirteen episodes, avoiding
the greatest difficulty of a product with these characteristics: the
survival over time of such a bold premise, which, as we have seen,
took its toll on Fringe.
Similar problems threaten one of the most successful premieres of
2014: The Affair (Showtime, 2014-). In its premise, this award-winning
Showtime series proposed a variation of the idea of the multiverse:
viewers witnessed an act of adultery and the collapse of two marriages;
the touch of originality is that the story is brought into focus from two
different points of view (those of Noah Solloway and Allison Bayley).
In a tour-de-force, the Rashomon style of the series multiplies in the
second season, in which the viewpoints of the protagonists spouses
regarding the events are also seen.

3.2. Back to the future: time jumps

If viewers find the multiverse challenging, more daring still have
been experiences with narrative temporality. According to Gennette,
every narrative work has narrative time (the events as they are


presented to the viewer) and the ideal time of the story (ordered
chronologically, without ellipses, which has to be reconstructed by the
viewer in accord with the data that provided by the story)7. Playing
with these two variables, series like Lost, Damages (FX/Direct TV, 2007-
12), or Flashforward (ABC, 2009-10) have stylized television narrative,
leading it to peaks as refined as they are devilish.
The rapidly-cancelled Boomtown (NBC, 2002-03), by reclaiming a
little known precedent, builds a fragmented narrative that, in addition
to disrupting perspective when confronting the crime of the week,
proposes truth as a puzzle that always starts with a flash-forward
(travelling to the future). Damages manipulated two time periods that
advanced in parallel, thus establishing a perverse text that robs the
viewer of details and saturates the story with narrative landmines. The
frenetic pace of Breaking Bad also makes use of these narrative jumps to
generate tension. Emulating the opening sequence of the series, the
fifth season begins with a trip to the future that shows its protagonist
in such a surprising situation that the viewers anxiety to know how he
got there serves as the narrative lever.
The most paradigmatic example of this was Lost, which created a
narrative maze that used temporal leaps as a structural element in each
episode, via flashbacks that allowed us to discover more about the
characters. Following the finale at the end of the third season, the
puzzle was further enriched with flash-forwards and, as if that were
not enough, the whole plot upset and the shows narrative universe
relocated to the seventies. In its sixth and final season, the narration
plays with the multiverse, replacing the trips to the future and
journeys to the past with flash-sideways: stories of the characters in an
alternate world. Ultimately, Lost ended up creating a hellish labyrinth
of sweeping scope, creating one of the most sophisticated
narratological hieroglyphs in pop culture and forming a riddle to
which every one of its devoted viewers wanted to bring order.
Many other writers have sought to imitate Lost without success,
offering series that propose unfathomable, prolonged mysteries; an

Cfr. Gennette 2007.


ensemble cast; an eclectic mythology and a mixture of genres (thriller,

fantasy, sci-fi); a conspiratorial perspective, and, the thing which most
interests us here, a story peppered with temporal shifts. In the U.S., the
failed Day Break (ABC, 2006), which barely lasted for six episodes when
it aired, told the story of a detective accused of murdering the D.A.
who relives the same day over and over again, la Groundhog Day.
Flashforward got somewhat more mileage when it aired. The series
began with a collective swoon in which people got a glimpse eight
months into the future, launching the series with an explosion of
narrative tension, temporal paradoxes and self-fulfilling prophecies.
However, despite its seductive parting shot, the show stumbled on one
dimensional characters and dispensable conflicts that spiraled
pointlessly without advancing or resolving dramatically. Even more
striking was the case of The Event. The first three minutes of the
networks big gamble for that year (2010) turned out to be
paradigmatic of narratological shipwreck: a confused present and two
entirely capricious flashbacks artificially breathing life into a plot that
had no clear dramatic conflict beyond the temporal leaps themselves.
There is a lesson to be drawn from these latter two failures: a conflict
must be based on the characters, not the narrative device.

3.3. Tick, tick, tick: action in real time

If Lost is a kind of generic hybridization that owes an enormous
debt to David Lynchs Twin Peaks, then, from a narrative point of view,
it is difficult to fully comprehend the tremendous tsunami triggered by
Abrams castaways without reference to the audacity of 24. From its
inception, the series established an unbreakable covenant with its
viewing audience: 24 chapters in which diegetic time aligned faithfully
with real time. Accompanied by clocks insistently reminding the
viewer of the millimetric importance of time in the series and the threat


of the deadline, every hour of the adventures of Jack Bauer was

equivalent to an hour of viewing8.

From a completely opposite generic and formal conception, In

Treatment (HBO, 2008-10) also conveys the sense of real-time action.
However, the biggest novelty of this psychotherapeutic HBO drama
was to embrace a radical, implacable form, never before attempted in
American television fiction: it presented a story that could be followed
either horizontally or vertically. Employing an unhurried pace and a
frugal mise-en-scnetwo people talking in a roomeach episode
featured half an hour in the life of Dr. Paul Weston. The shows
peculiarity is that it was a daily prime-time series, and featured the
same patient every day for 43 episodes, from Monday through Friday,
for nine weeks. Thus, the viewer could follow the story linearly, from
Monday to Friday, or choose the verticality of skipping a more
uncomfortable or less interesting character, or follow just one of the
characters in a second viewing.

3.4. Listen, but do not believe me:

storytellers who swindle and cheat

Among the tools that audiovisual creators have at their disposal,

one of the most fertile is to play with the voice of the explicit narrator,
something that has been employed with remarkable success in so-
called puzzle films such as Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, and
Memento (Buckland: 2009). Television drama has seldom used this off-

This idea of aligning diegetic time with real time had already been
played out on film. The best-known example of this is High Noon. On
television, another example comes from an episode of the 1990s comedy
series Mad About You (NBC, 1992-99), entitled The Conversation (9.6). In a
22-minute scene that was, moreover, taped entirely in a single take, Paul and
Jamie Buchman (the series main characters) hover anxiously outside the
door of the babys bedroom for 22 minutes, waiting for her to fall asleep.


screen voice as freely or skillfully as cinema has. There have been

examples of nostalgic remembrance as an excuse (The Wonder Years,
ABC, 1988-93), the cadaver that comments with gentle sarcasm on the
bourgeois customs of her former neighbors (Desperate Housewives, ABC,
2004-12), the foreigner who recounts, in documentary style, the war
against drugs in Colombia (Narcos, Netflix, 2015-), the interior
monologue as a tool to humanize initially surly or negative characters
the humorous Marshall of In Plain Sight (USA Network, 2008-12) and,
above all, the serial killer who is the protagonist of Dexter. But, apart
from the voice of Mary Alice in Desperate Housewives, some timely joke
on the part of Dexter Morgan, or the obsessive and unhealthy narration
of Elliot in Mr. Robot (USA Network, 2015-), TV narrators are usually
not storytellers who play with the details of the story, but internal
voices who complete the psychology of the characters or provide color
to the narrative.

These are comedies that provide their stories with an explosive

spark by playing freely with the narrators. The father on How I Met
Your Mother (CBS, 2005-14) who regales his teenage children with the
story of how he and their mother first met, from the perspective of
2030, engages in a constant duel with a succession of flashbacks and
flash-forwards, tricks in the shows point of view, or the ironic
counterpoint between the voice-over and the actual events. For
example, point of view is the key to episode Ted Mosby, Architect
(4.2), in which the excesses of the protagonist in a particular instance
are recounted. By the end of the episode, we are forced to re-interpret
the events and discover that Barney had usurped the identity of Ted.
There are other occasions in which it is not necessary to employ such
tricks; we know from the outset we are dealing with a narrator who is
eccentric and unreliable:

Oh, right, the goat! So funny! Youre going to love this. So later
in that night, the goat locked himself in the bathroom and was
eating one of Robins washcloths and wait, hold on. Robin wasnt
living here on my 30th birthday. When did this happen? Oh, wait,


the goat was there on my 31st birthday! Sorry, I totally got that
wrong. (The Goat, 17.3).

On Scrubs (NBC, 2001-10), the wild imagination of the anti-heroic

resident doctor who stars on the show mixes with surrealistic dreams,
creating hilarious versions of the events taking place at the hospital
where he works. In JDs imagination, the main characters appear
dressed as Batman and Robin (My Fifteen Minutes, 8.1), converts the
story into a traditional sit-com episode (My Life in Four Cameras,
17.4), or find in a patients illness an excuse to tell the story in the style
of a Broadway musical (My Musical, 6.6).
A final kind of prank that plays with narrative possibilities is
provided by Ron Howard of Arrested Development (FOX, 2003-06). His
parody of the expository documentary employs an omniscient off-
screen narration that transports us to the intimate past of the characters
by inserting still images, false archival footage, and even graphics
explaining parent-child relationships! Besides ingenious and surreal
occurrences that collide with some of the essential features of the
documentary genre, breaking the narrative credibility also occurs by
inserting false progress on the part of the narrator: the spoken phrase
on the next Arrested Development is nothing more than a way to close
storylines opened during the episode while also breaking the
expectation of the viewer and classic TV convention.

3.5. Other narrative tricks

Community is the most ambitious and cutting-edge of
contemporarys television programs, constantly tackling the ever-
more-difficult. Created by Dan Harmon, this sitcom tells the stories of
a group of seven characters of different ages, faiths and races,
attending a local community college. With a tone that establishes itself
as a combination of witty jokes, physical comedy and rampant
surrealism, Community stands out for the lush degree of intertextuality
of its episodes. This pressure cooker of cultural tributes and pop
references makes its formulathat is, what any spectator would call


the normal episodesthe exception rather than the rule of the

narrative. Community dynamites the usual aesthetic and narrative
coordinates of the television sitcom in favor of pastiche, parody, re-
reading and narrative somersaults.
Among the different narrative options available, Community has
employed fresh, brilliant new ways of presenting some of the most
extravagant episodes ever offered on television in the last few years. In
The Psychology of Letting Go (3.2), one of the subplots involving
Abed helping a woman to give birth develops with the characters in
the background of which an inattentive viewer might otherwise not be
aware. Towards the end of the second season, Community makes use of
the clip show, a format that had previously been used on Friends once
a year. These are episodes in which the characters recall past events via
fragments from previous episodes (textual flashbacks, strictly
speaking), serving as a sort of reminder of what has previously
happened on the show. Harmon applies a twist, however, inventing
completely new flashbacks in the episode Paradigms of Human
Memory (21.2), so that the viewer returns to events not seen
previously in the series. In its third season, the narrative contortions of
Community include, among others, an emulation of Ken Burns didactic
documentary style (Pillows and Blankets, 14.3), later an interactive
narrative, with characters stuck in a game of 8-bit animation (Digital
Estate Planning, 20.3) and, in the most sophisticated episode of the
season, the same story told from six different points of view
(Remedial Chaos Theory, 4.3). This last episodereferenced at the
beginning of this essayinvolves a variation called the Rashomon
effect, involving slight variations in the plot as told from the
perspective of each character.
These narrative adornments in Community are nothing more than
a systematic use of the so-called special episodes, true exercises in
style that have produced very flamboyant results. It is customary for
TV series, particularly those that employ narratives that are more self-
contained, to reward the faithful viewers with an upset of their
expectations. Coinciding with the sweeps, special episodes also allow
creators to escape from a rut and experiment with the format,


aesthetics or the narrative of the series. It would be impossible to detail

all the antics that have been tried; the list would be endless. But, as a
sample, let us highlight some especially audacious examples of the
kinds of narrative somersaults that have been performed. In the
episode The Betrayal (8.9), the creators of Seinfeld (NBC, 1989-98)
choose to rewind the story, in small scenes of less than two minutes
each that, following a completely new logic, starts the episode with the
closing credits (Memento-style). Another clever kick-off was the third
season of Coupling (BBC2, 2000-04): involving the breakup of the
shows protagonists, the episode The Split (1.3) presents the entire
story with the frame divided into two (split screen), so viewers can
follow the reactions of the boy and the girl at the same time. Joss
Whedon, for example, used such devices with great success on Buffy
the Vampire Slayer (The WB/UPN, 1997-2003). Particularly memorable
were a musical episode (Once More, with Feeling, 7.6) and one that
was almost completely devoid of dialogue (Hush, 10.4), like a silent
film from the early days of cinema. In Supernatural, there are pastiches
of horror films or complex meta-fictional exercises in which fictional
characters are involved in filming a series called Supernatural (The
French Mistake, 15.6). On The X-Files an entire episode adopted the
visual style and narrative anarchy of the reality TV show Cops (X-
Cops, 12.7). E.R. took a risk with an episode filmed in documentary
style (Ambush, 1.4), which Greys Anatomy later emulated (These
Arms of Mine, 6.7). And even in a traditional comedy such as Modern
Family they broadcast an episode in which all the characters interacted
from the screen of a computer (Connection Lost, 16.6).

4. Conclusion
I can tell the difference between life and television, Jeff.
Television makes sense: it has a structure, logic, rules... (Abed Nadir
in Anthropology 101, 1.2). Throughout these pages we have tried to
describe the logic that Abed claims for television narrative in
Community, mapping out the types of fictional narrative has on offer on
the small screen. As if he were the alter ego of Creighton Bernette of


Treme, when David Simon bellowed his now-famous fuck the average
viewer before Nick Hornby (2007), he was unwittingly defining the
latest stage of in the history of television fiction. It is a stage in which
this perfect storytelling machine has squeezed out, in the most lucid
and entertaining way imaginable, all the narrative possibilities of the
television story, with the result that the average viewer has become
accustomed to much more stringent narrative standards. Moreover,
technology is not only altering the way stories are told, it is altering the
way they are received: it is now possible to view and re-view a scene,
contrasting your ideas with your friends on Twitter, or contributing to
a blog post or wiki where thousands of people, in what Mittell has
dubbed forensic fandom (2015: 288-91); it is also possible to provide
data clarifying the intrigue or unexpected twists of last nights episode.
This forces creators to refine their craft: any story, subject to
overexposure on the web, forces anticipation of even the smallest
details, since any inconsistency or slip will be quickly discovered and
disseminated. Because intelligent audiences not only demand clever
stories; they are also creating them.


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The author
Alberto N. Garca

Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the

Institute for Culture and Society (University of Navarra, Spain). He has
been Visiting Scholar at the University of Stirling and Universidad de
los Andes, Chile. His work has appeared in Post Script, Communication
and Society, Zer and Analisi. He is co-editor of Landscapes of the Self: The
Cinema of Ross McElwee (2007), author of El cine de no-ficcin en Martn
Patino (2008) and editor of Emotions in Contemporary TV Series (2016).
He has also written essays about The Wire, The Shield, Breaking Bad,
Supernatural or In Treatment. He is currently researching about
emotions, narrative and TV Series.

Email: albgarcia@unav.es


The paper
Date sent: 30/01/2016
Date accepted: 15/04/2016
Date published: 31/05/2016

How to quote this paper

Garca, Alberto N., A Storytelling Machine: The Complexity and
Revolution of Narrative Television, Forms, Strategies and Mutations of
Serial Narratives, Eds. A. Bernardelli E. Federici G. Rossini, Between,
VI.11 (2016), http://www.betweenjournal.it


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