The beauty (?) of pre-streaming TV

[jo]

Apologies for the post title -- I am very bad at coming up with titles for entries.

This topic arose out of a discussion on Bluesky and I thought it would be interesting to post it here. The premise is that before streaming, scripted television had to react to its own reality. What I mean is, shows that had to pump out 20+ episode seasons *every year* had to deal with actual real life things and work them into the script. For example, a character becomes pregnant because the actor gets pregnant, or a lead role had to "go missing" for part of a season because the actor was off doing a movie or dealing with a real life issue, or a character had to end up in a cast or otherwise accommodated because the actor injured themselves in real life, or the "filler episodes" that exist because of budget concerns, or the finales that were written because they didn't know if they'd be renewed for another season, etc.

With streaming, because the wait between seasons is so long, we no longer get these (admittedly sometimes rather demented) workarounds anymore. Or as one person on Bluesky put it: "If you can just tell the story you want to tell with the actors you have with whatever running time you want, it's not TV, it's a movie."

Thoughts? Do you miss the imposed responsiveness of pre-streaming TV? Do you have any favourite (or not so favourite) examples of plot lines that came about because of real life events involving the actors or other aspects of the show (e.g. budget issues)? 

Comments

[shadowkat]

I still watch non-streaming television that's often re-shown on streaming. General Hospital is an example - they put a character into a coma because the actress had to go on hiatus for about five months (which is a very long time in a soap opera). They sometimes write in a pregnancy, but usually just hide them, which is amusing. One character was wearing a dress that was a tent.

Examples of pre-streaming?

John Ritter died in the middle of the comedy series - 10 Things...and James Garner took over as the grandfather.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

* OZ had to be written out in S4 because Seth Green wanted out of his contract. So they brought in Tara full time.

* Angel and Cordelia were being spun off into Angel's television series, so had to be written out of Buffy.

* S4 Buffy - was a bit of a mess, because the main villain portrayed by Lindsey Crouse wasn't available all the way through.

* the actress playing Buffy wanted to host SNL when one episode was filming, and they film on weekends and she's usually in every scene or most of them - so in Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered they turned the character into a rat for about half of the episode. Another episode - she needed to go off and do something or other - and her character was turned invisible.

Angel the Series

* Cordelia was supposed to be the main villain in S4, but the actress got pregnant, so they had to change the plot and story, and make her pregnant and possessed by the baby, then in a coma after giving birth to the big bad. Ironically it saved the character from being the villain. (Despite what fans and the actress may think - they were writing out the character one way or the other - mainly as the main villain of the season. Her getting pregnant actually kept the character from becoming a villain, but they still killed her off.)