Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
MaybeYellowjacketshas not yet infiltrated all of your cultural conversations, but we promise: Its coming.
Three years ago, whenGame of Thronesended, it felt like the end of an era.
The Netflix model had won!
The wave of the future would be all-at-once binge releases!
But over the past year, there has been a slow return to weekly release schedules.
it will also mean a renewed investment in stronger TV storytelling.
Alison Willmore and Kathryn VanArendonk are here to talk it out.
Is dreamy artist Adam actually Javi all grown up, and wouldnt Shauna recognize him if so?
Namely: Would we even be talking aboutYellowjacketsthis way if it werent getting a weekly release?
But it seems inarguable to me that the series has benefited from getting a traditional weekly release.
Were we too quick to accept that binge-viewing is the future of television?
Are we tipping back toward the way things were?
Kathryn VanArendonk:I hope we are!
Do you put them up all at once?
Do you drag them out over a couple days?
How do you deal with posts about spoilers and endings?
When is fair game?
And we … never did.
When TV is serialized, the whole audience gets to live alongside it for a while.
WhenGame of Thronesended, the widespread belief was that wed never see something like it again.
But this past year, watching shows likeYellowjacketsandMareandWandaVisionpop up into general awareness and then stick?
That formlessness still plagues a lot of binge-era shows.
:Im just over here holding up a giant sign that reads Yes!
Yellowjacketsis much, much scarier than most shows I gravitate toward.
Sometimes we like things that dont look like our favorite familiar genres.
Sometimes good TV transcends theever-more-specific content categoriesassociated with our data-scraped account information.
Your point about the genre-busting aspects of some of these series is a great insight.
Its not just content to be extruded by tubes onto our devices.
:A weekly release was once a reflection of the simple reality of TV technology.
Now, when streaming means that the programming gridgoes to infinity, the scarcity logic changes.
A weekly release is a claim about the show.
But its also become kind of an entertainment marshmallow test.
Youcouldjust wait and bingeThe Boysall at once when its done with its full season!
Weekly releases have not suddenly become unmitigated successes, though.
Maybe the new default model will be whatever HBO Max is doing.
Three episodes one week, then two the next, then maybe three again, and then one!
Even if everything is niche now (and more varied and rich for it!
Its not just the conversation serialization creates, although thats a huge part of it.
Wouldnt it be nice to share TV together again?
