How To Watch a Procedural TV Show in 30 mn

TV shows are too long. There it is, I said it.

They are too long because there is a lot of “fat” in a lot of scripted series. By fat, I am referring to countless wasted minutes in each episodes where the characters or the action seem to do nothing to advance the story in a meaningful manner.

The worst offenders are procedural TV shows. As much as I love them (and boy, I do), I find that there are too many scenes that are unnecessary and that really don’t advance the plot at all. They are filler at best. Here are a few them that I really want to abolish:

Musical Scenes
In every CSI episode, there are inevitably musical sequences where one of the CSIs goes through the evidence to extract the piece that will unravel the mystery. While that is nice for some, I find these sequences to be tired and really not adding anything to the episode. Plus at the end of each sequence, there is inevitably a scene where one of the protagonist explains what we just spent the last 5 minutes watching. So guess what, I skip the musical scenes and go straight to the explanation. You try that and you can shave up to 5 min per episode.

“Find The Suspect” Scenes
Ok, so you are a cop and you are entering a home for the first time. You slowly walk through the entire house and you clear each room until the suspect jumps out from the best hiding place in the world. This scene that I just described can sometimes take 5 minutes in an episode. If you skip the whole “Let’s spend some time looking for a suspect” sequence, you can shave off some additional minutes

Emotional Scenes
Ok, when I am watching CSI (I hate harping on CSI but they are the worst at this), I am not interested in scenes where the character expresses doubt and confusion about their own lives in a case. I am interested in the crime, not why Sheldon from CSI NY is sleeping on a friend’s couch. Skipping these scenes can shave around 5 minutes on average.

These are my big ones. There are many more but they are not recurring scenes and are too numerous to count. Now if you are keeping count, I have managed to shave out about 15 mn out of a given show. The remaining 15 min come from skipping advertising (I know Duh).

This whole exercise is not for the faint of heart. It requires two ingredients to be successful:

- Solitude: It’s hard to fast forward shows when you are watching it with someone. Believe me, I tried.
- Dexterity: Skipping the boring parts can be a dangerous exercise as sometimes you can skip over some important detail, so you have to be very versatile with your remote.

Now, I don’t mean to paint a wide brush here. There are some TV shows that do a good job of minimizing this or at least making it tolerable. The Mentalist is a good example of a show that I rarely if ever fast forward as the tone of the show and the dialogue of the characters is so engaging that I want to see it all. You can also add in that bucket, Burn Notice, The Closer and Lie To Me.

In essence, I hate to waste my time. Whenever I can, I try to do small things to make the most out of everything I do. When I have a choice between two elevators, I always take the left one because 9 times out of 10, no one is taking it. When there is an accident on the freeway, I don’t slow down to watch the wreckage. I just happen to apply the same logic when there is a procedural show on TV.

Am I the only one in my madness? Or are there more like me out there? If so, speak up below and share your thoughts. If you disagree with the whole approach, also chime in and let me know how you approach this whole TV watching thing.

Author: Americ Ngwije | December 31, 2009 | 5 Comments

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Tanith

Wow, why do you even bother watching TV? I stopped watching all the CSIs because I got tired of the almost complete lack of character development. To me, the story is important, but in self-contained stories (over time) there needs to be more and that’s where the characters and their development is important. If I don’t give a damn about the characters, I won’t watch. House does a really good job of combining the two elements.
Sarah

Just stop watching if it bothers you that much! Those TV shows are successful because they have a healthy balance of everything. They not only focus on the crime and evidence, but also on the characters and their personal lives. The actors are the ones who make these TV shows interesting after all. You said you don’t like wasting your time, so why did you make a blog post about something that bothers you so much? I think you just wasted another few minutes there . My advice to you: just ignore them! Your opinion doesn’t really matter, because those TV shows will continue to be that successful as there are lot of people who actually love everything you just described you don’t.
http://www.daemonstv.com/author/eric/ Eric

Folks,
I think that I might have sparked some strong reactions.

Tanith, Why would I stop watching a show because I skip the boring parts? After all, I am watching 30 minutes of the show which is more than 66% of the show.

Sarah, The reason I write this post is to share my TV watching experience and not to spark a petition on changing the way TV shows are being made. I can only affect what I can control and I just happen to control my remote control.

All and all folks, my whole point was that not everything on TV is interesting and worth watching.

If you have the opportunity to skip over the boring bits, hell do it. 15 mn here, 15 mn there, you might save an hour or two a week doing that.

I wonder what you can do with an hour…maybe squeeze in 2 more shows?
Delynn

Castle is another crime drama I wouldn’t suggest skipping over, if only so as not to miss the parts where they make fun of other crime dramas! (In one episode, Castle says “Shouldn’t there be music playing?” while watching fingerprints being lifted. In another, when asked why he can’t just get his research from watching TV, he says “I would, but they seem oddly fixated on their sunglasses.”) And it’s not so much a procedural as it is a dramedy, so you really don’t want to miss the “personal life” parts… they’re where Fillion really shines.

I pretty much gave up on CSI: Miami after the first episode I saw. I love CSI and CSI:NY, but I agree: the filler is starting to annoy.

Two other CBS procedurals, NUMB3RS and NCIS, don’t really suffer from the same “filler scene” effects though. For both, I find myself wanting to watch the whole episode… even the emotional scenes and the “find the suspect” scenes are well-played, and neither show has cheesy music montages.

http://www.daemonstv.com/author/eric/ Eric

Agreed. Castle is a good one. no skipping there. NCIS too but it depends on the episode. Numb3rs on the other hand can be very annoying but that is mostly my own issue with the whole Charlie and Amita thing.