From Fixed Lengths to Variable Episodes

On this episode, Ryan and Todd discuss the episode--a fading television art. Beginning with a brief history of what early American Broadcasting aestheticized about television as form (e.g., its liveness), the hosts theorize the unique cut of the television episode, an analysis typically reserved for film media. The cut has been aesthetically mobilized by television (as seen in the banal yet artistically fruitful breaks for commercials), though it is precisely this cut dimension of television that is currently being lost in favor of cliffhanger heavy models of recent streaming television series.