Opinion On the hook

The penultimate season of the show was just seven episodes long, and the final six episodes will only air next year. (File)

In the entertainment factories in the West, two clichés are battling each other. If the customer is indeed always right, should she get what she wants? Or, in the words of Bobby Womack, should you “leave them wanting more”? The creators of Game of Thrones — arguably the most popular TV series in the world — have just become the latest in a series of film-makers and show-runners to solve the conundrum by pointlessly stretching out a narrative, knowing full well that their fans are hooked and can be milked a little longer. The penultimate season of the show was just seven episodes long, and the final six episodes will only air next year.

The “make-em-wait” phenomenon is not new. What was Peter Jackson’s excuse for stretching out The Hobbit to three films? Or The Hunger Games finale, where the first film was little more than a prologue to its successor? TV dramas, the last hope for mature, artistically engaging mass content are now following suit. Breaking Bad split its final season, making fans wait over a year to witness the fate of a chemistry teacher turned drug lord.

Advertisement

There is little artistic justification in taking a 10-episode narrative arc, adding a few episodes, and dividing it into two. Addicted as most fans are to shows like Game of Thrones, its producers will likely retain them and even gain new ones in the year that ensues. However, at a deeper level, such blatant commercialism may have adverse consequences. Hollywood, with its penchant for remakes and films with mass appeal, lost some of its audience to serious TV. In India, younger audiences are turning towards web series because the daily soap — and its over-explained plots and constant resort to clichés — does not appeal to them. The lesson is simple. There is a difference between show business and the drug business: You can’t take your customer for granted in the former.