Parallels
Stories tend to be better focused on a few key characters- and the trend in TV for the past two decades has been towards large ensemble casts. The stars all want a piece of the screen-time pie, but the producers don't want to risk driving their ratings down with unwieldy, muddled stories when they try to shoehorn everyone in. The result: The "B" story.
Done right, the B story can add depth to the A story, it can help flesh out the characters and make them more real to us, it can even (and often does) move the season's or series' story arc along when the A story is a stand-alone type. Of course Sturgeon's Law is especially enforced in Hollywood, and too often the B stories are jarring misfits; lighthearted slapstick jammed in next to a thoughtful tragedy, or otherwise distracting from the natural flow of the story.
Both Forever Knight and Highlander made good use of flashbacks to frame their B stories. With protagonists centuries old it was no stretch that in any given situation they would often find themselves reflecting on some similar event or feeling or relationship way back when. It also helped that both series focused on one central character, with just three or four supporting cast.
Lost (Don't worry, no spoilers) has somewhere over a dozen regular characters. They also heavily use the flashback sequences for the B story, so when one character is central to the A story and is also starring in their own flashbacks for the B story, what's left for the rest of the cast?
Sometimes there's even a C story... and sometimes not. Sometimes they don't try to cram in some arbitrary amount of screen time for each face. Some episodes don't even show half of the regular cast at all. No doubt any given actor would like more screen time, but the producers seem bent on making the stories as tight and compelling as possible. Sometimes that leaves my own personal favorites out of the picture for a week. I'm cool with that, as long as the stories are worth coming back for week after week.
The Black Smoke isn't going anywhere.
Done right, the B story can add depth to the A story, it can help flesh out the characters and make them more real to us, it can even (and often does) move the season's or series' story arc along when the A story is a stand-alone type. Of course Sturgeon's Law is especially enforced in Hollywood, and too often the B stories are jarring misfits; lighthearted slapstick jammed in next to a thoughtful tragedy, or otherwise distracting from the natural flow of the story.
Both Forever Knight and Highlander made good use of flashbacks to frame their B stories. With protagonists centuries old it was no stretch that in any given situation they would often find themselves reflecting on some similar event or feeling or relationship way back when. It also helped that both series focused on one central character, with just three or four supporting cast.
Lost (Don't worry, no spoilers) has somewhere over a dozen regular characters. They also heavily use the flashback sequences for the B story, so when one character is central to the A story and is also starring in their own flashbacks for the B story, what's left for the rest of the cast?
Sometimes there's even a C story... and sometimes not. Sometimes they don't try to cram in some arbitrary amount of screen time for each face. Some episodes don't even show half of the regular cast at all. No doubt any given actor would like more screen time, but the producers seem bent on making the stories as tight and compelling as possible. Sometimes that leaves my own personal favorites out of the picture for a week. I'm cool with that, as long as the stories are worth coming back for week after week.
The Black Smoke isn't going anywhere.
Fun Facts
Imagine if they had to 'flashback' to before all of this technology and have to do it all over agin - ie, reset the scene for flashbacks.
Something tells me they would be pretty rare fallbacks in that event. ; )
Passionate Apathy
I do remember one episode of Highlander when MacLeod had a flashback to a meeting long ago- including a flashback he had back then, too!
Fun Facts
LOL!