Why Do Comic Book Shows Keep Doing Freak of the Week?

From The X-Files to Smallville to Arrow and Constantine, a number of fanboy-favorite one-hour [...]

By Russ Burlingame

From The X-Files to Smallville to Arrow and Constantine, a number of fanboy-favorite one-hour dramas have used the one-and-done or "freak of the week" storytelling style for a significant part of their run, before graduating to more serialized, continuity- or mythology-driven stories as the show evolved.

In hindsight (or, at times, even as they aired), serialized storytelling seems to be a more reliable way to generate good television that will please both fans and creative staff, while the one-shot episodes can sometimes produce classics -- but are generally thought of as forgettable filler. Hell, even just mentioning "freak of the week" storytelling will cause some writers to feel they're being accused of something unsavory.

So...what's the appeal? Why would they want to tell those sorts of stories -- especially on something like a comic book show, where there's a built-in mythology?

The reasons are many and complex, frankly, but a lot of it comes down to accessibility. That built-in mythology might seem like both an obvious storytelling engine and a boon to the writers when you're already in on it, but to outsiders, it can be just as prohibitive as a comic book with years or decades of complex backstory.

Heck, even comics aren't totally averse to one-and-done stories, and while nobody much remembers a lot of them, certain key issues will stick with readers for as long or longer than the year-long epics that define our trade paperback-driven marketplace. Think about it: What do you remember from Joe Kelly's Superman run? Is it "Our Worlds at War" or "What's So Funny 'Bout Truth, Justice and the American Way?" Which of those was made into a movie?

Back when Constantine had lost its shot at a back nine order and may sites were reporting that it had been cancelled, ComicBook.com spoke with showrunner Daniel Cerone about what the chances were for renewal, and what some of his challenges were in finding a groove for the show. Ultimately the series, which started fairly slow and to middling reviews, took on cult status and a rabid fan base as it progressed -- and fans noticed that it had done so while abandoning the one-and-done formula that made it feel a bit too procedural for their tastes and embracing the broader world that the character of John Constantine and the supernatural side of the DC Universe had to offer. For the first time, here's some of what Cerone had to tell us about the creative process behind finding Constantine's voice -- and a few thoughts on what it means for the bigger picture in comic book adaptations.

"Look, NBC wanted stand-alone stories, without a doubt," said Daniel Cerone who ran Constantine for Warner Bros. Television on the network. "That's what we said from the beginning, that's what they ordered. We're fans of Hellblazer, we're fans of John Constantine as much as anybody that's watching I hope, and we're fans of serialized storytelling. And so we knew that as the show built, we would be able to lean more into serialization while also telling stand-alone stories but you couldn't just jump into a serialized story because there's also millions of viewers out there who don't know John Constantine. That was the network's thinking in terms of having stand-alone stories. I think what you saw at the beginning was that you saw more episodic storytelling, but once people spent a couple episodes with these characters, we were able to loosen the reins a little bit and start digging into characters and continuing stories."

"Once we start digging into that rich tapestry of humanity around John, of course it exploded," he added. "How could it not? There was such a wealth of source material there that excites fans and certainly excites us as writers."

That series also aired episodes out of order, due to the vagaries of scheduling. A Halloween-themed episode ended up airing at the end of November because the show's premiere -- originally set to air in early September -- had been pushed to the end of October to capitalize on a themed night of "spooky" programming near the actual Halloween date.

Airing the episode -- originally set to be its second and filmed before the character of Zed had been added to the show -- out of order felt like an odd choice, but the fact that it was a one-and-done allowed them scheduling flexibility; they were able to move it to a place where they needed a single episode with resolution, while keeping the momentum of the mythology-driven episodes moving earlier in the season throughout fall sweeps, slowing down only when the show was nearing a holiday hiatus.

From a practical point of view it can also help to manage budgets and scheduling. It's unlikely you could sign Mark Hamill to a four-episode run on The Flash while he's in the middle of Star Wars mania, but getting him for an episode per season is both more manageable and more affordable. When writers are particularly acclimated to the source material, they can -- as The Flash did very well, and Constantine had begun to scratch the surface of when it unfortunately was cancelled -- tie the disparate elements of one-and-done episodes together and create a larger tapestry out of seemingly-unconnected events.

Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero's iZombie did this -- to even less of an extent than Constantine, and with seemingly less of a concrete plan than Cerone had. The quirky tone of the show, and the chemistry of the cast have helped it to hook in casual viewers who benefit from the one-and-done formula while the big-picture mythology stuff was peppered lightly throughout the season, paying off big only toward the end when it was clear they were going to have a Season Two. Would it have played out a little differently if the show were cancelled? It's unlikely, according to the show's star.

"When we got the finale, I just remember all of us cast sitting around page-turning as quickly as possible and just in shock," Rose McIver told me at Comic-Con International: San Diego this summer. "When I finished, I just ran to the writers and said, 'Okay, so what happens in Season Two?' And they were like, "Hang on, we haven't even been renewed yet,' but I was like 'Okay, but I need to know!'"

In that case, it may have been strategic: a traumatic cliffhanger like that almost demands a resolution, after all. On-the-bubble shows like Chuck have been known to do that in the past, in the hopes that enthusiasm on the part of viewers and loyalty to the audience on the part of network brass could help the show. The cautionary tale, there, is something like My Name is Earl, though, which ended on a cliffhanger that many fans speculated had been designed to help encourage a renewal.

Showrunner Greg Garcia later resolved some of Earl's lingering questions on his next show, albeit very, very subtlely. It's not entirely unlikely that some of Constantine's dangling plotlines will be wrapped up with a line of dialogue in Arrow this season, although it's hardly guaranteed.

At any rate, comic books started as very episodic storytelling, and evolved to be more serialized over years. This happened in no small part as the audience became aware and accepting of the idea that characters share a universe and a continuity, and started looking forward to the next installment in what was ultimately a massive, sprawling drama.

Similarly, the established, existing Marvel Universe helped a show like Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to develop its mythology right from the word go, although it also seemingly hobbled their first season, the plot of which relied on events that took place in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which hadn't yet come out when the show premiered. And when the show faltered, the non-fanboy press always had those questions: is asking a primetime TV audience to watch a half-dozen movies in order to understand your show a bridge too far?

The Flash, similarly, was more able to jump right into the deep end of the DC Universe than was Arrow, in part because they had a world already established and presumably had confidence that if The Flash had been a flop, they could resolve issues on Arrow, which was one of The CW's most prized series.The result is that the first season of The Flash feels like one, long narrative in a way that few shows manage (although I'd argue something like How I Met Your Mother did it pretty well without the benefit of an established universe, so it can be done).

The Flash, though, relied on not only viewers' awareness of Arrow but on a general awareness of superhero storytelling tropes that comic book fans are aware of, but that a mainstream television audience wouldn't necessarily have understood back when Smallville got its start. After a decade of massively-successful comic book movies, a show like The Flash can name-drop Crisis on Infinite Earths and get more knowing winks (or at least benefit of the doubt) than something like Watchmen, which came out before The Dark Knight and Iron Man but which asked more of its audience in terms of understanding in-universe comic book storytelling than probably any movie up to that point.

A show like Constantine has the challenge of being a comic book -- but not truly a superhero -- adaptation, and so it's really more like Smallville than it is The Flash, in terms of its storytelling needs. Add this to the fact that NBC hadn't yet had a hugely successful comic book property come out of this current generation of shows and movies, and you've got a fairly understandable reason for their desire to latch onto the familiarity of a procedural drama. Based on its pilot, it seems that Supergirl (airing on CBS, who don't have a comic book show yet either, but produced by The Flash's Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg) will try to blend the approaches, with a freak-of-the-week dynamic built in but the shorthand of the Superman universe helping to nudge the broader plot along in a big way.

So in the end, why do networks still make these kinds of episodes, even though they know that often, they aren't the favorites of either fans or creators?

Well, a lot of reasons.

There can be budgetary reasons, like a guest star you really want but can't afford to make a regular.

There can be scheduling reasons, like having one long arc wrap up and then having only one week before a break and not wanting to launch into your next long arc.

There can be practical reasons, like trying to attract casual viewers to a show that's struggling in the ratings, and/or one that isn't based on a character for whom they have existing context.

There can be somewhat inscrutable reasons, like network, studio or publisher notes. Why was Ted Kord transformed into Ray Palmer on Arrow? No official reason, but a vague answer that DC has "bigger plans" for the character, presumably in the rumored Booster Gold/Blue Beetle movie.

Are all these reasons great? Not always, and not for every situation. But they're there. These kinds of conversations are almost always more complicated than the fans would hope -- just ask the guy who had them on Constantine.

"With any new show, of course you're trying to find your footing. In the early episodes of the show, there's so much weight and expectation in every episode and those early episodes are incredibly scrutinized by the studio, by the network, by DC," Cerone explained during our conversation. "You're at the whim of all of those forces and sometimes those forces are hitting you from different directions and from a creator perspective, you have to meld them together as best as you can."

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