A few months ago, V shut down production to give the writers a chance to improve the scripts coming out of writer’s room. Before that Caprica was put on hold, according to some, to let the writer’s catch up and rethink the direction of the show. Further back still, Dollhouse suffered numerous writer’s room lock-downs and rewrites. And now, the same thing is being done with Flashforward.

Too many intelligent shows are falling quickly in quality after the first few episodes, those written external from the production process, and too many shows are experiencing staggered airing of new episodes because of the logjam in the writer’s room.

The lesson here, is that writing doesn’t work the same for all shows. When most television was episodic — that is, each episode was mostly independent — it was easy for a writer’s room to work on episodes as the season progressed. But with the new generation of television shows becoming increasingly serialized, writers need more time to make sure each episode fits into the overall story well, that the various threads are intertwining at a decent pace while maintaining suspense and tension.

It seems more and more obvious that networks should be ordering scripts well in advance of air date, before any production begins, in fact. Sopranos did something akin to that for the second half of its sixth season, taking a year and a half to, among other things, ensure the final season’s scripts were all high caliber. I’m not saying you need a year and a half off between seasons, but the precedent is there.

The danger with this is that the seasons as written would be immutable, if there’s a character that the audience loves and they’re killed halfway through the season well the audience might jump ship because their favourite character is dead. But this fixed structure is also a boon to the show, because quite frankly the whims of the audience are not the best compass for plot or character progression. Writers follow the audience’s whims because it means they might keep their audience, and in turn can continue to write their show. What needs to happen is for just one network to take a risk: get a spec script, interrogate the writer as to their plan for the show, and make sure they have an ongoing vision. Give the writer a full staff of writers and assistants and whatnot, that either the original writer or an experienced showrunner will guide, and let them write a full season.

That won’t happen, of course. And even if it did happen, there’s no guarantee the material produced will find an audience, so there’s no guarantee it would work. But something needs to happen. Somebody needs to try something; preferably not the abandonment of serialized television.

Flashforward got a lot of hype as the next Lost — a laughable prospect to anyone aware of how brilliant Lost is — and while it certainly was one of the more promising pilots of the last few years, it is with equal certainty not the next Lost.

The one advantage it has over Lost is that it wears its science fiction on its sleeve; unlike Lost, which cloaked its science fiction with mystery, intrigue, and vague fantasy, Flashforward is from the outset delving into the implications of time travel and discussions of free will vs predestination. Unfortunately, that’s also Flashforward’s greatest weakness.

The first two acts which detail the initial cataclysm — in case you were wondering what the fuck Flashforward is, the essential premise is that for 137 seconds everyone in the world blacked out and during that time they all saw a vision of their future, specifically April 29, 2010 10PM — are great stuff. The carnage of the aftermath is visceral and jarring with lots of great short shots of people suffering through the fog of war slowly lifting over them allowing a clearer picture to form.

But once that fog lifts the show devolved into a series of conversations pondering the implications of what they’ve experienced. Because of this, there’s not nearly enough time devoted to giving the characters some much needed depth. Joseph Fiennes’ Mark Benford is given some level of history, and somewhat necessarily his wife as well though not with the same depth. I find Benford’s AA sponsor one of the more fulfilling of the characters right now so I take that as a sign that the show knows how to develop characters well, it just opted to utilize the pilot to explore directly some of the headier concepts the show’s dealing with. Not the choice I’d make but it doesn’t ruin the show, unless it becomes a running pattern.

Though the geek in me appreciated the explicit geeky discussions of free will vs predestination, I’ve come to appreciate the character driven exploration of these sorts of ideas that Lost does so well, and so the lack of character development bothered me. Of course, the show managed to make me almost forget about my issues with the show’s characters by ending off on the excellent cliffhanger with the lone person walking amongst the blacked out masses during those fateful 137 seconds. All told, I’m excited for more, though I’m also hoping for more from the show as it finds its way.