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.