I want to semi-address a concept introduced (at least to me) by the Roseanne reading: the idea that a piece shown with different surrounding commercials is not the same piece. The reason I say semi address is because I recognize that what I am about to talk about is not exactly along the same point as the reading. The reading was more focused on what a piece of television might mean to people concerning the differences in the content surrounding it. I instead what to look at commercials less as a meta device and more as a narrative aspect and rather than discuss how two different commercials might result in different readings of the same episode, I instead want to illustrate how an episode is affected simply by whether it has commercials or not. I first remember thinking about this as a kid who was way into Ben 10 and when I first watched a Ben 10 episode on dvd, which of course had no commercials, it was the first time I actually noticed the commercial break. At first, being a dumbass kid, it took me a little while to figure out “Wait why do they keep cutting to black and then showing me the same three seconds I just saw?” Nowadays with all the streaming services we have, their original shows don’t have to account for this but I’m willing to guess a lot more 0f us have noticed when we go to watch an older show made in the golden age of network television that of course still has its commercial breaks. I bring this up because I encourage you to notice how this contributes to where an episode of any show has to leave a cliffhanger, has to leave you with that feeling of What’s gonna happen? In Ben 10, they can’t guarantee that the very next episode in this time slot is gonna be another Ben 10, and even if it is what are the chances it’s the next episode chronologically, so the commercials throughout the episode mark where the cliffhangers are. I’d even argue as much as I hated commercials as a kid, that’s probably because the cliffhangers were very well timed. I hated the commercials because they always came on when something big was about to happen, but I do think that forcing me to wait had me more engaged than when I watched them on dvd and I would find out what would happen in like a second. Shows like the DC Universe’s Harley Quinn series (check it out btw, criminally overlooked) will more consistently place cliffhangers at the end of each episode so that you can just binge it all at once.
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