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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I think it was more of a cultural shift in what was expected from TV stories. Lynch really took a step forward with Twin Peaks. Back in the early 90s if you missed an episode of a show you were never going to see it again. There was no internet, there was no way to get hold of an episode once it aired unless you could find someone who had taped it on actual, literal tape. As a result the general wisdom was every episode had to be self contained. Otherwise people who missed an episode would be lost and unable to follow the narrative. Lynch said "fuck it" and gave Twin Peaks a plot anyway. It changed the game - People watched diligently, and if they missed an episode they made their friends or co-workers explain what had happened in detail to keep up.
When X-files introduced it's season-long overarching plots they were interspersed with the "monster of the Week" episodes. A couple of times during the season you'd get a plot episode that moved the overall plot forward. Again, this worked very well. The overarching plot helped create real stakes for the characters that never existed in previous shows where each episode was totally self contained. The status quo could change, people could get hurt, there could be important revelations. Again, it worked very well (and it didn't hurt that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were widely regarded as the hottest people on the planet with a great dynamic on the show) and helped shift what studios thought was possible and desirable in TV.
Aside from goofy holodeck adventures and filler, the TNG "effort" episodes mostly focused on some particular concept or idea the writers wanted to explore or play with. It was for the most part very episodic and often had a lot of slice of life scenes following the characters as they explored the universe. A few years later we got Deep Space 9 and Voyager, both of which were much more plot focused. DS9 famously so, and it's still recommended as a sci-fi political drama to this day. Babylon 5 also came out somewhere in the 90s and combined a plot driven narrative with what at the time was very impressive CGI for a TV series.