I remember one of the reasons I got into anime and jdrama was the serialized stories. I had gotten bored of typical American tv at the time where everything was really episodic and would just bury myself in these Japanese series that had "actual story arcs." For years I didn't even "watch television." Eventually I was really excited when Heroes came out because it actually went somewhere from episode to episode, and then The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and then slowly but surely the networks started allowing more stuff like that because you could catch up on the previous episodes online (so there was less risk of losing the audience members who didn't catch every episode on schedule), and then Netflix and Hulu happened, they started their own serialized shows and just like that, mainstream western television became everything I loved about anime and jdrama.
And now it's... almost too much? There are so, so, so many high-quality prestige serials every damn year and I have four streaming subscriptions with massive watch lists on each and most of the time I don't know what I wanna watch because it's all too big and now it doesn't feel special anymore.
It's like the Syndrome meme. When everyone's super, nobody is.
Is this the most first-world-privilege rant I've ever gone on? It probably is!