By Christina Kallas
The comparison with a novel or with watching a very long movie is a good one for yet another reason: serialization means that you cannot watch the episodes in whichever order they reach you. You have to watch the whole season as if you were watching a 12-hour movie. Terence Winter, creator of Boardwalk Empire and one of the writers for The Sopranos) talks about how the effort still goes towards ensuring that each episode may stand alone, as if it were a mini-movie. So when you just happen to watch this one it still has its own beginning, middle and end, and it makes sense. But it’s like one chapter in a book. To really appreciate it you have to watch the whole series, as you would read a book.
