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One of my favorite shows ever is Avatar: The Last Airbender. It has a heartfelt story with deep and nuanced characters, alongside a vibrant setting with years of in-universe history. It has dread-inducing, gut-wrenching scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat, right alongside light-hearted moments and tender touches of emotion. And, of cou💃rse, it has 3 seasons worth of filler episodes.
The filler episode was born out of necessity. TV shows used to run on cable, where each episode's length was determined by how much airtime they purchased, commercial breaks were built into shows, and they ran an episode each week with commercially dictated breaks through seasons.
Even if they had a straightforward story for the season planned that could be told in eight episodes, a TV show generally needed to have enough episodes to run one once a week. Hence, a 20-episode season needed filler. To distract the audience, they explored the characters' backstories, set up some goofy hijinks, deepened the world-building - anything to keep us entertained.
The way I heard it, "filler episode" was usually an insult. When my partner wanted to watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars before the final season came out, he found lists online that detailed a𝓡ll the plot-relevant episodes you needed to watch, so he could get the stꦫory and skip the filler.
I used to think that way too. I used to rewatch A:TLA and just put on the episodes where the g(A)ang is reall𝐆y focused on their goal of learning the four elements and defeating the fire lord. That is, until I realized that most of those are my least favourite episodes.
In the final moments of the show, Aang has to make a critical decision. Kill the Firelord and breℱak his moral code as a monk, or spare him at the risk of Ozai escaping.
We're introduced to Aang's childishness, fun-loving ways, and history as a Monk in the very first episodes, so, technically, you don't need any more information to understand why Aang doesn't want to kill.
However, during the course of three seasons, we see so much more of Aang than that. We're shown, not told, that he is a non-violent person. We see him struggle to start fire bending because of its potential to harm others. We see him bob and weave around opponents as they throw punches and never once retaliate. We see that he's a romantic, idealist at heart when he goes through the Secret Tunnel. We see him find creative solutions to problems using words, like when he mediates a disagreement between two ancient clans in the Great Divide. The story tells us that Aang is non-violent. The filler episodes show it.
Television is coming into a time of unprecedented freedom. New shows can release in seasons on Netflix and Disney+ at any time of💯 the year they want, with however many episodes they choose, either weekly or in bingeable chunks.
Yet, as television shows get shorter, I can't help but find myself missing my spare time with the characters. I can't claim that every show needs 25- episodes in a season, of course. Some new shows are probably better off as mini-series. But, as the old saying goes, limitation breeds creativity. When they had to make a full season of episodes, writers were able to explore and deepen that plot we all care so much about.
Want to remind the audience that their opponents are people too? Avatar: The Last Airbender made me sympathize with the show's villains by sending Aang to school and having him cheesily reenact the hit musical Footloose with a bunch of Fire Nation kids.
Want to explore the day-to-day lives of people living in circumstances we could never imagine? The show Babylon 5 is named after the space station where all the main characters live, and one episode featured a gather💎ing of the various alien races on the station so that they could share their cultures with one another.
Want to explore the existing relationships between characters? The Star Wars movies gloss over the fact that Anakin and Padme are having a long-distance secret love affair, but in The Clone Wars' "filler" episodes, I got to see all the drama, jealousy, and secrets in action.
Want to make the viewer care more about the plot that happened before the start of the show? I didn't truly understand how attached Firefly's Mal was to his ship, Serenity, until the episode that shows flashbacks to when he bought it, second hand, over a bunch of newer, fancier ships.
I wouldn't trade any of those episodes for a hundred shows, stuffed to the brim with plot.