‘Longmire’ season 5 debate: Should there be one larger case, or several small ones?
“Longmire” is a series that has long had the luxury of playing around with format in one way or another. For the first three seasons, we thought of this more as a procedural that played around from time to time with a longer-form story. However, when the show moved to Netflix it adopted more of a serialized feel. There was the story of Branch’s death through the first three episodes, and then the arc surround Gabriella Langton that spanned most of the second half of the season. There were also still some individual stories for the sheriff’s department to take on in between.
So moving into the fifth season, should “Longmire” lean back into doing more isolated cases, or try something akin to “The Killing” or “True Detective,” where you have one story that really takes center stage from start to finish? We’re doing a wide array of TV debates as we navigate through the slower holiday season, and this is certainly an appropriate one for this show.
The case for a longer story – It allows for more enriching material for the most part, as you become invested to a particular group of guest actors and you see the evolution over time. The ending is also significantly more rewarding since you see the characters go through a whole lot more. There are many long stories that the show could take on if they chose, whether it be a brutal series of murders, a missing person, or something else that could take some time to piece together. If there was a way for the show to get more attention from critics / awards shows, this would be it. Oftentimes award shows tend to thumb their noses at one-off stories.
The case for standalone cases – For those who are casual viewers, it’s a heck of a lot easier to just pick an individual episode, go away for a few weeks, and then come back and watch another. There’s a sense of escapism here, and it pays more tribute to the show’s roots. Also, there’s less risk here. If viewers don’t like an individual case, they can feel okay knowing that in an episode or two there will be something different. That luxury is not available if you’re dealing with a case that lasts the entire season.
Where do you stand? We want to hear from you below! Personally, we do think it likely that the show will give us a combination of the two, mostly because it makes sense to give the series something meatier on Netflix, but you also don’t want to stretch a five-episode arc into seven or eight just for the sake of doing so.
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