Charmed vs. Hex

In case you aren’t familiar with these two series, Charmed is the story of three sister witches who fight demons, date (sometimes the demons they wind up fighting), and in general look way better in crop tops than any of us could ever dream of. Hex is a new series on BBC featuring a teenage witch with a lesbian-ghost friend and a fallen angel who quickly becomes the father of her child. Charmed is more chick lit with a dark side. Hex is dark with the occasional smile.

My real question though, isn’t whether you like dark or light–it’s the basic set up of the series. In Charmed, each season there was one major overlying story arc. Then within each show there were smaller story arcs. So, at the end of each show you felt like you had a conclusion of sorts even though the major arc was still unsolved. In Hex this doesn’t happen. It is much more a true serial. There is only the overlying story arc–when the epispode ends they could very easily tack on the old “tune in next week to discover…”

So, which do you prefer?

Okay, and I’ll throw in another choice–police dramas, like CSI or Homicide. Also a series with recurring characters, and best watched in the intended order, but not like either Charmed or Hex in how they do this. In police series the story arc that overlies the whole season is the small stories–someone is having an affair, someone can’t get pregnant, a daughter is fighting with her father. The big bang story with the hard emotional punch is within the epidsode–a man is stalking teenagers, will they catch him? At the end of the episode the affair is probably still going on, the woman still can’t get pregnant, but maybe dealing with this stalker brought one of the characters closer to his own troubled teen.

See the difference?

So, which works for you?

• Hex-One main story arc and that’s it–tune in next week (or next book) (Books like this don’t exist much anymore. Although I will say occasionally a trilogy author does this with the second book–drives me batty by the way.)
• Charmed-Big emotional pull story goes for whole series–small stories conclude each episode/book (Harry Potter)
• CSI-Big emotional story is new each week, but smaller stories pull you from one episode/book. (Mystery series like Susan Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone mysteries.)