Don't get me wrong. I love instant gratification too. I require it often. I just wanted to point out that there exists television shows that do not adhere to that paradigm, but instead attempt to be like those super epic novels that we read when we were kids or something, and those novels always turned out to be WAAAAAAAY better than expected. The thing is that we just had to stick it out while the details built everything.

Look at it this way, I don't know anything about any of the characters in 'normal' TV shows. There is no detail, no depth, no nothing. It's just a bunch of generic characters going on camera and doing nifty stuff and making happy for half hour to hour once a week. However, in novelesque shows, the opposite is true. I know more about Bubbs from The Wire or David from Six Feet Under than I do every single character in every single generic show I've ever seen combined. On top of that, the novelesque shows almost always have much better production and cinematic value than the stuff that caters to average audiences