There were 3 other series (England, Japan, India) with the same pattern that were examined, created from 1980 to 2015. Writers wouldn't try to create all of them in a similar way.
We're not saying that the writers would
try to create their shows in a similar way, but rather that they would create their screenplays
in the manner in which they had been trained to. Different people with the same training tend to approach similar situations in the same manner. When you observe dancers out on the dance floor (I mean partner dancing, not free-style "shake whatever you have"), you can usually see who their teachers were, or at least see that a number of the dancers had the same teacher. They certainly are not trying to dance like each other, but rather are dancing in the manner they had been trained to.
Where did the writers get their training from? From school, including film school and other creative writing courses. And from actual experience, which involves being able to sell their scripts and having to work with editors. So where did the editors get their training from? From the same sources, since most screenplay editors should have previously worked as writers themselves (and still do).
Are you starting to see the pattern yet? So if they're from different schools, then why should their training be virtually the same? For one thing, their teachers and their teachers' teachers and their teachers' teachers' teachers descend back to a small number of
schools of thought on writing scripts and screenplays.
Certainly, the centuries of playwrights played a role, but that had to be adapted to a new medium, film, and then episodic TV. Out of stage arose a small set of formats and overall structure for plays, formats and structures that were then adapted to film and ultimately to TV. True, individual cultures produced different theatrical traditions and techniques, but then the cultures started learning and borrow from each other, even though the true effect was small ... for a time.
One thing that should be noted is that those theatrical traditions were not arbitrarily and deliberately created, but rather they developed in a manner analogous to evolution. What is the single best explanation for why a particular theatrical format and structure would prevail in a given culture? Because it is successful, because
it works! The formats and structures that the audience is able to follow and understand and that evokes the desired emotions are the ones that playwrights are going to use over and over again, and that new playwrights will know to use themselves. A playwright could invent an entirely new and innovative format and structure, but if it doesn't work then it will not survive and it will not be used again (though it could inspire a later more successful format). Survival of the most popular.
Then with the advent of film, we see another analogy to evolution in which a new form develops in one locale and then radiates out to other locales. The original adaptation of stage structures to film happened in a small number of countries starting in France with the Lumire brothers. Then film production spread to other countries, each one trying to adapt it to their own culture, but still based primarily on the work of the first pioneers. Plus they would watch each other's films drawing ideas from each other. And again which new ideas and formats and structures were kept was based on
whether they worked! Survival of the most popular.
Suggestion: Watch
The Story of Film: An Odyssey. It's on NetFlix in the USA.
Then came TV, which based itself on what had developed in film. Again, it first developed in the few countries with the technology, which were mainly Western European (including Nazi Germany) and the USA, then was exported around the world along with commercial TV which developed after the war. Thus, every country with commercial TV learned from and borrowed from those few countries that had laid the groundwork. And they continue to watch each other to borrow from each other. Again testing and keeping that which works and discarding that which does not.
Survival of the most popular, especially considering that they are always watching the ratings by which they live or die. You can try to be innovative in commercial TV, but you still do not dare risk losing any of your audience. If you try something that confuses your audience, then you can lose that audience. So you continue to use the tried-and-true formats and techniques. And the show runners will have learned to sense what will appeal to the audience and what won't. They're not trying to fit their show to a set pattern, but rather they
know what works and that is what they're fitting their shows to.
On top of all that, there's the simple need to crank out script after script after script. As a result, shows become formulaic, creating a basic pattern for presenting the scenes and characters and reusing it in order to save time. I encountered the same thing when I was Admin Officer and then later XO and CO. We had reports to produce in short amounts of time, so we created a format that we would use over and over again, updating it with that reporting cycle's information. There was simply no time available to create an entirely new format for each report. Plus, sticking to the same format made it easier for our command to interpret our reports -- again with not wanting to confuse or lose your audience.
Writers get paid for writing and they get paid the same amount regardless of how long it takes them to write. So as a writer you want to be able to do a lot of writing in a very short amount of time. In the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1930's to late 1940's), most writers of fiction were writing for the pulp magazines (eg, Amazing Stories), for which they were paid by the word -- popular Western author, Zane Grey, used to have his characters fire every single bullet in their guns, because he got paid for every single bullet. Comic book writers were paid by the page, so they would throw in a lot of big explosions to get paid more.
TV writers (and film screenwriters as well) do something similar. One technique is to have a basic format for an entire episode (or movie) into which he simply inserts different characters and locales and a different
MacGuffin (the precious item or person which is the motivation for the action) and, voil!, he has an entirely new script in a matter of days. Of course, the basic format that he used had to be one that he could sell, which is determined by the show runner and editors, so it's also going to be very similar in structure to what the other writers are cranking out. Not a coincidence, not footprints in the sand being left by the Hand of God. Rather, survival of the most popular.
The second TV writer's trick is to take a script that he had sold to a show and sell it to another show by just changing the names to the other show's characters. One late night, my ex-wife had been watching old reruns on TV. There was an episode of
Charlie's Angels followed by one of
The Mod Squad. They were the exact same script, except for a few cosmetic changes.
So then, who is more powerful? An editor or God? In the beginning of one of his novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs recounted the remarkable circumstances by which he received a personal account of the hero of the story, thus attesting that the story he was about to tell was true and not fiction (a frequent fiction of Burroughs' stories). Burroughs concluded the introduction by saying that he had submitted for publication every single word as it was given to him. However, before it could come to his readers it must first pass through the hands of an editor and everybody knows that an editor would even change the Word of God Himself.
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