A good television show writer understands that Oscar Wilde wasn’t kidding when he said, “I can resist anything but temptation.” Drama holds its audience in a perpetual state of anticipation, joyful in the knowledge that answers will be doled out only sparingly, that no resolution will ever be as powerful as the growing desire for it.

Theater and film do this for a few hours; television can do it for years. Audiences form an intimacy with television that they do not have with other visual mediums, not because television comes into their homes but because television comes into their heads. And stays there. To “watch” a series, one must interact with it, carry the characters and plotlines around in between episodes, consciously or unconsciously thinking about what will happen next, talking about it with friends or, nowadays, taking the pulse of other viewers via the Internet.