This is so fucking funny. Late 90's early 00's syndicated scifi was great.
I miss these days. Nowadays it's all about PLOT and SHOCKING TWISTS and ARCS and DEVELOPMENT which is great and all (except for how they never seem to know how long they have to develop all of that stuff that requires time and continuity) but back in the day they just established some guys and put them in Situations and damnit that was enough. We had fun! Sometimes those Situations, given enough time, could be part of or related to or existed concurrently with Plot, but mostly it was just Situations.
I think that's part of why we had such a fanfic golden age, tbh. Part of it was the structure of the internet spaces we were gathering in, but part of it was the episodic nature of the shows we were watching. When your source material is Putting Guys In Situations, then it's really easy and fun to continue on Putting Guys In Situations. The characters themselves got a particular type of character development - broad strokes characterization that stayed largely static but got fleshed out with minor details rather than extensive biographies and in-universe growth and change - which made it really easy to slot them into Situations.















