Marlow Some shows are highly episodic: a situation arises at the start of the episode and ends at the end of the episode. Every episode has a new story. Some are a bit more suspenseful: the episodes end with a cliffhanger of a problem that will be dealt with in the next episode. Sometimes that's a shallow cliffhanger - the problem is solved in the first 5 mins of the next episode, sometimes it's deeper - the whole episode is spent dealing with it, resolving it and then ends with a new cliffhanger. The best shows have longer arcs of suspense - sub-plots, mini-cliffhangers, episodic events, but you see that something big is developing.