Complex TV

Orienting Paratexts

Along with shifts in the television industry and technologies, viewer practices have adapted to the digital era with new developments in how people consume narrative television. This chapter explores the range of paratexts that have emerged to help viewers make sense of complex television’s temporality, characters, plot, and spatial orientation, spanning a wide range of programs from St. Elsewhere to Game of Thrones. Through a detailed account of the fan wiki Lostpedia, I explore the complexity of how people watch television and foreground notions of forensic fandom and drillability as modes of television spectatorship.

This chapter refers to many online examples of orienting paratexts. As of March 2015, these are some of the active links to such sites:

p. 265: Lost, the Synchronizing video

p. 267: Dexter's Victims infographic

p. 267-268: St. Elsewhere's Tommy Westphall Universe Theory

p. 269: Character Alignment charts



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