Well, How Did We Get Here? (Backstory in Various TV Series)

As I rewatch Mr. Robot, it occurs to me that a) there's a lot of backstory in this series (Elliot and Darlene, Angela, White Rose), and b) just about every series I've ever liked goes that route, some a lot and some very little. A TV series that runs for five or six years is perfect for dropping in bits of backstory along the way.

Mad Men: A lot, but I think just focussed on Don (his childhood, Korea, and also including how he met Roger).

The Sopranos: Not much. There's the one S1 episode where we go back to Tony's father and Junior in the '60s.

The Americans: More early on--Philip and Elizabeth back in Russia--than in later seasons.

Breaking Bad: a little.

Better Call Saul: a lot.

Six Feet Under: here and there, not much.

I can only think of one series I really love that doesn't have any (that I remember): Friday Night Lights.

Anyway, post any favourites here, how they handle backstory, etc.

And I should mention that Better Call Saul itself, obviously, is mostly backstory to Breaking Bad.

Another one: Ozark. A little bit on the Snells...maybe a little bit on Marty and his partner in Chicago? Not much.

The Leftovers: Backstory meant anything before the Departure, so there's the one whole episode in the first season devoted to the day before (my favourite episode in the entire run). There was a little more of that day later on, but I think that was it.

I can only think of one series I really love that doesn't have any (that I remember): Friday Night Lights.

Coach Taylor: "Backstory? Why the hell do we need any backstory? Now go on, get the hell out of my office."

Will Trent is half backstory! so many flashbacks. but i enjoy them.

Earlier this month I finished a rescreen/new screen of Girls (I watched the first three seasons when they were first on DVD, then lost track after that). They didn't really do flashbacks, outside of an early bit were they showed several of the main characters partying at Oberlin, and kept backstories to anecdotal things shared by characters. But they did a clever thing in the final season when Adam & Jessa made a roman à clef film about Adam & Hannah's relationship; one of the scenes we get to see from it was an unused 'meet-cute' flashback Lena Dunham had written and been talked out of filming for the show back in S1-2 era.

I don't know Will Trent, but I have every intention of watching Girls at some point--I have bootlegs of the first three or four seasons, just haven't gotten around to them.

I could be wrong, but wasn't Dick Van Dyke the first TV show to really lean into this? Seems like every season had like 7 or 8 elaborate flashback episodes about Rob & Laura meeting, dating, getting married, and their newlywed days.

Could be. I remember All in the Family had an episode that flashed back to the first time Gloria brought Mike home.

Lost really kickstarted this device 20 years ago in a way a lot of subsequent shows aped wholesale. The quality and value of the flashbacks depended a lot on how you felt about the character or how they were handled in the story present. In some cases there was huge anticipation for particular 2nd or even 3rd tier characters depending on their role.

Orange Is The New Black had some good ones and the allure of them was similar to Lost - the 'relief' of seeing the characters before they were trapped as much as how life events determined how they operated in the trap.

Oz did that thing where every character got an episode telling their story. and Harold Perrineau of Lost narrated each origin story on Oz. speaking of Lost.

Oz influenced a lot of later shows come to think of it. not unlike Sopranos. Oz started in 1997. Sopranos in 1999.

The Righteous Gemstones is pretty good with this, every season has one full flashback episode

In Dark Shadows the backstory of the Collins family is constantly elaborated and entangled with present-day events through time travel, hauntings, opening of chained coffins, etc.

The Expanse fills in a lot of backstory about the Roci crew

Though with The Expanse it’s all via stories. IIRC we don’t get flashbacks of young Holden etc.

And I should mention that Better Call Saul itself, obviously, is mostly backstory to Breaking Bad.

It's the Young Sheldon it's OK to like!

Backstory is baked into the DNA of Gilmore Girls. Not depicted as such but much of the show (at least in the earlier seasons) involves Lorelai reckoning with/running from/coming to terms with her past.

I can only think of one series I really love that doesn't have any (that I remember): Friday Night Lights.

You get some from the QB's absent military father and deadbeat mom, Tim Riggins brother having to take over as father because of more deadbeat parents.

David Simon's pretty light on this for prestige TV (at least through Treme, I haven't watched any of his more recent stuff) - not super interested in how McNulty became McNulty, you occasionally get brief scenes like Bunk talking to Omar about their neighborhood before things got so bad.

Seinfeld and Friends had a few small flashback cut scenes over their run. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has had a bit of flashback usage too.

Will Trent is a good show, one of my current favorites. I think Will Trent like Bosch or Reacher, coming from long running novel series, there is quite a bit of flashback in the original material to use.

the past is kinda integral to the plot in Will Trent. how people deal with things/how they act/their motivations. and they are constantly dealing with it plot-wise. more so than most cop shows.

love seeing the Wire gang on all the shows i'm watching. Lt. Daniels on Bosch. Bunk on Elsbeth. Kima on Will Trent.

Reacher S2 flashbacks were so bad

the Reacher show is pretty bad. i'll still watch for S3. but its pretty bad.

I really loved the backstory eps in Reservation Dogs, fleshed out the themes to greater depth and made it more resonant. Even though I missed the Dogs themselves!

I’d agree the second season of Reacher was pretty bleh after the first one, but the sequences with his brother on the first one when they were kids were a big part of the first story.

Same with the sequences about Busch’s mom and the parts in the orphanage and in the army are a big part of explaining the character.

Coming from novels where there is so much space to play that out, episodic tv allows that level details that movies usually don’t.

You get some from the QB's absent military father and deadbeat mom, Tim Riggins brother having to take over as father because of more deadbeat parents.

True, but--I should have clarified this--I meant backstory as in actual flashbacks. It's probably impossible to do a series where you don't get some backstory filled in via dialogue.

The most sustained/plotcentric Seinfeld flashback I can think of: the one that summons the Library Cop to present day showdown.
But basic backstory, much more than references to Jerry/Elaine's dating, and maybe even more significant than how long Dad Morty Seinfeld made a living selling raincoats in the Garmet District (where Jerry got his brainlock?) is just how freaking long Jerry and George have been confiding in/jabbering to each other---since 1971, at least, according to the library story----and it rolls on through the decades, like ilx.

The little bit we're told-not-shown of Walt's pre-Breaking Bad life is significant as hell, re avenging-starting-over control freak.

Think this is right

Who did Morty Seinfeld sell raincoats for?
Morty Seinfeld | WikiSein | Fandom
Morty made a living selling raincoats under a man named Harry Fleming for 38 years and considers his invention of "the beltless trench coat" (also called "the executive") his greatest accomplishment.

I think you get actual flashbacks in Breaking Bad, though, to Walt's earlier days with his two prospective business partners, the couple that eventually becomes rich.

There's some clumsy flashback to Claire Underwood's childhood in the final (Spacey-less) season of House of Cards. Trying to remember if there are any actual flashbacks to the Underwoods' early political days and I can't.

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Qva8lG4mY

And this too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzeluRrHxJE

Yeah, he thinks the woman, who was his wife! and the guy, his business partner, ripped him off, when he was the great scientist-inventor or something, and so he just left, disappeared, and they ran the company---maybe her father provided a lot of financial support for the enterprise, at least initially (and that could be at least one reason Walt took up with her, to get at Daddy's money). And he's told Skylar that the couple is sending money for his cancer treatment---and then they turn up--and Skylar is all, "O THANK YOU!" and they're like "?" And Walt has to tell his ex something or other.

Yeah Rez Dogs backstory eps for the older generation are so good.

Bojack Horseman is huge on backstory, flashbacks, and many full episodes set in periods between the 1940s and 2000s, not to mention the title character's in-universe 90s sitcom from which much of the premise derives.

I mean, technically How I Met Your Mother...