Still on the Stairs

A man entered a building.

It took him three minutes to reach the second floor. Then two people looked at each other near a door for several more minutes. The door closed slowly enough to deserve its own credit sequence, and the man eventually walked back downstairs.

I remember thinking that if television repeated the same sequence twice, forty minutes would already be gone.

That was my complaint.

Nothing was technically wrong with the scene. The actors were acting, the camera was filming, music was helping, and the hallway had clearly been asked to contribute emotionally. The problem was that ordinary human actions had been inflated until time itself became visible.

Slow scenes can be powerful. A face can hold tension, silence can carry more than dialogue, and a hallway can become frightening if the story earns it. But once I began wondering why the man was still on the stairs, the spell had ended.

The scene stopped being drama and became arithmetic.

Three minutes up.

Five minutes looking.

Two minutes at the door.

Five minutes down.

The absurdity was useful because it showed me what bothered me about long episodes. Length was not the problem by itself. Unused length was.

A story can take ninety minutes if it needs ninety minutes.

It should not need five extra minutes because a staircase is available.