Seizers are generally – maybe universally — structured as mysteries, detective stories, ever-tantalizing, ever-unsatisfying. Research is required, and rewarded, compelling you to do more research. But their real genius as dramas is that they have many, many streams or branches, and perhaps an unlimited number, or so it seems. In fact, they aren’t open-ended, they just feel that way, like a lot of good stories do when you’re in the middle of them and are stumped for solutions. “I’d thought I’d solved it but then the suspect died, and then it felt like anything could happen.” These forking paths and lanes of possibility are also quietly patrolled by traffic cops, and not just passively. You take a certain road at a certain time and at a certain speed (all factors matter), and you might hit a roadblock. One put there just for you. And perhaps not permanently. Tomorrow it’s gone.
This is the nuclear-level capability that makes seizers something truly new, even if the tropes and games they use are rooted in tradition. (Ancient tradition.) Dramatic productions of the older sort might strike different people in different ways, but, for the most part, they unite the audience. They provoke a common response in a shared space, or a metaphoric shared space. “The nation’s living rooms.”