ABC Catches You Up On Its Drama

The evolution of television as a complex storytelling medium has both its pluses and minuses. Plus: TV drama and comedy has never been better. Minus: Unless you’ve been watching from the beginning, it can be nearly impossible to jump into a new series. Networks, of course, have used recap episodes of series like Lost to try and lure in new viewers for years now. But ABC has discovered a new battlefield upon which to fight this war on ignorance: online video.

Starting in 2006, ABC was one of the first networks to put the majority of its shows online, and although it’s since been surpassed on a technical level by Hulu, it still gets credit for being an early adopter. So it’s excellent to see the network taking on territory normally left to industrious fans, and creating short recaps — called Starter Kits — to prepare viewers for the new fall season.

The current Starter Kits recap the bulk of ABC’s hefty lineup: Desperate Housewives, Private Practice, Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, Brothers and Sisters, Dirty Sexy Money, Samantha Who and Eli Stone. Each manages to capture the voice of the show, while bringing viewers up to speed on the premise and major characters. In a few cases, ABC has shot additional footage and voice-over to help catch viewers up — Dirty Sexy Money’s Starter Kit is framed as a confidential conversation with the family chauffer, while the Pushing Daisies clip makes use of the show’s ubiquitous narrator (Jim Dale).

Ugly Betty’s recap takes the cake, presented as a fashion report from Suzuki St. Pierre (Alec Mapa), a minor character who manages to cover pretty much every major plot twist of the surprisingly complex first season. The ones that don’t take a meta approach to their execution simply don’t have the time — when trying to synopsize the past four seasons of Grey’s Anatomy drama in under five minutes, you have to make each second count.

Really, the biggest flaw of the shorts is in ABC’s technical presentation. These are strictly promotional materials that do far more than banner ads to lure in new viewers — so why not free the ABC.com versions from their occasionally problematic interface (the above links are non-official uploads to YouTube), and make them embeddable everywhere? The answer to that question is probably a complex tale of copyright woes and corporate restrictions. I wish they’d make a recap video for it.