The Evolution of Characters in TV Series: Morphology, Selection, and Remarkable Cases in Narrative Ecosystem

The aim of this chapter is to study vast narratives (Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin, 2009) according to the theoretical paradigm named narrative ecosystems. Among vast narratives we will focus on TV series which, better than other audiovisual productions, have become increasingly complex (Mittell 2015) and multifaceted objects that need a crossdisciplinary and systemic perspective to be analysed. As far as TV series are taken into consideration, the chapter will focus on a specific portion of these narrations, that is to say the characters and their evolution within the long lasting narrative arch of a TV show. In analogy with the natural ecosystems, in order to study a narrative ecosystem and in relation to all the features we will focus on, it is required to adopt a holistic approach that would consider direct and indirect interactions among multiple objects. In particular, this chapter will focus on the study of the morphology of the TV serial narrative formats, discussing the selection and evolution patterns that affect their characters and that lead to the development of different narrative formats. In order to talk about the morphological aspects of TV serial narratives, we need to concentrate on some of their features. First of all, we will address the issue of narrative ecosystems and the need for a dynamic model of analysis able to take into account the complex mode of operation of this kind of productions. Afterwards, we will cover the issue of selection models and from them we will draw on the TV series possible configurations