Over 10 million viewers saw the story of Walter White come to its inevitable—necessary--conclusion. And now the final episode of "Breaking Bad" could change the way that audiences and writers think about the narrative structure of episodic television. We were given what Aristotle had always demanded: a story that is "serious, complete and of a certain magnitude. "

It is this issue of "completeness" that has eluded episodic television.—Can a multi- year, 50+ episode arc have a beginning, middle and end? The answer up until now has pretty much always been "No."

Television show-runners and executives, however, are facing the reality that they no longer have control over how an audience experiences the unfolding stories they tell. The phenomenon of binge-watching television shows has made a new narrative structure necessary.

Many viewers spent the summer binge-watching "Breaking Bad" in order to be up to speed for the ending. (I am one of them) This is a totally different experience than waiting week by week for the narrative countdown. Total immersion in the morally upended world of "Breaking Bad" is emotionally draining, and unsettling; but it also allows a viewer to indulge a compulsion to follow the headlong spiral of the plot. This mode of experience demands an ending to a story audiences have committed to.

The brilliant, and controversial, conclusion of "The Sopranos" demonstrated what the episodic structure of television had always been about. In the final scene of the series, Tony is meeting his family at a diner. Tension builds—not through any action on screen, but through the audience's expectations that we were in the countdown to the ending. All of a sudden the screen –mid gesture, mid-lyric—goes black. What happened? There wasn't anyone watching that finale who didn't lunge for their television to see what had gone wrong. Nothing. "Sopranos" creator David Chase had literally pulled the plug on us. Tony's story is going to go on—but we just can't watch anymore. Maybe he lives for two more minutes, or twenty more years, but we don't have access to the next events. In this thrilling last moment, Chase acknowledged something that was a keynote of American television character: the character has a fully realized life—and we, the audience, only are able to see a part of it.