Screenwriters by IMDb episode ratings

[satirise]

I had a little fun with average episode ratings on IMDb. I believe it's the largest available set of people's quantified takes on each episode. I considered every writer with more than one ML credit to their name, and here are some findings:

1. If we only consider writing credits, not story/teleplay ones, the Debra Frank-Carl Sautter team is ML's finest at an average rating of 7.64, followed by Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno at 7.58. If we disregard the outliers of TDSART and AS, it's 7.45 and 7.44, respectively, bringing both pairs under Bruce Franklin Singer's 7.55. The most prolific writers, Roger Director and Charles H Eglee, are at mere 7.18 and 7.1, respectively, because they did most of their work later in the series.

2. If we sum the episode ratings for a very crude measure of overall contribution, Kerry Ehrin comes on top at 66, followed closely by Roger Director at 64.6, then Charles H. Eglee at 56.8.

3. Caron is only at a 7.17/43, obviously brought down by TSP and AWWaW.

4. If we give story and teleplay credit equal weight (and perhaps we shouldn't, given that BoB-IACM was credited to everyone and their aunt), Carl Sautter becomes the highest-rated writer because Debra Frank is hurt by TToMT and falls below Bruce Franklin Singer. She's still above Karen Hall, who in turn edges just ahead of Osborn-Reno.

5. Under that same scenario, Roger Director has the largest overall contribution at 109.1, then Charles H. Eglee at 107.8, then Osborn-Reno. It pretty much follows the number of credited contributions.

6. The shift away from long-term writers in S5 is stark, with no full credits beyond SaS.

7. The IMDb data isn't flawless, at the very least it claims Debra Frank co-wrote "Every daughter's father is a virgin," which I only caught by accident, because it seemed to make sense. Or maybe the credits of the episode are wrong?

When I have some more time, I'll consider only credits given to writers working alone or in established partnerships.

[marta]

This is fascinating, Satirise! I congratulate you on the considerable effort. I didn’t even know the ratings were there. What strikes me most from your analysis is how close the top results are for writers. And for episodes! The highest rating is 8.4 for TDSART and the worst 6.4 for AWWAV and TSP. This confirms IMHO the high quality of the whole series and that people hate a compilation of clips. I am not sure about excluding top two (and only at the top?) outliers in this analysis. I would not. I wonder what it was about C that put people off (6.8), too much outside of the fourth wall?

 
Another observation is that the ratings assess how people liked the episodes and most hated seasons 4-5 and it was due to the story, not poor quality of writing. So you may be unfairly branding some writing as inferior by your analysis, don’t you think? The story line, that is the integrity of the show, is the responsibility of producers, not writers.

We know that GGC had edited, sometimes extensively, every episode except AS at his time on the show but did not get writing credits because such was his policy. We also know that Ron Clark had a lot (A LOT, his emphasis) help with the last episode and is a bit embarrassed that he ended up with the solo writing credit.

From what you say on the board overall I suspect that you are a writer yourself (we know Sandra is, impressive!) and have knowledge of movies. My interest in ML is wide ranging but the main is picking up cultural references. By these I mean references to movies, quotations of music and wider culture tropes. A good example is your suggestion of a link between Two For The Road and ‘bitch -bastard’ exchange in ML, which I think is spot on. I hope you have more (many more?)… If you do please respond under the episode rather than here. CHD P1-2 probably has dozens? [late edit here: this is silly. I am taking it back!] Oops! There are thousands of such references in the show. I meant ones that would be more obscure, but how are you to know which ones are more obscure for me? Oh, dear what a bummer.

I feel it may be increasingly difficult to discuss the show in an episode - structured way, as your guys discussion under IAWJ showed already, but we should try. What do you think?

[satirise]

Of course, the results only say anything about what a reasonably large set of people thought, not about the actual quality. I still wanted to see what they would show. I see what you mean about the direction of the story being in the hands of producers, not writers, but ML had a great deal of overlap between the two. But then, it's definitely true that the line-by-line quality of the writing didn't suddenly fall off a cliff. Episode ratings aren't that great for inferring things about the quality of the writing, to be honest, but TV is still much more of a writer's medium than films.

As for disregarding the outliers, it's a common direction in data analysis if they're far removed from the body of the data set. It's not quite justified here, but I looked at it qualitatively: TDSART and AS have a reputation that is likely to colour people's ratings. At least, as an old show, it's not as prone to ratings inflation as the Twitter-era ones. I should have disregarded 2-3 other episodes on account of their fame or infamy, but I was tired and forgot.

I don't get the Camille situation, either. Or TSP, for that matter, until Community, it was the best clip show ever made.

I might attempt a slow rewatch of the entire series and comment on every episode, I don't think it's been done on this board in years.

[sandra]

Jan 10, 2021 5:28:32 GMT -5 satirise said:

I might attempt a slow rewatch of the entire series and comment on every episode, I don't think it's been done on this board in years.

If you do, I'll join you! 

[marta]

Thank you so much! Sesame Open!