Edgerton says TVshows are either star-driven or concept-driven, or morph one into the other.
Experts say that sometimes, a hot show expresses something percolating at the surface of the culture's subconscious -- and hits the air at the golden moment the mainstream is poised to accept an element of the encroaching fringe.
The seminal '70s show "All in the Family," for example, took the well-worn family sitcom genre and placed it right in the combative generation gap between parents and the counterculture -- when it really was counter.