Contemporary US TV dramas (from 1990 to 2005) have developed a specific communication process with their viewers, based on a strong proximity established between the audience and the program. In studying this issue we will apply the principles of the epideictic rhetoric. Two aspects are especially relevant and will thus receive particular attention: first the thresholds à la Genette (titles, opening credits, taglines, etc.), then the phenomena of intertextuality and transtextuality. Thresholds have become the loci of a game between the discourse producers (networks, creators, executive producers, writers) and the audience: navigating between industrial conventions and personal creative dynamism, they go alongside the TV viewer in its entrance and its exit of the series and embody significant marketing issues. The phenomena of intertextuality and transtextuality, on the other hand, are particularly apparent in both the spinoff and the crossover, as well as in a continuum of processes ranging from quotes to references. Altogether they lead to the constitution of a text-cento. Ultimately, they transform TV shows into a palimpsest, in which each text echoes thousands of other texts, key events of our contemporaneousness as well as reminders of the audience's own life. In summary, TV shows have become a ritual in their own right, not only of consumption (watching an episode a week), but also in the sense that epideictic rhetoric gives to the concept: they create a community united around shared values.