People were waiting for a happy ending. He wasn't a pure victim. People never are. Willie in part knew what he was getting into. It has to be tension-filled every day.
Series tend to be very long.
The beauty of the serial thing is you can hit it. People have followed The Days of Our Lives for 30 years. The Miami Herald had weekly installments of a novel about life in South Florida. I don't think fiction belongs in the newspaper. You could give each chapter to the next person.