What you are describing is suitable for drama. It's what you get in a thick Russian novel. The rule of three, on the other hand, is a good start for a presentation or a training class or an analytic essay.
Certainly not poo-pooing the Rule of 3. It has definitely use in and out of story telling. One of the reasons it came to dominate TV drama so much is that they were mostly built under the assumption the viewer would never see the show again. In the age before VCRs and their children, and before the internet, and only some episodes being shown in reruns writers had to assume the viewers would see the show once only and leaving them confused because they coughed during the “big scene” just would not do. You had to give the viewers some level of repetition. There’s a good reason why the first show to really discard (B5) was also the first show to make heavy use of the internet to bring the viewing community together and to have the creators communicate with the viewers. I don’t know any B5 viewer from back in the day who didn’t read Lurkers after every episode, heck I’ve saved copies of every page for when I rewatch the show. The only real problem the rule of 3 has is the execs who forgot why it exists (and it still does, most TV drama still follows it), it’s not because viewers are dumb, it’s because viewers are transient and most shows still don’t get rewatched or analyzed, so you need to make sure the plot works on one viewing.