Why I Think These Shows Should Still Be on the Air, or: Why "Gilmore Girls" is the Reason I'm Not Married

One of my dear readers requested that I make a customized list of programming, sort of a TV Guide for the Loaded Diaper, representative of 1 week of programming. While I am trying to stay away from making lists, I don't think I have the luxury of alienating 1 of the 10 people reading this thing, so here's my compromise. These are the top 5 shows from the past few years that should not have been canceled, and why.

1. Firefly. A lot of Joss Whedon's stuff has a juvenile flavor to it. I don't say that in a denigrating way, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were designed to appeal to young audiences with archetypal heroes. Firefly, on the other hand, had more depth. It was a genre show about the crew of a smuggling vessel, trying to make it in a post-civil-war star system under tyrannical rule. The core of the program was about the captain (played by Nathan Fillion of Castle) and his constant struggle to stay true to his moral ideals, and the mysterious passenger River (played by developing talent Summer Glau) - a genetically modified but atavistic super girl. Fox canceled the show after only 9 episodes based on struggling ratings. The truth is that Fox killed the show in what seems like an almost premeditated manner. First, they aired the 9 episodes out of order. And since Firefly, like most genre shows, depended heavily on long-term story arcs, the viewers were rightly confused from the very beginning. Second, Fox kept moving the show around to different time slots - and they only aired 9 episodes!! It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you keep hiding a show during its first few episodes, no one is going to watch it. This is TV, not an Easter egg hunt. Regardless, it was a great show, and had enough support for Joss Whedon to make a full-length feature (the passable Serenity) to wrap up the story arc. Fox, just because you lead the market in the 18-49 audience, doesn't mean you can piss us off like this continuously ... we're watching you (hmm ... that may be a bad metaphor).

2. Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. While we're on Fox and its treatment of genre programming, let's talk about TSCC. This show lasted for 3 mini-seasons (or 1 mini-season and 1 full season, depending on how you look at it), with a total of 31 episodes. It started out great - with a present-day re-tool of the Terminator mythos - using a teenage John Connor and Summer Glau (see? once you're in one genre show, you can't escape!) as a nubile young, female Terminator. The story arc was interesting, the actors were doing a great job, and the writing even started to get much better during the second season. The ratings, however, got crushed towards the end of season 2 (or beginning of mini-season 3). Not surprising, considering Fox's retarded treatment of this show, Firefly style. Not only did they change the air time to the infamous genre-show graveyard of Friday night, before the ailing Dollhouse, Fox also worked with Warner Bros. (the producers of the show) to trim the show's budget in an attempt to make it more profitable. Here's the problem: the show was a sci-fi visual spectacle. When you cut the budget in half, and you can no longer show the robots in a robot show, people tend to lose interest. Duh.

3. Deadwood. I won't even go into how great this show was. If I were making another list of my top 5 favorite shows of all time, this show would probably be in the top 3. If you have never watched it, go out and purchase the DVDs today. You will not be sorry. Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, Robin Weigert, and Powers Boothe in some of the most powerful roles you will likely ever see on TV. Like most cable shows, HBO aired this as 3 mini-seasons, with an ongoing story arc continuing through each season about the future of a frontier mining settlement in the 1870s. The show just kept getting better each season, and the cliffhanger at the end of season 3 led us all to believe there would be a season 4. Unfortunately, HBO and the show's creator David Milch could not agree on "terms" for a 4th season and the show was canceled. I'm sure this was about money, but frankly I place most of the blame on David Milch (who is brilliant, by the way). In my opinion, he was restless and wanted to invest time in his other projects including the cable series John From Cincinnati about a not-so-human surfer. Remember that one? Yeah, me neither. It was short-lived. Thanks, David!

4. Gilmore Girls. Okay, first of all - shut up. Just because I'm man enough to admit I loved this show, doesn't mean I'm above slapping somebody who taunts me about it. This show about a single mom and her bookworm daughter was intelligent, snarky, and rife with pop culture references that would make any americanophile swoon. Not to mention the optimistic portrayal of small-town America in a time where most small towns are portrayed as little more than redneck breeding grounds or places where pageant moms rule. And as long as we're being honest, Lauren Graham was really the reason I watched this show. Her creation of the quintessential modern woman - independent, complex, funny, neurotic, romantic - set the bar a little high for real-life single women. "Are you telling me there are single women out there who can run a business and quote lines from Pipi Longstocking? Sign me up!" The show was canceled (predictably) one season after its creator Amy Sherman Palladino left because of, I presume, creative and financial concerns. Still, we got 6 great seasons and 1 meh season out of it. I needed one more, though.

5. Farscape. You knew it was coming. And if you didn't know it was coming, you have never listened to me rant about how the greatest genre show of all time was stepped on, abused, spit on, and spit out by the SyFy network in favor of factory-line monster-movie crap like Chupacabra: Dark Seas and Mega Piranha. Do I really even need to talk about Farscape here? Shouldn't it be enough to point out what SyFy does invest it's money in? Oh, Fine ... Farscape was an Australian-made, Lost in Space type show that followed the crew of a living spaceship full of interstellar convicts, including a lost human astronaut. It was funny, quirky, action-packed, and there were muppets! Hello? Muppets? You should take remedial TV classes if you don't understand how awesome Muppets are. The show lasted 4 seasons and was canceled despite being critically-acclaimed and having decent ratings for a SyFy show. I think the producers of the show probably got a little big for their britches and started investing too much money in flashy space sequences and corny opening effects. The show was becoming too expensive for a SyFy series, but that could have been worked out. It was actually better in its initial seasons when it cost much less.

You should start seeing a pattern here ... genre shows have a tough row to hoe. They're expensive, they have long-term story arcs that take time to get rolling, and conversely they have a hard time picking up new viewers precisely because of the long-term story arcs. Viewers are less likely to start watching a show in the second season when the main plotlines are in mid-stream. Networks like Fox and SyFy could make it easier on us, however, if they had a long-term view of shows; genre shows are much more likely to build franchise assets (think Star Trek or Stargate) that will spawn merchandising, spinoffs, and features. Also, genre shows need coddling. They need powerhouse lead-ins with their time slots (hey Fox! try scheduling a genre show after American Idol and see how long it takes to gather an audience, whydontcha!) and they need big up-front investments in sets, effects, and writing. Unfortunately, today's networks run on a short-term business model and rely on independent production companies (who usually own the distribution rights of the show) to create the programming. In other words, while I think we might get some cool 2-season genre shows every once in a while, don't expect many powerhouse genre properties to emerge any time soon.

P.S. -

Erica Durance, I love you.