The reason to give up on television

Max Headroom tried, but Dark Angel – The Complete First Season was the best cyberpunk TV season ever. Since Firefly never got a complete season, arguably DA was simply the best sci-fi season ever–the only competition possible would be from Battlestar Gallactica. Second Season was quite different though no less superb (I’m not showing you the cover because it is seriously ugly. I thought for awhile that S2 must have involved a change in actress. I have to assume someone in charge of design had a serious grudge against Alba). I could see readers being thrown a bit as the plot twisted from a more conventional near-future scenario into a more ancient-conspiracy type story with a strong kingdom of the animals feel to it (and one of the DVD commentaries leads me to suspect that 9/11 led the creative team to want to replace the freedom v. feds theme with a bad guy that could leave the feds looking better–which I think was a sad development).

But it was simply great. Especially since a lead protagonist was the Pacific Northwest itself. The future Seattle portrayed and the whole scenario was superb on many levels.

Yet it got cancelled. Why? Did it not get good ratings? Actually the first season, Tuesday night, got fine ratings. The second season was played in a Friday night death slot but still got reasonable ratings. In fact, the Fox Network initially picked it up.
So what was the problem?

Well, Joss Whedon wanted Fox to do Firefly.

But Mark, Firefly was a fantastic show. You’re telling me that Fox had a chance to air two incredibly brilliant shows? Why is that bad?

It is bad, because they were both “high budget” and Fox wouldn’t do both. They picked up Firefly instead.

Oh, that’s too bad. But you’re not declaring a preference for Cameron over Whedon are you? Because then we would have to take away your blog name and kick you out of the fan club and everything.

Right. Because Fox was sooooo loyal to Whedon, airing all of ten out of thirteen shows, and only changing the show time more often than the number of episodes.

No, what we got was two dead scifi shows that were both better than almost any other dramas on television.

That is the reason to give up television. No matter how many advantages that TV series have over movies, the fact remains that no movie-goer is kicked out of the theatre before the story is over. I’m just sick of getting interested in dramas that obviously have a multi-season story arc die before their time for completely bogus reasons.

10 thoughts on “The reason to give up on television”

Pastor TA January 10, 2008 at 2:22 am

Mark, the Lord really uses you in my life.

When i read all of your posts about what TV and DVDs you watch, i feel much better about the amount of TV that i watch. 🙂

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Ben G. January 10, 2008 at 10:21 am

Just finished watching through Firefly‘s run a few days ago – the worst of it, to me, was how stinkin’ good “Objects in Space” was. A lot of the episodes were fun, all were pretty good TV at worst, but right at the end it started to show its real promise.

It makes me wonder if there’s any other possible venue for good scifi series. The only thing that’s drawn me back to TV at all in the last few years has been its increasing resemblance to film, and it makes me wonder if scifi’s real place would be as serial, shorter features released in theaters and on DVD/as downloads.

I imagine there are all sorts of things wrong with that notion, but it would be nice if these sorts of series could have room to breathe and be less subject to network whims.

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george January 10, 2008 at 10:25 am

Fox dropped the ball with one of my favorite shows too – Arrested Development. It lasted three seasons but was forced to wrap up its story in a condensed form because they knew the ax was going to fall. There was some closure but it was cliffs-notes-y if you know what I mean.

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