Friday Night Lights to join Best Cancelled Shows list?
Sorry for the lack of posts lately -- have been learning a new beat and dealing with High Point's Furniture Market. But now that I've got my feet under me the regular posts will continue.
Beginning with...
ESPN 2's Bill Simmons is blunt about the possible fate of NBC's critically acclaimed sports drama, Friday Night Lights -- and who's to blame:
NBC is damned close to burying Friday Night Lights, which would be a shame on a number of levels, but none more serious than this one: It's the greatest sports-related show ever made. Returning for a second season on Oct. 5, it's a fair bet that FNL will be canceled by Christmas. And when it is, it's going to be because of people like you.
I don't know anyone who's watched the show and doesn't like it -- but like other critical darlings Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks and Firefly, FNL may learn the sad lesson that being good is simply not enough on network television.
I've written previously that NBC is now offering a money back guarantee to anyone who buys the first season of FNL on DVD and doesn't love it. They obviously have a lot of faith in the quality of the show -- but if a show airs and no one is watching, does it make a sound?
Making lists of the best shows canceled before their time is a time honored tradition -- and it's a good way to manage the frustration of reality television taking over and bad television shows sticking around so long while good ones die on the vine.
Here are my picks for the top five TV shows canceled too soon. You guys tell me which ones I missed.
5) Firefly - Sci-Fi has been a hard sell on network television for a long time. And this dystopian space western from Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon seemed to good for TV almost immediately. Fox mismanaged this one from the word go -- changing the order in which episodes aired, switching up when it aired, pre-empting it for various games and promoting a brooding existential sci-fi show with occasional comic elements as a goofy action comedy. But fan and critical devotion to the show let it finish its life as a terrific (and successful) movie, 2005's Serenity.
4) My So-Called Life - Perhaps the most 90s show of all time, My So Called Life took teen angst as existential crisis to new levels, portrayed teenagers a little more realistically than they had been to that point on television (and much more realistically than they're being portrayed now, from Dawson's Creek to The OC), The show ran for just 19 episodes from 1994-1995 and ended on a cliffhanger that still frustrates my generation. More than a decade later, the show is finally on DVD this year.
3) Clone High - The concept for this animated MTV series was strange: government scientists clone historic figures like Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc and JFK and put them in a high school together, where they have amusing adventures and learn heart warming lessons (sort of). But the show was even stranger -- and too beautiful to live. Running for only one season (and ending on a cliffhanger) Clone High was one of TV's best written and most hilarious cartoon series -- and far better than anything MTV has produced since.
2) Arrested Development - Lasting just three seasons and teetering on the dizzy edge of cancellation its entire run, this Fox show was too brilliant for its own good. Smart, absurd, obscene, endlessly hilarious -- it just had to go.
1) Sports Night - This was West Wing and Studio 60 creator Aaron Sorkin's first stab at series television -- and it was terrific. A behind-the-scenes look at an ESPN-type sports show, it was funny, sad, loaded with pathos, and made even people who don't care about sports appreciate them in new ways. Unfortunately it started life with a laugh track and more conventional sitcom-style direction before hitting its stride as a no-track, single camera series that played up its more dramatic elements. In a way it was the blueprint for the phenomenally successful (and long running) West Wing -- and only that show's beginning as this one ended made its second-season cancellation less tragic.
Comments (2)
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Totally agree on Firefly. So sad! I am also still heartbroken that they killed Wonderfalls after just a couple episodes (which they showed out of order, I might add) and that Veronica Mars is gone.
I watched the first couple episodes of FNL when it premiered, and it just didn't grab me. And I liked the book. So maybe it's people like me who are killing it?
Posted on October 5, 2007 2:38 PM
It's much more likely it's people like me who haven't yet seen an episode although everyone's telling me how great it is.
Posted on October 7, 2007 11:24 AM