Brilliant But Cancelled

Shocho recently offered a link to a somewhat questionable list of the 50 Greatest TV Shows. While I haven't quite got the energy to muster building a list of my own right now, I did decide on a halfway measure I could offer up:

The Top 10 Shows That Only Lasted One Season
or 10 Most Brilliant-But-Cancelled

I wish I could claim to have spent a lot of time on this, but the truth is, I got this mostly looking through my DVD collection. Nevertheless, I think it's a pretty worthy batch of entries.

#10 - Undeclared

Before everything Judd Apatow touched turned to gold, everything he touched turned to cancelled. This half-hour comedy about a group of college students had a great mix of humor and heart, and starred several of the actors who to this day remain part of the Apatow Acting Company. There were some missteps here and there in the stunt casting of some comedians I'm not particularly fond of (Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler), but hey, a struggling show does what it can to survive.

#9 - Miracles

Many TV fans think of Jericho and the infamous "nuts campaign" when they think of Skeet Ulrich. But many years earlier, he was the star of this very strange, very cool, often unsettling little show that should have been the heir to The X-Files throne. It had a similar format of a believer and a skeptic paired together to investigate unexplained occurences. The significant difference was a major one: while The X-Files dealt with the supernatural, Miracles revolved around religious... well... miracles. This difference permeated every detail of the series, leading to provocative discussions of faith and God. The show kept getting better as it produced more episodes, but it was sadly cut down after just one year.

#8 - Action

This show starred Jay Mohr as a scumbag Hollywood producer, screwing people over to further his own career. The show was crass and funny and brilliant. It aired on FOX, making extensive use of bleeping. It should have run on HBO in all its glory. And if it had, I'm quite positive it would have enjoyed a five or six season run.

#7 - American Gothic

This show was almost too cool for words. It's set in a small North Carolina town where the sheriff is the Devil himself. Well, perhaps not quite literally -- the show remains slightly vague on this -- but certainly an embodiment of pure evil, and vested with supernatural powers to further his agenda. Gary Cole played this character, and made every single second of screen time an absolute joy to watch. The cast also included Sarah Paulson (long before Studio 60) and Jake Weber (long before his largely thankless role on Medium). The show had a compelling, serialized story. And best of all, this one season wonder has an ending! The producers saw the writing on the wall, and rather than roll the dice on "maybe we'll get renewed," they decided to roll the dice on "we'll figure out what to do with a season two if we get one."

#6 - Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Speaking of Studio 60, here it is. There's no question that this show wasn't as great as The West Wing or Sports Night (which ran two seasons, so it can't make this list). Still, it was a little slice of near-perfection. The show had some kinks to work out early, but it finally did, finding the right balance of comedy and drama, the right level of focus on the "show within the show," and how much Hollywood-ese to portray. But, by the time it had figured all this out, no one was watching. It's still a great place to see Matthew Perry do something other than Chandler Bing, and other great work by Steven Weber, Amanda Peet, Timothy Busfield, Sarah Paulson and more. (And perhaps the biggest shock, Nate Corddry, formerly from The Daily Show, shows some decent acting chops too!)

#5 - Police Squad!

Before The Naked Gun, Leslie Nielsen played Frank Drebin in this half-hour series. Truth be told, it might be a good thing that this show didn't actually make it, because I think it likely the schtick would have worn out pretty quickly. But since it only ran six episodes, each one of them is loaded with more rapid fire jokes than even the spin-off movies deliver per minute. Very funny stuff.

#4 - Wonderfalls

Before Bryan Fuller made Pushing Daisies, he created the equally quirky Wonderfalls, the tale of a misanthrope souvenir-shop employee who sees knick knacks all around her come to life, prodding her into doing good deeds. Actually, on many levels, you could call this Pushing Daisies "season zero," the sensibilities are so similar. But the show also had this sort-of Quantum Leap vibe, especially funny because the "heroine" was so reluctant (to put it mildly).

#3 - Profit

Adrian Pasdar (now known for Heroes) lights up the screen as the most rat bastard central character ever to appear on television. Today, after Swearingen on Deadwood, or House (on House... duh), it doesn't seem unusual to have a character ranging anywhere from mean to evil as the protagonist of a television show. But in the 90s, it was so revolutionary, it only lasted 9 episodes. There's a lot of computer-related material in this show that looks laughably dated today, but in every other respect, this show is phenomenal, and could probably find success if launched today. This show is just dark, disturbed, and demented, and I love every minute of it.

#2 - Freaks and Geeks

Before Judd Apatow failed with Undeclared, he failed with Freaks and Geeks. Starring more members of the Apatow Acting Company, this show focused on high school students coping with the pressures of teenage life. It had lots of humor and heart. It's hard to describe this show in any way that doesn't come off sounding like Undeclared, and on paper, about the only major difference is that this show was an hour long instead of 30 minutes. But all the parts just clicked better in this show. The sentiment is more genuine, the laughs funnier, and perhaps the setting more relatable (for those who grew up in the 80s, anyway). It's a perfect season of television.

#1 - Firefly

If you didn't know this was going to be #1, then you A) have never watched this show, and B) haven't really been reading my blog very long. To date, this is Joss Whedon's master work. Brilliant as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were (and they were!), this show transcends them. It's simply unbelievable that a show could fire so perfectly on all cylinders so quickly. The cast was phenomenal, the writing matched, and in general this feels as polished and natural as many shows in their third or fourth seasons (traditionally, the golden years). I think I could watch this series from beginning to end, one episode every night, for the rest of my days and never get tired of it.

So, there you have it. Challenges? Alternate suggestions? I'd love to hear them.

What Kind of Day Has It Been?

The final episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ran tonight (with the same episode title as the first season finales of The West Wing and Sports Night), and another brilliant-but-cancelled show has hit the scrap heap.

I'll be realistic and admit that of Aaron Sorkin's television creations, this was the weakest. I suppose if that's any mesasure, than it's appropriate this show ran only one season compared to the two years of Sports Night and seven of The West Wing. Still, weakest among that company is not faint praise.

While I do wish the show were continuing, I also have to admit that I don't feel the disappointment I felt over the end of some other favorite shows (such as Firefly, or the recently cut down Veronica Mars). I suppose I'd accepted the end of Studio 60 a long time ago, and it did get to play out its full season.

It was a good full season. These last few episodes have really been great. I think knowing their fate was sealed, the creative team behind the show quit trying to make little adjustments to try and appeal to a broader audience. They simply told the stories they wanted to tell. Well, story, in the singular, really -- this multi-part continuing plot of the last few episodes has been very engaging. And rather reminiscent of the first two years of The West Wing, which would routinely engage in long stories over several episodes. Which is a pretty good model to follow, I think, because even though The West Wing stayed good for most (not all) of its run, those first two seasons were certainly the best.

Best of all, the long final story arc ended with real closure. Matt and Harriet, Danny and Jordan, all settled. We could imagine further rocks in the road for them, were the story to have continued. But it's basically all tied up. Sure, there are a few dangling plots from earlier in the season that were abandoned (the FCC fines, and the whole "deal with Macau"), but really it's the personal relationships of the main characters that mattered, and we saw that dealt with.

So, a good end to a good show. And we even got the official announcement this week that the complete series will be out on DVD in October. Maybe I'm a little disappointed, but beyond all that, I'm satisfied.

Break Out

Prison Break's "fall finale" aired tonight, and the show didn't quite go out on the best possible note. It wasn't a "bad" episode, but it didn't deliver a cliffhanger to wait on pins and needles over, like the mid-first-season and end-of-first-season cliffhangers did.

I'm curious as to why the episode didn't just end about 20 seconds sooner. The gun standoff between Mahone, Kellerman, and the brothers could have been a really tense place to leave things. You'd spend the break wondering how the brothers would escape -- would Mahone turn on Kellerman, would Kellerman turn on Mahone, would the brothers outsmart the both of them? Instead, we get to see the "resolution," and are left with too much comfort in knowing the direction of the show when it returns in January.

The T-Bag plot was a... heh-heh, mixed bag. It's always fun to watch just how charming and creepy he can be, as he was with the post office worker. But now that he has found the woman who sent him to prison, what are we in for next episode -- scene after scene of torture? Anything too quick would seem a cop-out for a confrontation some twenty episodes in the making, yet anything too drawn out probably wouldn't be anything close to entertaining to watch.

Then there was the Bellick plot. I know Prison Break is probably the most escapist, fanciful show on television (even more so than 24), and so I'll forgive a lot. It's fun to see Bellick get a come-uppance, but the terms in which it was delivered are simply ridiculous. We're supposed to accept that a former prison guard would be sentenced to serve time in the same prison he once guarded? We're supposed to accept that a new warden trying to establish a good reputation would throw a former guard as an inmate into the general population? You can guarantee that guard would get shanked inside of a week, and then how great is the warden going to look? It makes no sense whatsoever, and I'm not even sure I can accept it in service of the narrative opportunities it presents. (Namely, getting the show back into the prison that started it all, and providing the opportunity to see some of the old characters from season one again.) It just seems like too great a stretch to me.

That said, there were things to like in this episode. Sarah seemed to smartening up a bit more, Linc and Michael had some good moments of brotherly rapport, and Mahone continued to unravel (and in doing so, continued to become even more menacing and dangerous). I'll be glad when this show returns in January -- I just don't feel I've been left waiting for that moment holding my breath.

Interesting, I'm finding my love for Studio 60 has tapered off a bit too. Now that the show has its full season order and I don't have to worry from week to week whether the episode I just saw is the last one I'll ever see, I don't feel as much pressure to lap it up greedily as "the Aaron Sorkin show" on the air.

Don't get me wrong. I still love it. I still think Aaron Sorkin should always have some TV show on the air, as long as he wants to be making one. But now I find myself looking at the show more objectively. It's still great. It's still "can't miss" for me. I'll still want it on DVD when they put out a season (series?) box set down the road. But realistically, it's not as good as either Sports Night or The West Wing were in year one.

Though granted, that's a high bar to clear.

Case of the Mondays

My Monday one-hours both stumbled a bit tonight. Or maybe that it's that I have a major head cold and I feel foggy and cranky.

Prison Break put the brakes on major plot developments this week in favor of trying to show some "vignettes" of character insight. Ordinarily, I like it when a television series delves more deeply into its characters. But tonight didn't feel all that deep at all.

From Michael wrestling with the wrongs he has done for the "greater good," to Lincoln having to leave his son again, to Kellerman having trouble torturing Sarah, to Mahone's connection with his ex-wife and child... the material was there, but it all felt fairly superficial. It didn't seem like we were really getting too deeply into any of these situations. And without that emotional connection, we're left with an episode with lots of sitting around -- Michael sitting in a shack in the desert, Sarah sitting over a bathtub of water, Mahone sitting in his car talking on his phone, and so on.

It seems like things should be better next week. Threads were dangled tonight that implied lots more momentum for the next installment, and Michael's reunion with his father could provide more character drama than tonight offered.

Meanwhile, on Studio 60, the resolution to the Nevada Day two-parter had several good moments, but overall didn't live up to the promise of part one. The dialogue between Harriet and Jordan at the beginning was great, Jack's confrontation with the potential investor at the end was a defining moment for that character, and Nate Corddry showed some real acting chops in the revelation about his brother. But in between, the dialogue was a little less snappy than usual, the debates a little less articulate than usual, the humor a little less funny than usual. I probably wouldn't have been so down on it, had the set-up last week not been so great.

Or, as I said, I may just be cranky sick person right now. So I'm gonna go get some rest.

Welcome Reprieve

Things were looking dark for Studio 60, but a few days ago the word came down that NBC has ordered a full season of the series after all. Now, I'd be the first to admit this show is not as good as The West Wing or Sports Night, but I still think it's pretty damn good, and I'm glad it's going to be sticking around. Perhaps it will improve and be even better now that the axe is not threatening to fall any minute.

Trekking Around the West

Tonight's Prison Break was not nearly as exciting as last week's episode, but still managed to deliver lots of good moments.

At last, the reunion of Sarah and Michael in New Mexico. And, as was right, she did not immediately forgive him for all he'd done. Getting Michael into another war of words with Mahone at the end of the episode was once again a treat.

The Bellick/T-Bag plot was every bit as horrible as promised. Big bonus points for the mention of "sliders" -- nothing is quite as diarrhea-invoking as White Castle. (Gee, what a surprise they came in a generic brown paper bag, though. You think they even tried to get permission for the real thing?) It seems pretty clear that T-Bag will escape in the next episode by once again losing his hand. That doesn't make it any less horrible to contemplate. But I suppose, fun as it is to watch this character, he does deserve some pain and suffering. The mallet-to-head dealt to Bellick was a fun bit of justice, too.

Watching how Linc got away from the law wasn't terribly exciting, but at least his escape was with help from his father, and not through some total random stupidity on the part of the police. I guess they drew the red X through his picture too hastily.

I wonder how much longer they're going to keep advancing the Sucre/Maricruz storyline without actually showing Maricruz on screen? I don't know how much longer they can keep playing the "can I talk to her?" "No, she's on The Nine now, Fernando!" business.

Still, a fun episode.

In other come-uppance news, tonight was an interesting Studio 60. It seemed almost tailor-made in response to the criticisms that the show is too snobbish toward Americans in "the heartland," too contemptful of religion, too self-important. The plot involved watching the characters get skewered for all those things by a Nevada judge played by Sorkin veteran John Goodman.

I wonder, was it too on the nose? Will the complaints continue, arguing that this one act of contrition played hollow in the face of the attitudes that preceded it? Will it help that John Goodman was enjoyably playing a sympathetic, apparently right-wing character? Most importantly, will it help the ratings? (Because last we heard, Studio 60 seemed to have one foot in the television grave.)

I am determined to enjoy it for however long it lasts, though -- as I have for every episode thus far, including tonight's.

Tonight's New Episodes

Prison Break returned tonight from a brief exile-by-baseball, and tonight it succeeded in making me feel really dumb.

I'm referring to the ending, in which it was revealed that the man chasing the fugitives, Mahone, has ties with the overall conspiracy. I felt completely dumb for not figuring this out before. So much else has tied up in the conspiracy -- why not this element too? And then there was his cryptic line from the last new episode ("I've got nothing against you, but they do."), helpfully repeated for us in tonight's re-cap. It just seems so obvious now. I guess I'm just not working hard enough to figure out "what's going to happen next."

What I did figure out far ahead of time was that Sucre's apparent betrayal of the group was a set-up orchestrated by he and Michael. And cheers to T-Bag (even while I'm booing him in that love-to-hate-him way) for double-crossing (triple-crossing?) them. Now he's off to tie up loose ends from season one. Should be very creepy.

Meanwhile, we have Dr. Sarah out on the run, and LJ and Linc finally reunited. Excellent -- a potentially more interesting storyline coming in to replace one that was a little dried up. (The latter being "solo LJ," I mean.) And we got to see some good "buddy moments" between Michael and Sucre before those two split up again.

In all, I'd say it was a good episode of Prison Break.

It was also a good episode of Studio 60, though perhaps a bit too unfocused. There was wonderful stuff in all the distinct storylines going on. Tom's trouble with his family (and the unexpected connection to Afghanistan), Jordan's drunken desperation for a friend, Simon and Matt's interesting look at race in comedy, Cal's encounter with a blacklisted writer... it seemed that even though I was enjoying all the stories, they were all getting a bit of the short shrift. It's not that I think any one of them could have existed in an episode on its own -- certainly not. But maybe with just one or two fewer story threads, the remaining ones could have been explored more deeply.

Studio 60 sits out next week. It was due to have been a re-run anyway, and NBC has decided to test drive another struggling new show, Friday Night Lights, in its time slot. I'm hoping this doesn't end up being further bad news for the ratings-challenged Studio 60.

Third Time is Not the Charm

Well, I gave Heroes three chances -- and now, I'm out. I struggled through tonight's episode, having heard there was some "big thing" at the end that was going to wow me. All the while, I'm wincing at the awful dialogue, growing restless with the ways the same damn information from the first two episodes is being recycled, and hoping that this promised ending is going to redeem all that.

Well, it didn't. The big ending was just the same information restated yet once more. We get it! She's invulnerable! Can we please get on with it?

Good thing Studio 60 once again delivered a good episode. Tonight's installment was arguably heavier on the comedy and lighter on the drama than the first three, but it was still a great ride.

But the truth is, the TV I enjoyed the most tonight was watching the season three premiere of Battlestar Galactica a second time, this time listening to the podcast commentary provided by series creator Ronald D. Moore. As always, it offered great insight into the making of a TV series -- commentary of a caliber I wish was more common on the DVDs I buy.

Another Monday Roundup

The busy TV night that is Monday is here once more. Here's my quick take on a few things from this evening.

Prison Break was decent, but sadly predictable this week. Last week's cliffhanger would have been a much stronger one to go out on a month-long break (for baseball) than this one. There was some good plot development, but the things that were supposed to surprise really didn't -- except maybe for Sucre's completely nonsensical actions at the end of the episode.

I have to take a moment and ask, how dumb is C-Note? I mean, he was arguably the stupidest of all the Fox River Eight. He'd been deceiving his woman about being in Iraq, and after escaping from prison, he thought they'd be able to reunite... how, exactly? Well, this week, he was literally ten seconds away from having half the other cons flee the house, taking with them a need to split the money extra ways. But no, he opened his big mouth about having reached the buried loot, cutting himself down to about (I figure) half the money he could have had. What a dumbass.

For once, the best line of the night did not go to T-Bag. Instead, Michael takes the honors with his quip about having to rob another bank.

I did check out Heroes one more time, and I was neither amazed nor totally put off. I still find the Indian professor a totally annoying means of delivering ham-fisted exposition; I think the static on the video tape of Vegas Mom's apparent psycho rampage was a pretty sad copout; I still don't find Hiro endearing. But, I am interested in Greg Grunberg's "washing out" cop character that was introduced this week (as I hoped I would be). And the introduction of a potential "super villian" that cuts open heads to suck out the brains might give the show a shot of something it really needs -- a unifying plot to bridge these separate stories. I guess this episode didn't really turn a corner for me, but was just good enough to string me along for one more episode. We shall see.

Studio 60, once again, was great. It was possibly the weakest of the three episodes so far, but that's really only because the bar had been set so high. It was still the "worst" of a very elite company. The issues were as intriguing as the first two episodes, the dialogue just as snappy, the jokes just as funny. There just wasn't quite as much of the emotion as the first episode (watching the meltdown of Judd Hirsch's character, and the rapport between Matt and Danny) or the second episode (the vivid depiction of the pre-show tension). Really, it's hardly a flaw worth mentioning. This show is still, hands down, the best of the new shows this season.

Monday Roundup

Two new shows "rolled off the lot" tonight. The first, NBC's Heroes, did so with great fanfare. The other, the CW's (Canine Whistlers?) Runaway, arrived softly.

The best comparison I can make for Heroes is FX's summer series, The 4400. Both of them revolve around a group of unrelated characters suddenly developing "super powers." In both cases, the audience has been told that these people are destined to save the world. Both shows are played for realism, even though the concepts both crib from comic books (X-Men, chiefly). But there are two important differences between the two shows.

First, The 4400 has a built-in "MacGuffin" to build stories around -- the "superhumans" were all abducted over a period of decades, and miraculously returned all at once having experienced no passage of time; a pair of government investigators digs into their lives in every new episode. Heroes has no such underpinning. Apparently, these people are all simply undergoing random genetic mutation. And the only connections between any of them are happenstance intersections that could well be cribbed from flashbacks on Lost.

Second, The 4400 is consistently a very well written show that is unfortunately saddled with some bad acting. (Not across the board, but it's a decidedly mixed bag.) Heroes, on the other hand, has a fairly good pool of actors, but the writing was seriously lacking. Ridiculous situations, unengaging characters, cliche dialogue, predictable "plot twists" -- this first episode had it all.

All told, I'd much rather have the bad acting than the bad writing. I can't see picking up Heroes.

Meanwhile, Runaway was premiering on the CW. (Cowboy Whittlers?) The two actors at the center of this show are great -- Donnie Wahlberg was brilliant on Boomtown, and Leslie Hope was outstanding on 24 (even in a few moments when the plotlines -- amnesia? really? -- let her down). And the writing was generally better than Heroes as well.

But... I do have a complaint, and a concern. The complaint: for the 147th time, we got a clone of that moment from The Silence of the Lambs where the authorities show up at the wrong place, but we're supposed to think they're about to bust in on the criminals. The first time, it was worth an Oscar. By today? I think it's cause to have your Writer's Guild membership revoked.

As for the concern -- here we have another show with a shallow premise. A family is living together in hiding, as the father tries to clear his name of a murder he didn't commit. Unlike The Fugitive, or Prison Break, they're not on the run. They're trying to stay settled in one town. How many times can the "will they get caught this week? Naaah!" beat be played? (Maybe ask the writers of HBO's Big Love?) How deep can this conspiracy to frame the father possibly go, that many little clues could be doled out in different episodes?

In other words, even if the acting stays as good as it is, and the writers find some other Oscar-winning films to rip off, where is there to go? I'm not sure that I care to find out, given how Monday night is as packed as it is.

Because after all, Prison Break and Studio 60 were both great tonight.

Prison Break once again found away to play some great tension over "getting caught" even outside the prison walls. They left at a nasty cliffhanger that leaves you dying to see how they'll get out of it. There were great character moments as we got to see: Haywire return for the first time this season, Michael come seriously unraveled early in the episode as once again his careful plans were disrupted, T-Bag being utterly creepy. I don't mind the dramatic conceits that Sucre would just happen upon C-Note hitchhiking, because it gets the characters back together again. The show is not at its best with the cons all split up.

And Studio 60 was even better this week than last. While the ultimate payoff of the Gilbert & Sullivan parody was not itself very funny (especially compared to other moments in the episode), I accept that you can't always play these moments off screen (like the "Crazy Christians" sketch, which I guarantee would be funnier in your imagination than it would be on your television) -- you can't always just tease. In any case, the 40-odd minutes leading up to the song were wonderful.

I'm guessing most of you didn't watch all of these shows. (Who could blame you?) But I'm betting that with a "menu" this diverse, you probably caught at least one of them. Anyone have favorite (or least favorite) moments to share with the class?

On With the Shows

"Premiere week" is here for most of the fall television shows, and it was a full slate tonight. I'm fresh from the TV screen and now at my computer screen, ready to spew my random thoughts about what I saw tonight.

First up was Prison Break. My love-nervousness relationship with this show continued this week.

On the love side, I'm still fascinated by the development of William Fichtner's character, Mahone. Every week, they paint him one more shade darker, and he becomes more interesting to watch. T-Bag remains the one of the most creepy, infuriating, and entertaining characters on television. As per usual, he got the best line of the night: "I'd have tattooed it to my body, but I didn't have the time." It was great to see so many of the escapees interacting once again, as they did back in season one. And suspense-wise, there were some good moments of tension with Tweener, C-Note, and Sucre all facing brushes with "almost caught."

On the nervousness side, they're careening towards this "loot in Utah" plot point at breakneck speed, and it's not entirely clear where the story has to go after it gets there. It's the same nervousness I've felt throughout this season, wondering if the show will be as good as it was in the first season. And so far, it's been pretty close, so you'd think the nervousness would have gone away by now. I guess that's just one more facet to the fun tension of watching Prison Break.

Second up was the return of How I Met Your Mother, the only watchable comedy on CBS. (It's actually quite a lot better than just "watchable," too.) I don't really have much to say here, because I recognize that as silly as it may be to spend so much time watching and talking about television, it's sillier still to talk about the ongoing plot of a sitcom. (Although you could with this sitcom.) Suffice to say, it's back, and still funny. Add to the weird stupidity of this year's Emmy nominations the fact that Neil Patrick Harris didn't get noticed for his role here.

Incidentally, I say that HIMYM is "only watchable comedy" on CBS, taking into account tonight's premiere of The Class before it. It's been available for sneak previewing on TiVo for a week, and, while not bad, there's nothing that great about it either. Its creative and directorial pedigree includes folks involved with Friends, Cheers, and more, but it doesn't really show any of that brilliance. Given how many great shows are on TV these days, there's no need to make room for one this mediocre.

And speaking of "great shows," the club got one larger tonight with the premiere of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I tuned in, hoping for a proud continuation of Aaron Sorkin's brilliant work on Sports Night and The West Wing, and I was not disappointed. (In fact, they even stole the type face from The West Wing for their credits.) The writing was excellent; the dense discussions of censorship, politics, religion, and other such weighty matters was provocative; the acting was top notch. If any other new fall shows had to be this good for me to start watching them, I probably wouldn't be adding any to my rotation. (Which for me, might not be so bad.)

Anybody else out there have Monday night favorites (new or old) they want to share with the group?