CHUD.com Community › Forums › SPORTS, GAMES & LEISURE › Television › TV series killed before their time...and TV series which should of been aborted...
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

TV series killed before their time...and TV series which should of been aborted... - Page 2

post #51 of 135
American Gothic went just as it was getting interesting, so did Lyon's Den.

Murder One, on the other hand, overstayed its welcome.
post #52 of 135
Firefly, I would have liked to see a proper ending to it rather than the lackluster film. Also I know it wasn't cancelled but I want more spaced.
post #53 of 135
Well sue me, but I was just getting into John From Cincinnati, albeit far too weird in the first episodes. No wonder why they killed it, but I have a feeling it would've grown into something very much worth watching. I liked the atmosphere, and a couple of actors really shone (Ed O'Neill!).
post #54 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheftournel View Post
Well sue me, but I was just getting into John From Cincinnati, albeit far too weird in the first episodes. No wonder why they killed it, but I have a feeling it would've grown into something very much worth watching. I liked the atmosphere, and a couple of actors really shone (Ed O'Neill!).
I have to say I am in the minority of people who dug John From Cincinatti but it was expensive as hell to shoot and got poor ratings and reviews. Would have been nice to see HBO give it a second season.

I marathon watched The Job a while back I wish that show was still on. Everything about it was really pitch perfect.
post #55 of 135
Despite sporadic bursts of relevance and quality, Saturday Night Live probably should have been put to bed the first time Lorne Michaels left the show.
post #56 of 135
That's one hardline take on things, Dickson. Everything in life is sporadic bursts of relevance and quality.
post #57 of 135
For me Twin Peaks is a bit of both worlds.

If it would have ended with the capture of Killer Bob it would have been one, if not the, greatest series ever. The way it ended now (circumstances aside) is just a letdown of huge proportions. While the final episode is glorious it should have gone into another series to wrap up the threads that have been laid out in a somewhat satisfying resolution.
post #58 of 135
I just think SNL was such a product of the 70s, in style, in attitude, in content, in relevance, that for it to have soldiered on for almost 40 years sort of betrays what the show was originally about. They set out to make fun of Ed Sullivan and became Ed Sullivan.
post #59 of 135
Robbery Homicide Division. In 13 episodes, almost every character got their own episode except the guy who played the asian convenience store clerk from Falling Down! I was wondering about his character's background the most.
post #60 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
I just think SNL was such a product of the 70s, in style, in attitude, in content, in relevance, that for it to have soldiered on for almost 40 years sort of betrays what the show was originally about. They set out to make fun of Ed Sullivan and became Ed Sullivan.
You covered your ass with the "sporadic bursts" qualifier, but two of the best seasons (1981, 1984) were Lorne Michaels-less.
post #61 of 135
I would have liked to have seen at least a full season of Journeyman on NBC. Maybe not the most original concept ever but it was well done and the story was going in some interesting directions when it just sort of ended abruptly since it didnt get very good ratings.
post #62 of 135
I don't see being satisfied with the ending to Carnivale, it left a whole new batch of questions along with its already unresolved threads. I could have stood to have the six planned seasons of it.
The Tick live action show was good and improving but doomed to die from moment of its conception.
Two shows that keep on I don't get are Family Guy and NCIS. It's not like any of the CSIs are art, but this same-network knock-off plays like it's trying to be a cutesy CSI.
post #63 of 135
Wait, I'm not the only guy who really enjoyed John from Cincinnati?

I did not understand a single thing that was happening, but man, was it good.
post #64 of 135
I loved JFC, the only thing I didn't like was the bizarre final episode. Mainly because it's CLEARLY a lead in to Season 2 and at the same time it's trying to resolve plotlines. It's a bit of a mess. But the feeling I always got was that Season 1 was the buildup and Season 2 was when things were going to start kicking off.

I'd love someone to ask David Milch just what his plan was for that show (If he had one).

Though less said about the surfing kid the better. He was picked because he was a natural surfer, which is fine, except he can't fucking act at all. And he didn't even surf that much.
post #65 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
Wait, I'm not the only guy who really enjoyed John from Cincinnati?

I did not understand a single thing that was happening, but man, was it good.
I would have watched another season. I don't need to know where we're going as long as I'm enjoying the ride and we eventually get somewhere. Ten episodes was too early to know one way or the other.

And if "where we're going" turned out to be not that awesome, the show would have retroactively lost points from me for wasting my time AND cutting Deadwood short. But that's all a bunch of 'what if?'
post #66 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrdrow
Two shows that keep on I don't get are Family Guy and NCIS. It's not like any of the CSIs are art, but this same-network knock-off plays like it's trying to be a cutesy CSI.
I think NCIS gets by on the charm of it's actors. I mean who can resist Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, and Pauly Perette. You could catch diabetes off of those three. My wife eats this show up like it's fried gold and I watch it with her. There's some cutesy banter that's not terrible so I guess if the show's ratings are good then why tank it?

Totally agreed on Family Guy. I just don't get the love.
post #67 of 135
Someone mentioned 'Murder One' earlier. It's really a shame that the show, in its original format, didn't catch on. The case that they followed for that whole season was compelling and had many solid twists and turns. I didn't feel cheated by how it resolved at all. The acting was great across the board (Benzali was fanstastic in the lead role) and the subplots/character arcs were interesting to follow. The second season ditched the 'one case per season' idea and changed the cast, but it failed fairly quickly.

In many respects this show provided the template for '24' to follow (no real-time aspect, though).
post #68 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
Despite sporadic bursts of relevance and quality, Saturday Night Live probably should have been put to bed the first time Lorne Michaels left the show.
I would certainly agree. However, giving SNL the benefit of the doubt things usually occur in cycles. So it is possible ( even if it is a very small chance) that the horrible pattern that SNL has been for over a decade now of being pretty much unwatchable, will someday be funny again.
post #69 of 135
But Dickson is saying DESPITE the Eddie Murphy years and the Chris Guest/Harry Shearer years, SNL should have died in 1980.
post #70 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
But Dickson is saying DESPITE the Eddie Murphy years and the Chris Guest/Harry Shearer years, SNL should have died in 1980.
I can't hang with that as that would deprive us of the Hartman years, which are arguably even better than their 70's era.
post #71 of 135
I liked Miracles, for all that it hewed too closely to the tidy wrapup at the end of each episode: it really did manage a creepy atmosphere (and as far as Ulrich goes, my wife will double my sentiment for Jericho, though I never really got into that one).

Lucky wasn't genius, but it was just far enough off-center to take you by surprise here and there (and had the good sense to only run half an hour, which paradoxically probably helped kill it, as networks rarely know what to do with half-hour shows that aren't straight-out sitcoms).

I'll second the love for Karen Sisco (though it obviously paled next to Out of Sight), and add Threshold in the Gugino category. Compared to Invasion, it was more conventional (in that it looked like a cheap imitation of something like Independence Day, whereas Invasion just looked cheap in its own way), but it featured a great cast, which is more than half the battle where episode TV is concerned (much as I love Fitchner, I'll never forgive Invasion for launching the career of Joss Whedon and Jack Black's evil love child).

And I guess Invasion links, by way of Kari Wuhrer, into Nero Wolfe, which was such an obvious labor of love by Hutton that I could overlook its flaws and only marvel at how much it got right with a set of characters that no one else had properly managed in over half a century of trying.

Let's see... Crime Story had already nuked the fridge by the time it ended, but if you could have dumped the last half-season and rebooted it after the Battle of Las Vegas, I'd have stuck with it.

And I don't know how much more you could have milked out of Andy Barker, P.I., but (like Police Squad! before it), it surely deserved more than a fistful of episodes.
post #72 of 135
I'm always amazed that shows like Robin Hood keep getting renewed. That shows comes on and I want to cry. Especially when a show like Life or The Inside gets canceled. Also why does One Tree Hill continue on?

And a huge nerdy sad part of me is a little sad Xena got canceled. It worked through an awful fifth season to produce a sixth season of just crazy ridiculousness. I would have totally sat through a seventh season of WTF for more gold like their adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, The Nibelungenlied and Beowulf...in one story!
post #73 of 135
SportsCenter.
post #74 of 135
Surprised we haven't seen* mentions of Brisco County, Jr. and Jack of All Trades. Brisco, in particular, I think gets a bit more love than it warrants, but I'd sure as hell watch it if it were on again. Not so much Jack, but I recently picked up the DVD set used, and it's got a few laughs here and there, though maybe not as many as I remember.

Oh, and Xena is all well and good, but what about Queen of Swords? Oh, sure, tell me it sucked, you'd be right. But heavens above, what beautiful... cinematography.

*ETA: I could easily have missed them. But it sounds better that way.
post #75 of 135
Shows that should have died much earlier: SeaQuest DSV. It just NEVER worked.

Shows that were cancelled too early: Firefly. But as this barely counts since its probably a given, I ll second the "Space: Above and Beyond" love. Gritty War Sci-Fi during that time? Hell yeah.
post #76 of 135
If it means not having to go through the likes of Charles Rocket and Anthony Michael Hall, yeah, I'd give up Murphy, Crystal and Hartman.
post #77 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
If it means not having to go through the likes of Charles Rocket and Anthony Michael Hall, yeah, I'd give up Murphy, Crystal and Hartman.
That's some bullshit. Those one-season also-rans sullied Phil Hartman and Chris Walken for you? How well can you even recall Anthony Michael Hall's run on the show? And Rocket's a fun name to throw out, but where are you seeing these turns taint the "good work" of the early years, or even the best of what followed? Selective rerunning have wiped them from the history books. Many of us know certain Bill Murray, or Steve Martin, or Eddie Murphy/Piscopo sketches by heart; if you can do that for Downey, Anthony Michael Hall, or Charles Rocket, that's a fucking disorder and you should see someone, Dickson!

In fact, when I think of those misfire cast members (Gilbert Gottfried, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, etc.), it almost makes me want to revisit them to see if history was kind or not to them.

Also, plenty of sub par work on the first couple seasons as well. The cream rose.
post #78 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by JPL View Post

I'd have to go with Invader Zim. The humor of that series was just too odd for Nick.
Zim is awesome, but considering this was for a target demographic of the 6 to 10, it's a huge WTF.

For me, the obvious ones are Firefly and Brimstone. Firefly ain't worth explaining, and it's been said before, but watching 1 or 2 episodes of Brimstone would sell anyone. John Glover probably made the best Lucifer in any medium like, ever.

Also, Dark Skies, Threshold and Jericho (though we did have something to leave on). Space: Above and Beyond was great. Too bad it was also on FOX.

EDIT:
Why is Heroes still on again?
post #79 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Also, plenty of sub par work on the first couple seasons as well. The cream rose.
Was watching the first season with a roommate some months back. They had a great deal of hit and miss. Even the the stuff that worked wasn't high art. I think Belushi's Samurai and someone like Cajun Man have the same DNA and it's not a deep gene pool.
post #80 of 135
Hey, I'm also the guy who would give up Empire if it meant having Star Wars exist as the sole film, unsullied by the prequels.
post #81 of 135
Richard Dickson, The only prequel that was poor was...The Phantom Menace, and even that was more interesting than anything but...The End, in...Atonement.
post #82 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercury318 View Post
And a huge nerdy sad part of me is a little sad Xena got canceled. It worked through an awful fifth season to produce a sixth season of just crazy ridiculousness. I would have totally sat through a seventh season of WTF for more gold like their adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, The Nibelungenlied and Beowulf...in one story!
I'll agree that Xena recovered some of its sense of fun in Season 6, but the dreary screw-you final episode just about ruined the show for me.

On that note, I can't think of many other good shows that shouldn't have packed it in a year or two earlier than they did. Particularly irksome: Northern Exposure trying to make something work out after Rob Morrow left. I grant Babylon 5 a pass due to special circumstances.
post #83 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Savage View Post
Zim is awesome, but considering this was for a target demographic of the 6 to 10, it's a huge WTF.
Well, sure, but what did Nickelodeon think would happen when they gave the reigns over to the guy who penned Johnny the Homicidal Maniac?
post #84 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeb View Post
Surprised we haven't seen* mentions of Brisco County, Jr. and Jack of All Trades. Brisco, in particular, I think gets a bit more love than it warrants, but I'd sure as hell watch it if it were on again. Not so much Jack, but I recently picked up the DVD set used, and it's got a few laughs here and there, though maybe not as many as I remember.
Brisco was mentioned. Jack of All Trades wasn't mentioned, probably because it sucked.
post #85 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhead View Post
I'll agree that Xena recovered some of its sense of fun in Season 6, but the dreary screw-you final episode just about ruined the show for me.

On that note, I can't think of many other good shows that shouldn't have packed it in a year or two earlier than they did. Particularly irksome: Northern Exposure trying to make something work out after Rob Morrow left. I grant Babylon 5 a pass due to special circumstances.
But that's the beauty of it! A seventh season would have washed away the horribleness that is the 6th season finale.

And they're are quite a few shows that went past their prime, sometimes I think that's what happened to Buffy. Soo easy to identify with those characters when they're in high school and then they go to college, have a year of the college experience and are suddenly adults. So frustrating.
post #86 of 135
I'm currently a little over halfway through USA Network's Touching Evil, and I'm liking it a lot (I prefer it over the original British series). It's a dour little show and while the stories can be a bit derivative, it's got a strong lead performance from Jeffrey Donovan and an otherwise solid cast. I'm bummed that there are 21 seasons and 490 episodes of the CSI franchise, and only 12 episodes of this.

How about shows that never came to be? Sad to see that the Virtuality pilot movie tanked as it showed promise, and I wouldn't have minded a spin-off from Star Trek's Assingment: Earth as was originally planned.
post #87 of 135
Alobek, It is a shame that...Assignment Earth as Robert Lansing as Gary 7 and that...GARReat actress, Terri, complete with the shortest miniskirts on the planet, bounding around the universe, would have been a trip.
post #88 of 135
One show that I've always thought had tons of potential was Keen Eddie. If they jettisoned the stuff they lifted from Guy Ritchie's style book (a lot of those gags were groan-inducing in this show) and reined in the roommate angle, they could have had something. The main cast was pretty great (even Sienna Miller managed to be not that bad), and some of the cases could be surprisingly effective. It was a show with some near-crippling flaws, frustrating because there's a great show in that first season waiting to be set free.
post #89 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercury318 View Post
And they're are quite a few shows that went past their prime, sometimes I think that's what happened to Buffy. Soo easy to identify with those characters when they're in high school and then they go to college, have a year of the college experience and are suddenly adults. So frustrating.
The decision to make them drop-outs makes a lot of sense for Xander, and even Buffy to some extent; less so with Willow. I suppose it must have had something to do with Whedon's repping for alternative lifestyles, the idea that maybe your best chance at happiness lies outside of the institutionalized view of how the world fits (though it's sort of weird for a guy so beloved by academia to snub it.) At any rate I'd hardly call them adults, though, since there's enough heartbreak and pettiness and dumb mistakes made to rival any of the earlier seasons. They're kids in their early 20's who happen to be holding down jobs.
post #90 of 135
Buffy going beyond high school is great, because the characters grew with the audience, and reflected what they were going through at that time. (See also: Harry Potter). Seasons four through seven are my favorite of the show.
post #91 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by D.S. Randlett View Post
One show that I've always thought had tons of potential was Keen Eddie. If they jettisoned the stuff they lifted from Guy Ritchie's style book (a lot of those gags were groan-inducing in this show) and reined in the roommate angle, they could have had something. The main cast was pretty great (even Sienna Miller managed to be not that bad), and some of the cases could be surprisingly effective. It was a show with some near-crippling flaws, frustrating because there's a great show in that first season waiting to be set free.
THIS...except taht I rather would have had the Guy Ritchie style toned down a lot, instead of gone.

Mark Valley and the utter craziness from each episode's crime/plot made the show a blast to watch, plus, it was insanely quotable sometimes.
The episode were some idiots in mask rob a mob casino, and casually steal tickets to the football finale from London's most feared (and just released) psychotic mob guy is gold, though.

On the WTF side, how the hell can Smallville keep going on and on?
post #92 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercury318 View Post
But that's the beauty of it! A seventh season would have washed away the horribleness that is the 6th season finale.

And they're are quite a few shows that went past their prime, sometimes I think that's what happened to Buffy. Soo easy to identify with those characters when they're in high school and then they go to college, have a year of the college experience and are suddenly adults. So frustrating.

Buffy should have ended with her dying in season 5. Everyone seemed to go full circle in their characters. Xander was finally a man, Anya is happy being a human, Giles's charge wasn't a little girl anymore. Willow and Tara had each other and were powerful witches and women.

And we would have avoided awful things like Spike trying to rape Buffy and Xander leaving Anya at the altar. Sadly, no musical, but a musical could have easily been done on Angel.
post #93 of 135
Season 6 of Buffy was hard to watch but utterly brilliant for what Joss was trying to achieve. Sure, if you want a standard pseudo-happy, hero-sacrifices-themselves-for-the-greater-good type ending, then 5's your huckleberry, but 6 was brilliant in showing that nothing ever ends, the good times never last and that these characters we loved greatest challenges were their own inner demons. After overcoming them in 6, 7 actually feels like a more satisfying ending to the Buffy saga for me than 5 ever could have.
post #94 of 135
It is possible to go too far the other way too, you know. There was nothing brilliant about the Magic = Drugs metaphor, nothing.
post #95 of 135
Of course it was obvious, that didn't stop it being a rather good look at the perils of addiction in general.
post #96 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielRoffle View Post
They're kids in their early 20's who happen to be holding down jobs.
It's actually kind of ironic that Xander, who never even attended a day of college, is the only one with an actual career in seasons 4-7.
post #97 of 135
Seventh Heaven lasted for what 10 years or so
post #98 of 135
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercury318 View Post
But that's the beauty of it! A seventh season would have washed away the horribleness that is the 6th season finale.
Except that the finale was by design a no-exit scenario. The showrunners went out of their way to clarify that Xena was dead, dead, dead, with no option for resurrection, presumably to discourage future producers or rights-holders from devising a spin-off.

As for Buffy, the show could have concluded satisfactorily after season 2, 3, or 5. We should probably take further discussion to, eh, let's say the Buffy Addict thread.
post #99 of 135
I definitely agree with posters above who mentioned Brisco County Jr. and Gvs.E. After they cancelled a show featuring a detonated Emmanuel Lewis and people choking to death on goat balls, I realized I had reached a parting of the ways with American television.

Not mentioned so far (I think): I was absolutely madly in love with the Ben Stiller show when it was on. I think it was on at 6:30 or 7:30 PM with no advertising to speak of, and I managed to catch seven or eight episodes during its run. I was not surprised it got cancelled though.

Also, the Tick (animated) was my favorite show on television for however long it actually was. The Little Wooden Boy and The Deadly Bulb episodes were revelatory to me.
post #100 of 135
-The UPN "Classic" Deadly Games
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111937/

-Night stand with Dick Dietrick (Timothy Stack)

-Nowhere Man with Bruce Greenwood.
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Television
CHUD.com Community › Forums › SPORTS, GAMES & LEISURE › Television › TV series killed before their time...and TV series which should of been aborted...