TV Shows Cut Down In Their Prime

I liked Raines. It hadn't even made it to it's prime yet, but it was good.

I was LOVING Life when it got the axe. They did a good job of mostly resolving the main story which is a credit to the writing team when they found out they were likely going to be cancelled.

Deadwood and Freaks & Geeks are my picks for the best shows that didn't get to go out on their own terms, although they may not be fitting for this thread.

I would have loved more seasons of Pushing Daisies.

DEADWOOD
ROME
CARNIVALE

Those are the top three "killed too soon" shows of all time IMHO

It was glorious from the beginning but the winner of this thread is Arrested Development.

My personal agony though was Chicago Hope. ER had nothing on Elizondo, Patinkin, Harmon, Berg, Arkin, et al.

Oh look, another Raines fan! I thought I was the only guy who loved that show.

Life is probably the most recent example that hurts, but I'm kind of glad the show ended when it did, cause I would have been pissed if Crewes and Reese got together as a couple. (Obligatory "Damien Lewis for Law & Order: LA" mention.)

Freaks & Geeks has the benefit of a finale that goes both ways, but I would have liked to have seen the 'Neal Becomes Judd Apatow When His Parents Split Up' storyline.

You know what's worse than being a Deadwood fan pissed off it got cancelled after three seasons? Being a Deadwood fan AND a John From Cinncinatti fan, like me.

Deadwood, Rome, John From Cincinnati, and Kings are at the top of my list. Kings is the best thing that NBC has aired in years and they fucked it in every way imaginable. I hope they boot Zucker in the worst way possible.

Firefly, Life, Deadwood.

ETA: Gah, almost forgot one of my most recent ones, Better off Ted.

I'd be remiss if I left out one of my personal favorite shows of all time:

Yeah, I know that pain. I hope you didn't discover Kings. That's pretty much a third strike on that front.

Sports Night. Second season wasn't as good as the first but it ended on a high note and then... splat.

I think I watched half of the first episode of Kings, and I was like "this is pretty good but I don't have the time for it right now" (it was when I was watching the majority of stuff on iTunes and could only pick a couple shows a week to download), but I've been thinking about watching the DVD.

NBC is the winner of this thread, it seems -- Kings, Raines, Life, all NBC shows.

Sports Night, I almost mentioned, but that show could have gone to Showtime if Sorkin wasn't busy with West Wing, so I wouldn't say it was "cut down." (This is also why Josh Charles hates his breathing guts.)

Josh Charles is obviously irrational. It's not fair to have Sorkin write two damned good seasons for you, give you a chance, and then turn around and hate the guy just because he wouldn't follow you to SHOWTIME circa 1999. Showtime in 1999. Charles "hates" Sorkin for giving another concept a fair shot on a network watched by millions of people instead ?

Kings was absolutely fantastic, so were Carnivale, Deadwood and American Gothic. Arrested Development was mentioned higher up, but oddly enough I think of it as pretty complete.

Just try and foster a sense of detachment when watching Kings. Its development is really, really close to the first season of Deadwood. It starts off on a shaky but promising note and then just ascends to greatness. For me, "The Sabbath Queen" is the point at which is transitions from a really, really good show to a great one and it's near the end of the middle section of the season.

That's not the only reason. There was a New Yorker article about Sorkin/Sports Night that described an incident on set where Sorkin (a stickler for dialogue) gave Charles a line reading, and Charles said "I don't tell you how to write, you don't tell me how to act," which Sorkin took offense to, and there was a big to-do.

(Also, the second season of Sports Night ran concurrently with the first season of West Wing, so it wasn't like he had an unproven commodity when he chose to stick with West Wing.)

I mean, if I were Josh Charles, and I was doing the best work of my career, and I had an opportunity to continue doing that work on a show I loved with people I worked well with, and that opportunity didn't happen because of this other show, yes, I might be a little annoyed.

Yes, me too. I wouldn't "hate Sorkin's guts" though.


Anyway, interesting to read about the behind the scenes stuff thanks

Oh, another one I would have liked to have more of: Dead Like Me.

Mine are...Glen A. Larson's Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Streethawk, Blue Thunder, The Phoenix (Richard Lynch as the main antagonist) and...The Master (Lee Van Cleef vs Sho Kosugi, each week...Awesome!)

It wasn't in its prime (as it wasn't genius TV) but I always wondered what That's My Bush! would have been like in the later Bush years.

Sphere_Monk, Galactica 1980...Ugh! Just 3 words...Barry Van Dyke!

Dead Like Me killed a lot of good will with the TV movie, so I'm glad we didn't get more of that show.

Firefly certainly deserved an un-fucked-with run.

That's true, but in a better world we would have just got more shows and no crappy movie.

A-fucking-men.

I mean, even if it didn't get a second season, the way Fox screwed Firefly's episode order pretty much guaranteed it wouldn't catch on. How do you skip the episode that establishes the fucking concept of the show and then act surprised when people don't get into the show?

The winner, of course, is Studio 60.

.....

Guys, I'm joking! Awful show.

Grosse Pointe - "I wouldn't go around here bragging about how much time you spend on these scripts, cause guess what? They suck." (A great behind-the-scenes satire of teen shows like Beverly Hills 90210. It only lasted one season.)

Honestly, having gotten some time and distance from Studio 60 after the massive let-down that was watching it during its original run, I borrowed the DVDs for a second look. And the problems with the show are still massive, and it's still Sorkin using millions of NBC's dollars to get back at the people who were mean to him, and it's a show about life backstage at a comedy show that isn't funny, or backstabbing, or any of the things that you'd expect it to be.

That being said, those last four episodes that deal with the baby, Tom's brother, D.L. Hughely being stupid, Steven Weber doing his thing, and Timothy Busfield magically knowing everything there is to know about ransom insurance, are pretty good. Plus, Sorkin basically got NBC to pay for an explanation as to why NBC fired him from/he quit West Wing, and I think that's pretty fucking funny. I would give the show a solid C+, because it stumbles and falls a lot, but there are enough moments in it where it shines that I can't completely hate it.

The next to last words of the show are "We can do better." I think, had the show come back, it would have been drastically improved, because Sorkin seems to have worked out a lot of his issues in that first season. It's a shame the experience seems to have soured him on TV for a bit, because Charlie Wilson shows the man can still write.

I'm not at all saying the show qualifies for this thread, much like West Wing, which had two great years (2 & 4), four good to very good ones (1, 3, 6, & 7) and one mediocre to bad one (5), before ending at a good place for the show. But I'm saying that with both those shows, there was still a lot of potential left in them.

NOW AND AGAIN. The final episode was the very definition of leavin' a brother hangin'.

That was part of CBS's late 90s attempt to find shows that would appeal to somebody other than my grandma, but I don't think the kids were interested in watching Dennis Haysbert sing "Close To You" in the premiere.

Going along with that, BUDDY FARO. Dennis Farina as a washed-up p.i. who cleans up his act and brings his early 60s sensiblitity to the present day? I loved that crazy fucking show. (That was one of Allison "Mallory O'Brien/The Poor Man's Christina Hendricks" Smith's many failed shows. She was also in Sam Rami's SPY GAME, which I also dug.)

I'm with PK on Carnivale. I think that one was just hitting its stride.

I disagree with Firefly. Not even close to its prime or its peak. I think the 13 episodes we got are amazing but it was going to get better with Book's story, more on Blue Sun, the impending death of Wash, Jayne continuing the longest heel turn/swerve in TV history etc.

I think Arrested Development had one more season in it but I'm happy with what we got.

ETA: Pushing Daisies was getting good towards the end.

Dollhouse...it seemed like it started to really pick up before the finale. Also a third season of Veronica Mars would of closed out the series better. I would've like more of Spaced even though I felt it ended well. also a second season of Heroes would've been good. (rumors of other seasons are untrue)

Veronica Mars got a third season, although that's more of a "shows that got cancelled just before/during a creative upswing" show

Yes...you're right...I meant fourth season...I just thought the ending felt rushed...I would've liked to get a season where the cloud of cancellation wasn't over the show.

Jericho

It was spotty as hell, but the good bits were holy-shit-this-is-intense good.

Brooklyn South

RHD

Big Apple

Space: Above and Beyond

Last night I was reading some interviews online and came across this:

and this:

Fuck Alma becoming Willa Cather would have been amazing, and that Swearengen-Bullock scene would have been a sight to see. I'm pissed just thinking about it. THANKS A LOT THREAD.

#1 Show for me: ANGEL. Buffy made it to seven seasons, and Angel, a better show IMO, deserved the same. Show consistently got better every season and I would have loved a Season 6 with LA in hell as in the comics.

I loved this show, but it was fucked from jump street. Say what you will about HBO's handling of their lesser draws, but they don't fuck with the creative people directly. Showtime was fucking with this show constantly. Most of the things that happen past episode 3 in season 1 happen because of that and everything that happens after season 1 happens because of that.

I can't enjoy anything in JFC because from everything I've read Milch got a fascination with surfing, grew bored with DEADWOOD and decided to just move on. The ending of DEADWOOD is a fantastic end to the season but a maddeningly incomplete ending to the series

I'd argue that Babylon 5 was screwed by merely the threat that it was going to be canceled after Season 4. JSM then crammed two Seasons worth of plot into one Season, so when the show was in fact renewed, he had to scramble to fill in a Season worth of plot, and it showed.

Surface was really building into something bizarre and strange when it wrapped.

John From Cinncinatti was awesome, Kate. Fact.

It's not so much surfing but the natural phenomenon of the wave that fascinated Milch. That's the reason you have the character John and a generational tragedy thrown in there. They're supposed to basically be anthropomorphized versions of that phenomenon.

Waves are pretty fascinating, if you think about them. Not many people realize that the phenomenon of the wave in the ocean is completely distinct from water. It just moves water.

Fuck that show was so much smarter than most of the American audience.

Carnivale had a bit of "luck", in that while the show was planned for six seasons, the end of the second one would have been the end of a "book", so there's a sense of an ending. We would've jumped years ahead between seasons.

Of course, this doesn't matter because typing it reminds me that Jonesy was supposed to start s3 playing professional baseball and I just all over again.

re: JFC
Didn't Milch basically describe surfers as the dumbest people on earth in one interview/speech/class/conference? I seem to recall something along the lines of "Jesus coming back to the dumbest people on earth" as part of the premise of the show.

It was interesting but it felt like nothing more than unfocused existential musings, and there was no way I prefer that over finding out what happened next after Bullock sneers " Get out of here ...or I'll drag you out by the ear".


That brief look of uncomfortable vulnerability in Hearst's eyes is so satisfying, even if it's nothing like a victory for Bullock. Plus I need to see the camp burn, they kept alluding to it for three seasons and we were left with nothing!!

JFC was not what Milch should have been making, IMHO. It was interesting but pointless (IMHO, obviously)