If you could have produce one more season of a cancelled show... - Page 2

Actually, I'd argue that what we did see of sketches was par for the course for an SNL-type show; some worked and some didn't, despite the grueling writing and rehearsal process. The cold open for Danny and Matt's first show was damn good (and funny); the bits of the recurring Nicholas Cage sketches we saw were funny; Harriet parodying Nancy Grace seemed pretty good; and so on. Some of the bits we saw in process didn't seem all that great, but I think that was sort of the point. I'd still contend, though, that the sketches themselves were macguffins, and quite beside the point.

 

Eh. Lots of folks hated the show. Fine with me. I loved it, though (again) I don't think it was perfect.

 

Yeah I don't get the love for this all of a sudden. I could watch a show about Steven Webers network exec...he was awesome. But the rest of it was just so bad.
 

 Reaper, Firefly, Freaks and Geeks, Pushing Daisies, Life, Brisco County Jr. and Studio 60.  Most of these are all recent shows.  Clearly, television is a hostile environment - so I should stop watching it...or maybe stick to cable.  I haven't seen Deadwood or Carnivale yet, but they might get added to the list.  I will admit, part of my delay, is because neither had a proper ending. 

 

I am going to guess that Lights Out and Fringe will get added to this list soon, and maybe Justified.  :(

 

However, if I could produce one more season of any show it is a two way tie.  X-files and Lost.  These are two shows that tried to have proper endings, but left me with a thousand questions.  I would produce another season of these simply to answer my questions.  And this is coming from a person that liked the finale of Lost and the last three seasons of X-files...

 

You really think there was a lack of chemistry there?  I will admit that, at first, I was irritated that I was being forced to care about two characters that I didn't know jack shit about, but by the end of the first season I truly believed these two were a couple with a rough past and I actually cared about them getting together.  Did you watch it all the way through?

MichaelM... But it's important for verisimilitude. For example, the song in THAT THING YOU DO is actually catchy and sells the idea that the band becomes a sensation. If it had been as headscratchingly terrible as some of the stuff in Studio 60, a lot would've been lost.

Again, I point to SNL: we've experienced nearly entire seasons of really terrible sketches, and the show continued to air. I disagree that every single sketch we saw on Studio 60 was terrible and unfunny (the cold open for their first show was terrific, IMNSHO).

 

And part of the show was the idea of Matt struggling to write a quality show week after week without help and having to accept subpar writing from the writing staff.

 

Of all the criticisms leveled at the show, I still think this is the weakest.
 

 

 

I thought Jericho went to some pretty interesting places especially as the first season winded down, and the entirety of season 2. More than the political intrigue, though, I thought the show had some pretty good character work going on and some damn find acting especially from the likes of Lenny James, Gerald McRaney and Esai Morales. The show certainly wasn't up there with Firefly, Terriers or Deadwood, but I think given another season or two it could have kept that intriguing momentum it had.

 

I think the show doomed itself by daring to be something other than light, airy fluff on CBS.

I never really thought that they showed enough skits to really judge whether they were any good.  But, they were the last thing I cared about anyway.  I really didn't think they put a ton of focus on the skits because they weren't the point of the show.  They gave just enough info to convince me they were working well enough.  Besides, isn't it entirely possible that even if the skits weren't fantastic, they could have been leagues better than what the show had done for the previous few years and therefore received quite well?  Isn't that what happened in the Will Ferrell era of SNL?  In retrospect, they weren't as good as the heydays, but they were sure as fuck better than the previous few years.

 

Either way, it seems to be a weird thing to bitch about considering only snippets were shown.  Additionally, complaining about them seems like the same difference as complaining about the lack of prison life on CSI.

Christ, one I nearly forgot...Life. An excellent procedural with two great leads in Damien Lewis and the boner-inducing Sarah Shahi. Pretty good procedural/crime of the week elevated by a larger mystery framework that seemingly every cop shows borrows from but including the one detail that makes it more awesome than the others: Garret Dillahunt playing a Russian badass. Was a fan of Lewis since Band of Brothers and dammit, that show deserved a better life, perhaps on USA or something.

Yes Doc!  Lots of great shows in here, but if I could only pick one, it would be a close race between Firefly and Life.

 

I disagree.  The show was too serious for the sketches to be funny.  This may not have been intentional.  But this unexpected approach is one of the things I liked, a deadly serious look at the pressures involved with making a comedy show. 

 

The subject matter, was mostly excellent for Sorkin to preach, as would be expected since he's in show business.  I think this is why I liked it, it felt like a show that had a lot of relevant stuff to say.  And this is why I wanted more, to hear Sorkin to tell me about the business while he entertains me.  And I believe he must've had a lot more material to burn through.  Was it flawed and imperfect?  Very much so.  Not all of the characters worked, but most of them felt like well shaded individuals.  Sarah Paulson may not have completely sold it has a comedy superstar, but I thought her relationship with Perry actually felt very believable and developed.  As for the some of the whacky plot towards the end, well they only existed because of trying to capture ratings, but I admitt a lot of it is off.  Pregnancy complication was a bit of a cheap shot, and came out of nowhere.  But, a lot of it unfairly gets a bad rap, like the Afghanistan plot.  Sure, it was kinda lame, but the actor they get to play the military attache really sold it.  And these plot points happened at the end of the series, and really isn't indicative of the whole show or what it was about.  At the end of the day, I felt the postives outweighed the negatives, not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I did enjoy the show.  There are shows I'd rather see come back first, I kinda just threw the show into the ring.

 

I expected the eye rolling when I mentioned the show, but I'm a bit surprised no ones dismissed Jericho.

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What's funny is that they acknowledge what a cheap ratings grab the pregnancy scare was in one of those episodes - but I wonder if it was also written in to allow Peet to have her actual baby (you can tell she's pregnant before the character discovers she is).

 

I didn't mind the Afghanistan/kidnapping plot, because it helped us see different sides of the characters. What I hated was the flashbacks during these episodes. They only served to lessen the tension, not increase it, and were very unnecessary from a storytelling POV.

 

Its almost like Sorkin was deconstructing TV tropes by shoving in these cliched and undeveloped plot devices all at the very end of the show.  As you mentioned, they even comment on these plot devices within the show.  When Peets pregnancy complications arise, someone says something to the effect, " Focus groups show pregnancy complications always connect with female viewers."

Besides the fact that a couple of the pieces of the mystery were missing(But not much, we got a pretty satisfying resolution), Life had a great ending.

They did an excellent job at the ending they had to give, but it still felt rushed. The writers knew the axe was gonna fall and sped along the bulk of the main mystery. That they managed to do what they did in such a satisfying way speaks volumes of the show, but dammit, why does Life get canned when CSI: Wichita is greenlit? No justice, dammit.

I'd rather they go out strong with terrible ratings. Imagine if it had been really popular, Charlie Crews could have easily turned into a cartoonish character like Adrian Monk(Tony Shalhoub was always great on it, but the writers seemed to forget Adrian had a mental disease. He wasn't a clown, he was a man deeply in pain suffering from a tragedy and his actions just happened to be funny. )

I'm also baffled at the love for Studio 60. I love Sorkin as everybody here does but i found the show completely uninteresting with lots of really dull characters. Id take another season of Sports night over that any day.

 

I would also love more Pushing Daisies.

I love Sports Night, but thought that Season 2 was markedly inferior to Season 1. Likely due to network interference (hence the ongoing storyline about network interference and the consultant). Also how badly the ball was dropped on the Dana-Casey romance.

 

Still, I would have loved two to three more seasons of it, with Sorkin fully engaged....but by then, he was working on The West Wing, and it would have likely suffered in quality regardless.

STUDIO 60 was pretty damn good. There were certainly flaws -- **cough**SarahPaulson**cough** -- but the "sketches" not being funny wasn't one of them. If you were fixated on that, I feel like you missed the point of the show. Whitford, Perry and Steven Weber were great.

Twin Peaks was a good call.   In one respect, we DO get a proper finale when Laura Palmer's killer is caught but then it drags on aimlessly for a hell of alot of episodes only to get cut down just when it was getting awesome again.   Truly a case of a show that went too long AND too soon at the same time.

I hated when Twin Peaks went up it's own ass with the mythology. For me that stuff was most effective when peeking around the corners, not when it was front and center. I don't think I could have taken another season like those last several episodes.

 

I'd probably go with Upright Citizen's Brigade. One of my all-time favorite sketch comedy shows, cancelled and replaced with Battlebots.

I can't believe I forgot about Life! I just finished watching that a couple weeks ago and I definitely could have gone for more Charlie Crewes. I also would love the FBI season of Veronica Mars. I don't know if there is a show I enjoyed as much only to be so let down by the series finale as I was Veronica Mars.

Farscape, easily. While the show featured terrific writers, directors and actors, from a purely visual standpoint, I'd settle for any show that merged Henson's Creature Shop with a mature story. The combination turned out some of the most imaginative and interesting scifi designs since the Stars (Trek and Wars) dictated what outer space and aliens should be like in modern film.

 

It's really a show that (excluding the pretty rough 1st half of season 1) should not be missed by any fan of scifi, Henson, or great filmmaking in general.

Seinfeld.

 

Sure, they already had 9 seasons, but it is my favorite show ever and it was only getting better. If they could ixnay the last episode, and do one last season, I would be a happy man.

 

Honorable mentions: Arrested Development and Party Down.

SEINFELD's last few seasons were borderline terrible. And that's coming from someone who adores the first four or five.

Yeah, Seinfeld went on two seasons too long.

 

The reason Firefly is such a dagger in the gut is the combination of unresolved storyline with criminally small number of episodes. A lot of the shows people have been listing at least have a full season or more, and/or some kind of closure. Rome had a rushed final half-dozen episodes, and Carnivale had a lot of dangling plot threads, but at least they both come to something recognizable as an "ending" (even if it's a horror movie-type "The monster is still alive!!!" ending in the case of Carnivale.) Arrested Development had three good seasons and came to a graceful end. Even Deadwood, with its unresolved ending, had a good solid three seasons.

 

Firefly had the movie, but Whedon's so amazing at crafting long-form story arcs that it's painful to see all the stuff that clearly had to be trimmed away and abandoned. Even a single full season would have probably made the show a more satisfying experience.

Why do people hate the final 2 seasons of Seinfeld?  

 I don't!  Seinfeld is one of the most consistent shows I have ever seen.  Once it found it's footing, I felt the show was pretty damn consistent for the rest of its run.  If I had any complaint, I would say Jerry kind of turned Elaine into a bitch once Larry David left.  She was always the closest to normal for me, but they made her out to be a petty (pettier) bitch in the last non-Larry David episodes.

I like the last few seasons. However while the finale was garbage I think it did end at the right time.

That's it right there. It's not that Firefly is the best thing Whedon has ever done, it's that it came out so damn strong with only half a season to work with. Whedon's other shows have all struggled to find their footing out of the gate, but he always springboards off that into something incredible once the groundwork is done (even Dollhouse had, in my opinion, a really fantastic close to its run). Firefly was so good already from the start, and the world was so fascinating, I can't imagine how good it could have gotten if Whedon and co. had gotten another season or two.

 

Even as it was, it only took 14 episodes for the show to make us absolutely and completely fall in love with that crew, and out of 14 episodes it produced 2 of my all-time favorites ("Out Of Gas" and "Objects in Space").

Because they abandoned everything relatable and funny in favour of incredibly broad and "wacky" shit? I knew things were going to get rough when the 8th season premiere featured Jerry and Newman in a cartoon-style chase through the building. Then came George as human Frogger, Jerry turning into a werewolf while Kramer tried to bury muffin tops on an extended bus ride, Kramer recreating the Merv Griffin show, and (shudder) the Mandelbaums. Essentially, everything became a Kramer storyline.

 

Mostly, though, it's the fact that all the supporting characters, particularly the girlfriends, became completely inhuman ciphers whose behaviour was entirely dictated by the plot.

To each their own.  Personally, I found this to be one of the funniest bits the show has ever done. :)

I'll give you the Frogger episode. But everything else you mentioned is...well...gold Jerry...gold.

 

The Merv Griffin stuff was so funny.

 

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I guess I can see how the transition to Looney Tunes shenanigans is kind of jarring and off-putting to some, but this post basically reminded me why I love those final two seasons.  Also, lots of Patrick Warburton.

The Wire Season 6

 

After recovering from a slight head wound, Omar Little moves to the "Burbs where he shares a house with Brother Mouzone. How can a homicidal Radical Muslim get along with a homicidal Drug Dealer robbing Homosexual? With a little wit and wisdom from their drunken next store neighbor James McNulty! Tune in as the ultimate "odd couple' learn their way around a whole new "Street"!

 

Oh, and Stringer Bell comes back as a Vampire.

Even the Mandelbaums? EVEN THE FUCKING MANDELBAUMS?!?

Anyone remember G vs E? It started on USA and moved to Sci-Fi and was renamed Good vs Evil, about two guys that die and to earn their way into heaven they have to track down demons. Kind of like a funny Brimstone, I dug it at the time.

When I knew SEINFELD had totally lost it: The episode where Kramer starts using butter to shave and accidentally "cooks" himself, which then drives Newman to want to eat him.

 

Pretty sure that's early season nine. Completely sure that it's an embarrassing half-hour of television from a show that had clearly gone on two years two long.

The Mandlebaums were great.

 

Mandlebaum...Mandlebaum...Mandlebaum...
 

Having recently finished watching DEADWOOD,

 

FUCKING DEADWOOD