From what I have read, the aired order was 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 3, 10, 2(!), 9, 4, 11, 12, 13. For a show that had character development as part of its storyline, that’s criminally stupid on Fox’s part.
Maybe The Wall wasn’t keeping the Bad out, it was keeping everyone in! Outside the wall was a wonderful world. Everyone inside was being denied the truth, for some (nefarious) purpose. We’ll never know. Just like we’ll never know who John Doe was. Thanks, Fox. With all you’re meddling powers, couldn’t you have cancelled X-Files before the last two seasons?
I heard about this Saturday (my company is a WB vendor) and have been in denial since. I seem to enjoy the ones that get cancelled, like Alcatraz and Almost Human, and loathe the ones that get renewed cough Following cough.
I’ll warn you all when I start liking something next season.
Episode order. Once Fox starts forcing the producers to release the eps out of sequence, the show is doomed - they’ve pushed it off the cliff and you’re just waiting for impact. The meddling only gets worse after that.
I still don’t get why episodes are shown out of order. I understand the logistics of advertising and why you might change time slots and what nigh a show is on. I get why studios feel the need to appeal to focus groups and request changes in casting or storylines. I get budget cuts. But showing things out of order? What’s the benefit to Fox?
Sometimes there’s a good reason for it - you may want to shift episodes with a more-oriented feel to take advantage of a similar episode of another series. Sometimes it’s just random fuck-witteryy by an exec.
I can’t believe the people complaining about this one. We got a single half-season of this show. Of course they aren’t going to strongly develop a lot of the plotlines! They’d like to leave something for the future and there’s going to be significant budget constraints on the early episodes, whereas your show 's established locations & so forth effectively cost less over time.
Still, I really like this show and enjoyed so many of the episodes we did get that I’m really saddened by this. What particularly impressed me is that the writing never took the simple way out. Almost every time I thought they were going to trot out a tired or overused trope they did a half-twist, often showing a different side to the characters in the process. And in one of the most effective contrasts, we constantly saw the potential of technology to make our lives better and to be stupidly abused in the same breath. I’m not saying it was the greatest science fiction show ever made - but it never had a chance to really get going. But even what it was, was effective science fiction with a strong human touch.
It’s the best new show to get canceled it’s first season in probably the last 5 years. I don’t have a list here, but from my memory, I haven’t liked a new show that was canceled as much as this one in some time.
Firefly will always be #1 biggest tragedy, but that was 12 years ago(yikes).
What else has been canceled after one season in the past five years that bothered you?
I really liked Alcatraz as well, but it wasn’t as good as Almost Human.
Thanks, I was wondering what criteria you used to judge “worst”. I might have been overthinking it.
I don’t watch too many shows until they’ve been out for a few seasons. This way I avoid wasting time on bad shows, and I don’t get heartbroken on the next Firefly. The ones with multi-season plotlines, I avoid until the show’s over and out on DVD, that way I avoid the next Lost.
Exceptions to the “wait” rule in recent seasons: Grimm, Almost Human, Rick and Morty, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Raising Hope and probably a couple others I can’t remember. Almost Human is the about the only one in recent years I’ve cared about that got cancelled before it’s time, and I was pretty much expecting it. Well, they axed *Hope *after 4 seasons which was a shame, but I thought the last season showed a drop in quality anyway.
I don’t give 'em too many chances to *Firefly *me anymore.
The (possibly apocryphal) story with Star Trek is that the “Man Trap” episode (sixth produced, first broadcast) had a recognizable “space monster” in it, hence the network suits picked it.
Not just never developed, he barely spoke a word to her the entire series. And she was stuck at the Station most of the time, rarely participating in the investigation let alone in the storyline. It was absurd!
Yea, it was kind of weird how little the show seems to have been thought out. Fox obviously threw a decent amount of money into the sets, the effects and the cast, you’d think they would’ve sprung for a show-runner with some sort of plan for the plot, and some sort of clear idea of the setting.
Still, the episodes themselves were kind of fun. There was definitely a formula (heroes note in passing some form of technology in the beginning of the episode, and then use that tech in a non-obvious and clever way to get the bad-guys at the end). But it was a fun formula.
I think the stuff with The Wall was a set up for a season 2 that never happened. They never even gave the name of the City until one of the last few episodes.
I enjoyed it. The crimes were smart, well-thought out, original,and thought provoking. The characters were pretty terrible though. The main cop was a copy of will smith’s character in I, Robot. Imho, it would have been far more successful with the mainstream if the robot was a hot chick with lots of robo-side-boob.
Not surprised at all that the show got canceled - it just simply wasn’t that good. It’s greatest sin, as D_Odds aludes to, is that it really wasn’t that different from any other police procedural. Kennex and Dorian had the good buddy-cop relationship going, but everything else about the show was blah and generic. Not nearly enough cool sci-fi ideas, and some of those that did (such as the Wall) barely got used or alluded to… you would think something like the Wall would show up all the time and feel like part of the show. They also criminally wasted Minka Kelly’s character by having her do almost nothing else besides sit at home base and push the plot forward when needed.
Regarding the episodes being out of order… I didn’t even really notice. And that’s probably pretty damning of the show, in itself.
