OK - we are only talking NEW shows that just started this season.
Which will be the first to be cancelled?
My predictions so far:
‘Til Death’ on Fox…good actors, really, really horrible, unfunny scripts. Can’t imagine this remaining on the air for long. Rumor has it that wags on the show are calling the show, ‘Til November’.
Men In Trees…poorly written rip-off of Northern Exposure that seems to be headed nowhere.
And sadly, I don’t see a long future for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip…Sorkin’s new show with a great cast…the ratings have been going south every week, and to be honest, as much as I loved West Wing, this show just hasn’t hit the mark yet. I continue to watch, but the bloom is fading fast.
Oh, and take Heroes off your list of shows to be cancelled - it is the first to be given a green light for a full season of episodes and ratings have been great according to the link above.
Haven’t seen many of the new shows yet, but gotta agree with you on “Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip,” DMark. Love Matthew Perry and many others in the cast, but many of the characters just aren’t likeable. Even though the acting is great, I think the viewers need to have characters that they like and root for. I know I don’t want to watch a show that I can’t stand the characters on.
They cancelled Smith??? Damn, that was my favorite new show of the season! This is the third time this year that a thievery show has been launched and quickly cancelled.
I find it hard to believe that NBC would even consider cancelling Studio 60, considering it was pretty much the most promoted show in history. I, for one, like it, although I’m praying that it doesn’t contribute to 30 Rock (which I haven’t even seen yet, but what’s not to love about Tina Fey?) being cancelled due to low ratings, due to viewers not caring enough about two SNL satires per week.
Kidnapped was moved to Saturdays, which is basically the same as being cancelled. Somehow the vasty-inferior Vanished managed to win the season-long-Without-a-Trace battle.
I really hope that the over-exposure of Deal or No Deal leads to viewer burnout. This gameshow is the anti-dope, and the success is the proof of just how idiotic the majority of the United States population is.
Another show on my “I don’t watch it, but please cancel it anyway” list is The Class. I gave it about 10 minutes, and it is so mindblowingly unfunny and annoying, that it makes Friends and Two & a Half Men look like Masterpiece Theater.
On the other end of the spectrum, it looks like the best show on television (at least for the last two years) - Veronica Mars, is doomed, either by it being dumbed down to attract a new audience, or by losing its core supporters because of this (and still unable to bring on the mainstream audience who’d rather see Kristen Bell hold a briefcase)
Six Degrees. I tuned in for about 15 minutes since it came after whatever show I was watching. Boooooooring. J.J. Abrams can’t win them all. Plus, I’m still wishing him ill will since he neglected my Alias in favor of that atrocity, Lost.
Jericho on CBS, the show is quickly devolving into a post-apocolyptic soap opera, science is an afterthought, the only thing worth watching is to see what the story is with Hawkins
either bring on some hard science here (or even just some radioactive zombies) or i’m out, i have no desire to watch “90210-The Day After”
Ugly Betty won’t last. It’s an attempt at an American tele-novella and people just won’t get it. I like it, but it’s hard to imagine it really sticking in there for the long run since what was supposed to be the over-arching story and conflict of the series was resolved in the first half of the first episode.
I suspect that the highly-touted The Nine won’t last the season. And if it does, how can it continue for additional seasons? Are they gonna put these people through another holdup periodically and start over with more of “what really happened in there?”
Maybe we’re seeing the beginning of a trend – dramas with a story line that plays out over 13 or 22 episodes and then they’re over. Mini-series. I’m okay with that.
The promos for 30 Rock and the new show (Twenty Good Years?) with John Lithgow and that other guy don’t look very funny. I won’t watch a show that makes older people look pathetic, and the 30 Rock promos have too much slapstick.
I agree about Jericho, especially after reading spoilers on future eps.
Kidnapped – victim of a bad time slot. I hope people catch it when it comes back on Saturdays. It’s good, people!
Ted Danson’s new sitcom, Help Me Help You. The promo looked like boilerplate slapstick with Danson falling all over like Big Clumsy Man, and the psychologist angle is bound to feel stale after Bob Newhart and, latterly, Huff.
Remember “Coupling” on NBC a few years ago? Promoted out the wazoo, and pulled after just a few episodes. If it ain’t gonna fly, they’ll pull the plug on anything.
At the beginning of Season 2, a gang breaks into a bank and is dismayed to discover that there are only EIGHT people inside. One of them goes outside to grab an extra person. But that person is a woman who is eight months’ pregnant, leading to a deep philosophical discussion as to whether the unborn child ought to be counted as well. At the end of the episode, the gang finally decides to shove her out the door and grab a dude, whereupon everyone sighs with relief.
30 Rock has two extended promos on YouTube that had one decent laugh among them – not promising, but then, I’m no judge as I don’t find the "Brilliant Tina Fey’ funny. I’m going to watch it for a couple of weeks and the follow up “20 Good Years” because I really like Lithgow and Tambor–but it doesn’t look all that great.
I’m pretty sure we can write Jericho off – it is merely okay and asks a LOT of suspension of disbelief, plus devolving into a poor soap opera.
Do the transplanted Telenovellas count on whatever the new station is – MyTV or whatever–since they are slated to run just a single season anyway? I really don’t think the format is going to transfer to American tastes all that well.
Apparently we’re talking the last days of L&O since they’ve moved it to Friday–I keep hearing the “Lowered Expectations” theme song in my head ever since I heard the news.
What over-arching story and conflict resolution are you talking about?
As for the show itself, I don’t think it’s trying to be a telenovella. As I understnd the development history, the show started off as an Americanized telenovella but the concept was changed to weekly episodic. I don’t think the intention is for it to be as over the top as a telenovella or for it really to follow the format that closely if at all.
But I agree that it may not last very long, especially if the quality of the second ep is any indication. After a very good (albeit flawed) first ep the immediate devolution into a fairly standard story left me kinda cold. I was much more interested in the bunny kidnapping than in the A story of the missing book and that’s probably not a good sign.