I thought Tucker showed promise but the canned after 3 shows. I really don’t understand why they put shows on and don’t give them a chance to develope a following.
I’ve done this before, and if I knew how to put a link to an old thread like somebody with half a brain I’d do it, but if you’re interested it was from October and called “Oh my God, They Killed Jerri! You Bastards!”
Jerri being of course Jerri Blank from:
Strangers With Candy–an odd little takeoff on AfterSchool Specials with no laugh track, a bisexual 47-year-old-ex-junkie-whore as the heroine, and a twisted “lesson” learned by her every week, such as when steroids gave the lady’s track team beards BUT also enabled them to triumph at the State Championships: “Well, I guess I learned this week that only losers do drugs! Unless, of course, the drugs help you win, in which case only winners do drugs.” They destroyed the set, Little House on the Prairie style, in the last show, after the School Board threatened to turn it into a strip mall. That itself was a take on Comedy Central’s cancellation of the show in favor of '80’s movies, Battlebots, and a terrible new show called, well, Strip Mall.
NewsRadio–OK, so maybe it never fully recovered from poor Phil Hartman’s murder, but it deserved better than being booted all over the schedule and then cancelled. Some of the finest ensemble work ever and my favorite workplace comedy since Barney Miller. And its cancellation was announced ONE DAY after NBC also killed-
Homicide–incredibly brilliant except when Jon Seda mumbled his way into it. One of the few showplaces for great actors of color, too. This one maybe hurts the most, since it was cancelled for that Providence clone Cold Feet, which died after three weeks.
Sports Night–Annoyed me sometimes in the middle of the run, especially when Dana turned into a ditz for a while, but pretty damn good.
Action–To give Fox credit, they tried like hell to get people to watch this; it was heavily advertised and written about, and I adored it and still wonder how “Beverly Hills Gun Club” turned out.
Married…with Children–This, on the other hand, I still can’t forgive Fox for. OK, so it was tobagganing downhill for a while, but the last season was getting better and the damn Bundys had MADE Fox and put them on the map. They deserved better than to be taken out behind the barn and shot. Well, OK they didn’t really, but us fans deserved better to have this 11-season record holder go out without even a damn farewell show.
It’s Your Move–Starring David Garrison (the short brunet with the big nose who later was Marcy’s first husband on MWC) and Jason Bateman, a totally snarky series about a writer and the rivalry with his widowed girlfriend’s son, who is sure she can do better. Wonderful and ahead of its time, a trial run for MWC by the same creators and many of the writers. Killed in 1985 when they put it on opposite Dynasty.
Freaks & Geeks–like I’ve said before, not a drama, a documentary. I’m also a female exactly Lindsay’s age.
Max Headroom–Scary to see this one slowly coming true, bit by bit, and it still looks good. Blipverts are coming…
The Critic–Short lived animated series with Jon Lovitz, first on ABC, then Fox. Very inside but perfect for anyone who loves New York, movies, and/or the theatre. Their parody of a Webber-esque corporate-tainted written-by-committee musical, “Hunch”, is quite simply the most brilliant I’ve ever seen, and that includes the Simpson’s “Streetcar!”
Ah, the heady days when the lineup was Max Headroom and then Star Trek TNG, or The Simpsons/The Critic/Married with Children…
Y’all can’t tell I’m putting off writing work stuff, can you? Whew.
“Theater!! You know WHY there’s theater, Stuart? So that ugly actors can get work too!” - Movie Producer Peter Dragon, Action
The show I miss the most was cancelled several years ago.It was part of a series called something like “Action Central” or some such name, but the show was about a man called…The Searcher. This was the most hilarious show I’ve seen (Aside from The Simpsons and Married With Children). God, I wish they had kept that show. Does anyone else know what I’m talking about (Anybody other than my brother)?
I’m a basically lazy person, so it takes a lot to motivate me to write a letter. I did to the idiot new management of Comedy Central when they canceled MST3K. They wrote back a bulls**t letter saying that I shouldn’t worry because they still intended to show the reruns. Bastards! When MST3K went off the air, I canceled my cable service.
I met Trace Beaulieau a few months later and told him about it, and congratulated him on the show being picked up by Sci Fi. He just smiled uncomfortably. I should have known something was wrong.
Yeah, I remember this show.
The two part episode featuring “The Dregs” was one of the funnier things I’ve seen.
KIDS IN THE HALL (R.I.P) = The best in canadian scetch comedy. I used to watch religiously. My friends and I had videotaped every episode and watched the over and over.
THE STATE = Great sketch comedy though their beginning was shaky at best and towards the end they lost their punch. Midway through their career they were hilarious.
FREAKYLINKS??? = Has this been cancelled? I was getting REALLY into this show
Count me in as someone who hated to see Cupid go. I thought it was great. Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall were fantastic, the dialogue was sharp and fast, and did I mention it had Paula Marshall?
What did it last – like half a year?. Stupid ABC programming pricks. Why they axed that show and kept on some of the crap that still stinks up their schedule is beyond me. ABC is notorious for dumping shows before they have time to find an audience.
And did I mention it had Paula Marshall in it?
Well, I also agree that MST3K, Homicide and Family Guy deserved a longer life, but there are two series that no one has mentioned yet:
Easy Streets, a dark show on CBS with some hunk from somewhere as the undercover cop who comes to love the thugs he’s sent to infiltrate. Anyway, it was a great show with lots of antiheroes, all of the storylines were interesting, and although I’ve never made it a point to be home for a show before, I made it a point to be home Mondays at 10. Killed well within the first season.
Cop Rock. No, really. I was a big fan of “Pennies From Heaven” on PBS, and I thought this was a really clever idea, which took so much shit from everyone that ABC didn’t give it a real chance to find its audience.
But knowing that it is almost universally disdained, I await the inevitable :rolleyes:, and worse.
::opens umbrella::
Damn. That was supposed to be:
::Opens umbrella::
A lot of the ones that I miss have been mentioned-Strangers With Candy, The Ben Stiller Show, Stark Raving Mad [which I didn’t know was cancelled til I read this thread- I wondered why I never saw it anymore], Dilbert, The Adventures of Pete and Pete [was it targeted to kids or stoners?], TV Nation, and Action.
But I’d like to add Mr. Show, The Tick, and (potentially) the Joel Hodgson show. Why did I add the (potentially)? Because Comedy Central decided to show the pilot at the same time as the Simpsons season finale Who Shot Mr. Burns, thereby dooming it. I never was able to catch a rerun of it.
Cupid. Best fucking show on television, when it was on.
Homicide, B.F. (Before Falsone)
Sports Night. sigh I miss Casey and Dan.
It’s Like, You Know. Their mockumentary episode was classic.
My So-Called Life. Did they resolve the Cyrano plotline before it got cancelled?
M.Y.O.B. Mentioned in this thread, it was a summer fill-in written by Don Roos, the guy who did The Opposite of Sex.
Quantum Leap. Boy, the series finale was painful and contrived.
At least I’ve still got West Wing. They sure as hell better not take that away just yet.
DRY, so glad I’m not the only one who remembers the Dregs! When one of the skeleton-puppets fell into his drum set and Matt immediately turned to Norm and said, “Bones…lives in the fast lane.” I LOL’ed.
And sweet, ditzy Eileen, and ditto Eli, and proto-Kelly Julie, and Lou Donatelli the super. The banter between Garrison and Bateman is unsurpassed, great chemistry. I always catch David onstage when I can, saw him in October at Lincoln Center and talked to him once after TITANIC, the musical. Smart, nice guy.
Gadarene, pray that WW doesn’t become too popular, because they’ll screw around with it. Married With Children was best before anyone knew it was alive.
What? There was a JOEL HODGESON SHOW???
Guinastasia wrote:
If that’s not a quote worthy of a signature, I don’t know what is. 
Shows I thought were cancelled early, but which I haven’t seen mentioned yet in this thread:
Misfits of Science
Nowhere Man
Quark
Once a Hero
V: The Series
The Cheap Show with your host, Dick Martin
The Sifl and Olly Show (rock!)
Cartoon Planet
And, of course:
Crusade (even though I didn’t much care for the new theme music)
I’m still pissed off about Sports Night. Some of the wittiest dialogue on TV. I actually wrote a protest letter.
I loved Brimstone. It was so cynical and dark.
Evening Shade was another great show cut down in it’s prime. Everyone on it was terific, except that girl from Taxi, and she wasn’t too bad.
Was Forever Knight the series with a vampire cop?
I saw the last season of that one and liked it.
Alien Nation Okay, the human cop was a dork, but I liked it anyway.
Does anybody know what’s up with Farscape? All I’ve seen are re-runs for months.
Never mind Farscape, does anyone know what’s up with Space Ghost: Coast to Coast? They only had a few new episodes a while ago and have been in reruns ever since.
Guinastasia- don’t say it so loud or someone might know about it (heavy sarcasm). It says the show was called “Joel Hodgeson’s TV Wheel”.
There’s some low-res movies at http://www.pscyanide.com/mrshow/ms_video.htm but the audio is pretty poor- I can’t really hear it with my crappy speakers so I can’t tell how funny it is.
Almost all have been mentioned but…
Cupid
Fantasy Island (the new one)
Cop Rock (I know)
SportsNight
Action (for some reason, I always forget to watch the reruns on FX - Someday, they need to do a marathon so I can get the tapes)
Due South
Murder One (pre retooling… by the time the network was done reworking the series for the second season … well… Canceling was an act of mercy)
Freaks and Geeks was just too painful for me to watch (I thought I was over high school - turns out I was wrong about that) but it was a good show. It should have been saved, somehow or other.
Remember WENN Beautifully written, acted, and produced. The season had been building up to a huge revelation - the season finale had not one, not two but THREE major cliffhangers. All of them were integrated nicely into the plots (In other words the audience was not thinking “what the hell are they trying to pull?” but “Oh, wow, I should have seen that coming… I need to check all of my back episodes to see if I can find any clues at all…”). And about a week after the episode airs, AMC pulls the plug on the series without a single rational reason at all. (The show was getting good ratings for cable, it did have a rabid fan base, and it was cheaper to produce than the piece of crap they replaced it with.) of course - this network has made consistently poor programming choices ever since, so… But I’m getting carried away. If you can find someone with tapes, borrow them.
Quantam Leap needed a better finale.
sigh too many of the above are due to ABC’s not really having a decent slot in which to stick a drama - so the shows just die.
-amarinth
The one that really makes me angry are the shows they cancel after two or three episodes, they quickly whisk them away to be replaced by reruns of shows that have been on forever. The most recent victim of this was Wonderland which I was really beginning to enjoy, they showed 2 f*&$% episodes and canceled it. How can you possibly know after only showing two episodes that’s it not working, maybe all the people with good viewing tastes where on holidays!
Does it bother anyone else that they are actual taped episodes of shows that no one will ever get to see? I keep hoping that when DVD really takes off they’ll make them available, at least they could recoup some money.
I thought I was only one who watched Cupid.
The Muppet Show!
Really rich in, ironically, adult humor.
Of course, Family Guy is the most hard to accept since there is so little to re-run.
I like ALF! The Alf character was great, and he could be funnier in a better sitcom.