I just turned my TV off, in the middle of an episode of what I think is the TV series version of Painkiller Jane. They were, I think, in a vaguely European village, where there was a monster.
Fucking hell, those were some sad actors. I have rarely seen such crap acting, anywhere. The sets were OK, everything else sucked my hairy nutsack. I wish I could force mys3elf to watch more, since Kristanna Loken is hot as fuck, but it’s just not enough!
I guess what I’m asking is this: how the fuck do they find money to make a shit show like that, when Firefly gets canceled?
Both were canceled after one season, so I’m not sure your indignation is apt. I’m pretty sure Painkiller Jane cost a lot less to produce and faced much lower expectations than Firefly.
For my part, I wonder how Two and a Half Men, or any other CBS sitcom, finds an audience.
The networks’ programming policy has always pissed me off. They have certain prime spots that advertisers are willing to pay big bucks for (Such as Thursday nights, when studios pay big bucks to push movies for the weekends.) When good shows start doing well in other time slots, they move them to compete for the top slots. That way the top shows from each network compete for the top time slots and, if they don’t beat the other networks’ best shows, they get cancelled.
Meanwhile, in the lower paying slots, mediocre shows are allowed to continue for years. I mean, did ANYONE actually enjoy Urkell, for Pete’s sake?
I love Two and a Half Men. I used to be ashamed that I liked it but no more. Double entendres crack me up, and the show is full of them. I don’t know how many years it’s been on, but the writers haven’t diddled with the premise, and I like that. Charlie’s still a lech, Alan’s still hapless, Jake’s still sweet but dim (and gassy), mom’s still a bitch, Rose still loves Charlie. Once in awhile there’s an episode where Cryer and Sheen show their chops. If you missed the one (and you probably did) with Alan’s panic attacks, you missed some great comedic acting. It reminds me of comedies from the 50’s (like Lucy), without the sexual references.
You know there is the one guy from Painkiller Jane that my girlfriend thought was good looking (because he looks “distinguished”). I looked him up on IMDB and he’s the unshaven, pony-tail wearing guy from Sweating Bullets a 1990s Canadian rip-off of Magnum P.I. IIRC, it was on so late at night, you’d have to sit through the Red Shoe Diaries first if you wanted to see it.
And Loken was in that really, REALLY bad movie Bloodrayne.
The really bad movies on Sci-Fi fascinate me. Not too long ago, there was one about a college football team that crashed in the Himalayas and were hunted down by the Abominable Snowman! The main hero was the team’s quarterback, and he was in love with the hot girl who was apparently one of the trainers. His name, by the way, was Peyton Elway. I can’t remember what it’s called. Probably Abominable Snowman Attacks Hot Co-Eds! That’s the one thing about the titles–you always know what you’re going to get.
OK, there’s an important distinction to be made here.
Painkiller Jane was so bad that not even Kristinna Lokken’s awesome beauty could redeem it.
Bloodrayne, on the other hand, was good enough, or not-bad enough if you prefer, that Kristanna Lokken’s awesome beauty could redeem it – and DID redeem it, IMHO. Plus, it was an OK medieval vampire movie, really, while Painkiller Jane was just a mess. You gotta make some distinctions here.
Obviously, yes. Maybe not you or me, but the ratings (and popularity of the character) indicated it was a hit.
You can piss and moan all you want about Firefly, but ultimately it got bad ratings. Maybe things could have been done better; maybe not. And certainly decisions clearly were the right ones in retrospect: not showing the two-hour main movie so that you can run the premiere of 24, for example. Even under ideal circumstances, there is no way Firefly would have been a bigger hit than 24.
It is a crime against humanity that this isn’t out on DVD yet. I have to see this and I don’t get Sci-Fi anymore (I presume they show it 8 times a day).
You know, Urkell and the other Miller/Boyett sit-coms were good comfort TV, though. No, there was certainly no great drama or comedy there. However, they were good for mostly-inoffensive mindless TV with the kiddies after a long week at work/school. The hours-long Disney commercial-episodes were pretty bad, though.
Okay… this doesn’t seem to add up. ‘The train job’ was run on 20th of September, 2002. If they’d run the two-hour pilot as the first thing, it would have been run around the same time.
24 was already a hit by this point, having finished its first season and all. The second season did not premiere until nearly a month later, 29th October 2002. That seems to torpedo any suggestion that there was an either-or situation involved. Fox could have run the two-hour pilot without inconveniencing 24 in the slightest.