What series most wasted a promising premise?

Cafe Society
21

Good thing you mentioned this because now I get to peddle my theory on David E. Kelly.

The guy has a habit of setting up a brilliant series and then turning it into cheap melodrama by the second season. And I have a habit of watching his crap long after it turns to crap because I enjoyed the characters so much the first time.

The Practice was brilliant for the first six episodes. Then the firm stopped dealing with money issues and the show just began turning out stupid overly dramatic murder cases. It looked like they were just trying to outdo themselves every week.

Alan Shore was brilliant when he first appeared on The Practice. He was a guy who would not let the law get in the way of justice. Then on Boston Legal he slowly became a guy who rants about the issue of the day with no legal claim whatsoever.

Next series Kelly makes I’m bailing after the first season.

22

Do you happen to have any links to some clips with Alan Shore? I’d love to see some.

23

Wolf Lake. The idea of a community of people who aren’t really human (they’re creatures that can shape shift into wolves - real wolves, not wolfmen. Far more like skin-walkers than werewolves) was intriguing. But it was immediately buried under exploring what happened to the main character’s girlfriend, and who killed or otherwise disappeared her. There was a lot of whodunnit, and very little wolf or lake.

On a positive note, it’s early death and small audience doesn’t preclude them making Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld books with a similar but more wolf-laden premise into a movie or show.

24

I got into this show in it’s second season and really enjoyed it. Sometimes shows just get off on a bad story arc for a while.

25

Ditto. Instead of Alas Babylon, we got Amerika.

26

Even though I still enjoyed it, I think Dead Like Me failed to live up to its promise after they rudely ousted Bryan Fuller from his own creation. The dark and heavy edge was replaced with hints of sarcasm and petulance. Most disappointing.

27

24

Fox billed this show as a breakthrough show, that had 24 episodes, each one being a single hour out of the same day.

“” Events occur in real time “” was even heard on a few Season 1 episodes.

The show was GREAT when it first came out.

Now, in season 7 it has figured out a way to be a parody of itself, and to also copy Allias or any other like show.

You can not make it across LA rush hour Traffic faster than a helicopter.

You have to eat and use the bathroom at some point in a 24 hour period. (You could chose not to, sure, but then again, your probably also not running around packing heat, running after people etc.)

I would ALMOST put Prison Break in as well. Except for one thing:

The first season was GREAT. SUPERB. One of the BEST shows I have EVER seen.
–Incidentally, you can just tell that Prison Break took a few notes (and Extras Actors [Notably, Bellick and Haywire] ) from 24.

  1. The premise was promised, and delivered. You could not ask for more, from a show called “Prison Break” than the first season.

But it got even Better.

I’m sure a LOT of people (myself included) were thinking things like “This is a great show FOX, but what are you gonna do for season 2 ? You can’t break out of a prison again…”

But,

  1. Season 2 surprisingly took the show all over the place. Michael’s Tattoos were still in use, and we even had Mahone come on board. Overall, All of Season 2 was Icing on the best cake I had ever seen on TV. [[Hopefully you follow me.]]

Now, given the upset ((Compared to Seasons 1 and 2, but still ‘solid’ ))Season 3 was, and the… Unbelieveable stuff that happened in Season 4, I ask my self if it is the same show.

The Premise of Prison Break started it’s trip to wasteville ever since the word “Scylla” entered the show’s vocabulary.

I mean, IS it the same show? We have gone from INCREDIBLE well put together and heh, restrained environment of Fox River Pen. to a coast to coast (and then some) chase.

It amazes me to no end, that this was the same show I once spent 12 hours back to back watching online, just to get caught up for the next season.

I don’t know if it is because, or in spite of the fact that Prison Break only has 6 more episodes, but I’m glad it’s over now, and yes, I will watch them, just for the closure. I want to see how certain characters end the show.

Does the very short run show “Drive” also on FOX count? How many Episodes did it have? 4 ?

28

Dude, 24 hit Self Parody in Season 4. I mean, you have a terrorist group in the US that seems to have more members and resources then most companies and who have 5 distinct plans that get pulled off one after another in a single day, and each of which lead into the next. And of course, the most complex of these being melting down every nuclear power plant in the US at the same time by using a super duper universal remote that plugged into the internet(the mind boggles exactly how nobody at the writing sessions thought this just sounded incredibly stupid).

Also,CTU has an army of redshirts, almost all of which die no less then 5 minutes after Jack takes them into the field. At first they have generic names, though later on, Jack just calls them “Backup”. Amusingly enough, late in the season, he calls for reinforcements and is told they are running low on men.

Ironically, the best part of the entire season was that Jack just gets totally Torture happy and ends up torturing someone pretty much every other episode, including his girlfriends ex husband…with a lamp’s power cord.

That and the fact the Secretary of Defense is a total badass.

29

Manimal. Dr. Jonathan Chase, son of a rich man, explores the darkest jungles of Africa and learns the secret of shapeshifting into any animal. The show was limited in budget, apparently, because he always seemed to turn into a panther or a hawk, but still…nowadays they’d probably ruin it by using crappy CG for the transformation scenes, though.

30

Six or seven years ago when our little siblings were still young enough to watch children’s television on a regular basis, my best friend and I realized there was a show on television that had an awesome premise. Two siblings find a key into another world populated by a race of dragons! Okay, we like dragons, and we like portals to other worlds. We don’t, however, like DragonTales.

31

I can’t argue with the larger point, but why is it so outrageous that characters on 24 do all this off-camera, just like 99% of all other characters in the history of fiction always have? The camera is not on Jack Bauer every second of every hour.

32

If Jack used the bathroom regularly on 24, he would either continually run into bad guys or overhear evil plots while using the toilet. I can already hear the cries of “Oh, ANOTHER bad guy just HAPPENED to use the bathroom at the same time as Jack? This is so stupid!” It’s either that or a couple of wasted minutes every few episodes, which makes me wonder who the hell wants to see a TV show that sacrifices already limited airtime in order to be deliberately uninterresting. There are enough flaws with 24 already. Nobody needs to see Jack take a piss.

33

Oh, that’s not true, if you change “Jack” to “Kim” and “piss” to “shower.”

34

I don’t know if shows that started with a good premise belong in this thread if that premise that had limited viability as a long-running series. As long as they delivered a solid season or two before devolving into self-parody or ridiculous plot shenanigans, it doesn’t count.

Let’s take Pushing Daisies, for example… I loved loved loved this show and wouldn’t change any part of the one-and-a-half perfect seasons we got. But let’s face it… there was only so long they could go with the original premise before things got really silly. Eventually Ned’s secret would have been found out, Charlotte would have died after accidentally brushed a hand against Ned, the aunts would have discovered that Charlotte is still alive, and Emerson Cod would have located his daughter. Perfect show, perfect premise, but nowhere to go past Season 3 or thereabouts.

Same goes for 24 or Prison Break. There’s only so many times Jack Bauer can have a really really bad day and save the world in the process before people get tired of your shtick, and where can you go with story about a prison escape after they’ve… well… escaped?

Totally different from shows just never quite got their act together, IMO, like Sliders (started bad, got worse), Jericho (ditto), or JourneyMan (I just never could get past the terrible terrible writing).

35

I have to go with Desperate Housewives. Season one seemed to promise quirky, eerie mystery amongst a familiar innocent-seeming suburban backdrop, but became just an aimless, soapy who’s sleeping with who.

36

Not only that, but it starred Kurtwood Smith and Robert Knepper (T-Bag from Prison Break)! It could have been awesome.

37

John Doe(I think that was the name, it was right after Firefly). Technically didn’t waste the premise; cause it was cancelled while it was still an interesting idea.

But somewhere I read what the future proposed story line was going to be, it sounded like it would have gone crappy fast.

38

The Starlost: Created by Harlan Ellison with story ideas from some of the best-known science-fiction writers of the age, set aboard an immense generation colony ship comprising numerous self-contained worlds that have developed over centuries unaware of each other’s existence. Oh, and the whole thing is about to crash into a star or black hole or something. Done in by a combination of a shoestring budget, a cast that appeared to be heavily sedated (it was the '70s), and guest appearances by Walter Koenig as an alien in a shiny suit.

Bringing things back down to earth, Love, Sidney was supposed to be about a gay man in New York helping out a single mother, a doubly daring concept in the early '80s. Unfortunately, the network caved to outside pressure and Sidney was pretty much asexual for the run of the series. Not that we wanted to see Tony Randall in steamy man-on-man action, but his character was not allowed to date, hold hands, admire someone from afar or even talk about romance, which severely limited character development. And of course they missed their chance at having a truly groundbreaking series.

39

This last week they aired the series finale. We’d been told for months that it was going to be the last episode ever. Surely we’d get some closure, right?

Not a chance. All we got was another end-of-season cliffhanger, with *nothing *resolved. Really pissed me off, it did.

Kyle XY was never great TV… but I kind of enjoyed it. The last episode, however, was a slap in the face.

40

I’m going to guess you didn’t watch any episode from season 2.