Thanks to all the snow in the northeast, I have found myself with tons of free time. Which means I should be able to get back to a regular schedule with this thing. I'll start with a Top 5 list I eluded to in a previous post, Top 5 Shows Cancelled Before Their Time, in honor of Terriers, which was much to good of a show to be taken off the air after one season. I decided to limit the list to shows that only lasted one season or broadcast under 20 episodes. I would have liked to include shows like Ed (which lasted 4 seasons) or Pushing Daisies (which lasted 2) or Veronica Mars (which lasted 3) but the real point of the list was to honor shows that I felt ripped off by not getting to spend more time with. That's not to say I wasn't devastated when Ed was taking off the air or that I wouldn't have wanted to spend 9 seasons watching Veronica Mars solve crime, but when all was said and done I had spent enough time with these characters to enjoy what I was given. The shows on this list weren't given that chance...
5. Firefly (14 episodes)
I'm not as big a fan of this show as some, and the movie that followed really didn't do much for me, but there was something extremely interesting about the shows premise that Fox just didn't give a chance to develop. Nobody had really explored the idea of a space western and it seemed like a great idea for television. It had a good cast, Nathan Fillion as the lead, Adam Baldwin as the gun happy disagreeable second, and bad television sc-fi all-star Morena Baccarin as a beautiful whore and was created by Joss Whedon, of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. The network gets the blame for this one not working, forcing Whedon to air the episodes out of order and not giving him the chance to develop the characters that would have made this show pop.
4. Terriers (13 episodes)
I've documented my love of this show on this blog, so to write much here about it seems repetitive. Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James were amazing and I really feel cheated out of spending time with two of the best television characters ever. Some people want to blame the lack of success on poor promotion by the network and a title that didn't really tell anyone what the show was about. The fact of the matter was the ratings were just so horrible there was no way it was going to get a second season. So, we all end up losing.
3. Andy Richter Controls The Universe (19 episodes)
The show technically ran for two seasons, but only aired 19 episodes and functioned both seasons as mid-year replacements. Andy Richter has been a part of a few television bombs that deserved better fates, but this was by far the best. The wacky off-beat comedy had me in stitches on a regular basis. The cast was made up of mostly people that are still unfamiliar other then Andy and Paget Brewster, who was hilarious. Again, Fox never really gave this show a chance, putting it on mid-season with little or no promotion. It was a sitcom that was ahead of its time and because of that wasn't given a chance to be a success.
2. Undeclared (17 episodes)
Not the show that put Judd Apatow on the map, but his second big failure before hitting it big time on the big screen. I cherish my DVD collection of these 17 episodes and at the same time, get angry every time I watch them that I wasn't given more. An absolutely hilarious look at college life. And even though it had its ridiculous moments, it was a much more realistic take then most college comedies. Apatow was able to nail and skewer what going to college was like. The cast was made up of Jay Baruchel, who has been in many of Apatow's movies, Carla Gallo, Charlie Hunnam, who is now the lead in Sons Of Anarchy, Monica Keena, Seth Rogan, Jason Segal, Kyle Gass, of Tenacious D. One of my favorite shows of all time, even though there are only 17 episodes to watch.
1. Freaks and Geeks (18 episodes)
The show that did put Apatow on the map, as well as a whole cast of others. The amount of talent involved in this failed television show is staggering. You should all know who Judd Apatow, writer and co-creator of the show, is. He went on to make The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Funny People, and Knocked Up, amongst others. Seth Rogan, star of Knocked Up and Pineapple Express, writer of Superbad, was in it. Jason Segal, star of How I Met Your Mother and the writer and star of the upcoming Muppet movie. Linda Cardellini, Velma from the Scooby-Doo movies and spent a stint on ER. Martin Starr, Samm Levine, Busy Phillips, who all have cult followings. Oh yeah, and this guy named James Franco, who you might have heard a thing or two about recently. The show was funny, it had heart, it was wonderfully written, it was amazingly acted. If it had gotten the chance it would have gone down as one of the greatest shows ever. But for whatever reason it didn't pull in the ratings and was cancelled after one season.
Honorable Mentions: The Ben Stiller Show (13 episodes), October Road (19 episodes), Clone High (13 episodes), Rubicon (13 episodes), Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (25 episodes)
No comments:
Post a Comment