It’s their X-Files Doctrine: if it survives Friday nights, then it is allowed to continue and is likely moved somewhere better. Except nobody really knows this, because Fox never allows a show to gain an audience and only X-Files has survived Failure Fridays AFAIK.
PS Fox sux. I am fairly certain the department that greenlights series and the people in charge of canceling them never speak and secretly hate each other.
Every one is a different story. In the case of Firefly, you’re definitely right. The series was bought by one regime but aired by another and there was one executive that held some animus against the show for whatever reason. For Fringe, it’s gone serial, which means it’s never getting another new viewer, and it was bleeding viewers, so it had to go to Friday. Dollhouse started out bad and got renewed solely to keep people from bitching about how it was canceled. Terminator started strong but then bled viewers like a stuck pig. Oftentimes, you end up scheduling a show to Friday not because you want it to fail, but because you’re looking for anywhere you might be able to put it that would justify its existence. The “death slot” isn’t euthanasia - it’s life support.
The real irony is that Fox is the genre fan’s best friend and they catch the most shit for it.
As for Alcatraz, we’ll have to see it’s retention in the second week. As things lie right now, my guess is that Alcatraz and Terra Nova both get orders (possibly budget cuts on Terra Nova), Fringe gets canceled, House gets canceled (Laurie’s contract is up and I doubt that they’re willing to give him as much money as it would take to get him back, and that doesn’t even consider the rest of the cast), and if Touch gets another order, it’ll be a deadline thing right before the upfronts.
Whoa, so we’ll see half a dinosaur per episode?
That show is supposed to be super expensive, and I just don’t see it. Not enough dinosaurs and it’s not as if they have huge stars in the cast.
Back to the subject – is anyone besides me getting tired of JJ Abrams? Lost burned me on ever believing in a sci-fi serial again, and Super 8 was disappointing.
I only saw the first hour. It’s not terrible, but it’s not very interesting either.
The Alcatraz bit is not much of a hook. Modern serial killers, terrorists, psycho children, etc have made Al Capone era bad guys seem like almost cuddly curiosities more than anything else now. I would have gone for escapees from an old school mental institution like Danvers or something. Then you could have your standard police procedural crossed with creepy heebie jeebies.
The other thing was the “you should have shot me” bit. I hate that convention, when a character has the means(and apparently motive) to die but doesn’t use it, instead waiting for someone else to do it. Then they get annoyed and say ‘You should have shot me’. Why not shoot yourself champ?
It’s a fantastic cast with nothing really to do so far…
I’m certainly with you on Abrams. Super 8 was little more than an homage to better movies and as I detailed above I’m no fan of serialized stuff on TV shows, particularly the kind of stuff Abrams is interested in.
Is it fair to blame him for the resurgence of a mythology/serial aspect to almost every new procedural? Even something like Hawaii Five-0 has that ridiculous Wo Fat storyline going. I can’t imagine it gains them viewers. If anything it seems like it would cost them viewers since new people can’t really connect to the serialized stuff. I understand that it probably makes it a little less boring for the writers and actors, but it’s always so half-assed that I can’t imagine the audience is thrilled with it. I watch procedural shows because they’re the TV version of comfort food. I’d rather just concentrate on the case and forget about the poorly done serialized mystery they’re building that they’re going to keep building until they get a cancellation notice or they’re going to leave hanging if they’re not renewed when they were expecting to be. If Abrams is responsible for the glut of procedural shows with a silly serialized element then he can suck it.
CSI did two years with a stupid mass killer mixed in with the Laurence Fishburn character. You would think with two years to work on a conclusion to the character they could have done a better job than they did. TV writing in general seems to really suck now.
Maybe all the good writers are working for projects on cable.
You’re basing this on it being stupid to you. Yes, CSI used to be better. But to me, that was due to casting than better TV writing.
I liked Laurence Fishburne’s character, I just thought the whole mass murderer revenge thing was way overdone, and then way too easy to solve. I think that is writing, not casting. There is no reason when you run a story line for 2 years that you have to have the ending be so simplified and sophomoric.
PS…so far I like the Ted Danson character.
Who else watched tonight? I’m enjoying the show so far myself. It seems that all of the “'63s” are people that the sadistic warden took a special interest in.
Saw the one last night but that’s two in a row where the convict had issues with a family member. Two out of three!
The show needs a little more overarching storyline. Having two minutes of something mysterious at the end isn’t going to cut it.
Saw last night’s and it was a bit better in terms of utilizing Hurley’s character and overall plot consitency. On the other hand, at the end, what the hell? I’m guessing that the old doctor was on the island when everyone vanished, and was also somehow one of the earliest people to “return”? How else to explain how he’s back, seemingly unaged? Same with the woman who got shot, who was show in '63 at the end of last episode. I understand that this stuff is supposed to be “and the mystery deepens!” type stuff, but having been third-degree burned by LOST on the whole “here’s a mystery tidbit, oh yeah, it won’t ever go anywhere” thing I’m extremely suspicious of such plot devices now.
Still, I’m going to keep watching as it may only be average procedural crime drama but the overall mystery has my curiosity engaged.
I have little tolerance now for crime, see bad guy, capture bad guy aaaaand done shows. I watched the two hours before last night. Was last night’s pretty much more of the same? One convict, one investigation, one more thrown in the super-duper Alcatraz II.
I’m ready for them to show us something other than people haven’t aged. It’s not much of a reveal any more. Still hanging in there, but I wouldn’t mind something a little more unpredictable next week.
Last night did it for me. Bad guy of the week, some crazy killer who’s reason for being crazy is solved in 10 minutes by good guys using old file info and super computer.
And somehow the grandfather plays into this in a “blood” way.
Adios.
It was truly awful, imho.
Thanks for doing the heavy lifting. I can tell my wife it is OK to delete so she can have more room for her crap TV instead of my crap.
I can usually watch any procedural show and enjoy it. I was bored to tears by this week’s Alcatraz though. So many things about the show just aren’t working for me.
This show is definitely missing any kind pizazz. It’s the most inert of any tv show or movie about Alcatraz prisoners that I can remember ever seeing.
Ugh, this last episode had so much handwaving it was hard to take. The criminal in question used a “No Country for Old Men” style pneumatic hammer to bust into safety deposit boxes and to kill people, but without the all-important tank of compressed gas to power it.
Also (but other shows do this constantly), the heroine gets the drop on the bad guy by noticing that he’s not wearing his seatbelt, and crashing the cop car they’ve stolen. Fine as far as it goes, but the air bags don’t deploy (the impact is definitely at over 25 mph).
Actually, the device he was using uses special cartridge blanks to drive the bolt. So he wouldn’t have needed an air tank or compressor. They did skip showing him reloading the cartridge, but I can make that complaint about guns on TV and movies constantly.
Also (but other shows do this constantly), the heroine gets the drop on the bad guy by noticing that he’s not wearing his seatbelt, and crashing the cop car they’ve stolen. Fine as far as it goes, but the air bags don’t deploy (the impact is definitely at over 25 mph).
She turns the car right before impact and smashes the front right headlight at a corner angle. Depending on the airbag sensor, an impact at that angle might not trigger a front airbag. There are numerous articles online about how inconsistent this can be.