Story Of Cancellation

Today's song: Story Of My Life by Social Distortion

I did not plan to do two Punk bands.  Adam says The Dead Milkmen doesn't really count so maybe it is kismet that leads me to Social Distortion and Story Of My Life.  Kismet and a short lived show called Surviving Jack.  But today I am not really going to talk about Social Distortion.  If I were going to discuss Social Distortion I'd have selected Ring of Fire.  Maybe later in the month.

Television is replete with shows that did not get their due.  Unfortunately for every piece of garbage like 2 Broke Girls that keeps getting season after season there are ten shows that died well before their time.  Today's post will discuss a few of them so that you may watch them and feel my pain.

I will not be discussing Firefly.  I have written extensively on the subject and mainstream culture is aware that Firefly should still be on the air.  It is to humaniy's detriment that Two And A Half Men got twelve seasons and Firefly got to air twelve episodes, I don't need to expound on this subject.

Surviving Jack is the first of the shows killed off too soon that we will look at today.  It seemed like this show was going to do well.  It had Christopher Meloni, heavy promotion by Fox, and a great premise.  Set in the 1990's the story is told as a series of flashbacks to our narrator's life in high school.  This premise worked for The Wonder Years an it is working right now for The Goldbergs.  For whatever reason this show failed.   The actors were proficient and the writing was good.  But a talented cast of actors and writers is not enough or Firefly would still be on the air.

Another lost gem is Animal Practice.  Animal Practice was a vehicle for Justin Kirk who was coming off a great run as Andy Botwin on Weeds.  Kirk was one of the few things about Weeds that was consistently good.  Kirk's love interest on the show was Joanna García who would go on to play Ariel on Once Upon A Time.  The two had fine chemistry.  The show was set an animal hospital and Kirk was the top surgeon.  It was Scrubs at an animal hospital, or I imagine that is how they sold it.  It was not Scrubs at an animal hospital, but it was worth watching and it deserved better than nine episodes.

The last show we will cover is two shows.  This season we were treated to two excellent Rom-coms that were killed off too soon.  Manhattan Love Story starred Analeigh Tipton and surrounded her with a cast that worked well as an ensemble and served to help the star really shine.  Unfortunately America did not care and the show was the first Network program to be cancelled in the Fall.  The Fall season also presented us with Selfie. 

Selfie had everything but a good title.  In fact, it is possible the stupid title killed a brilliant show.  Jon Cho is always good.  Karen Gillan was best known as that really hot companion from Doctor Who.  The show was a retelling of My Fair Lady which was a retelling of Pygmalion but there was no way ABC was going to tell America that.  ABC figured out what the Simpsons told us twenty years ago, smart TV shows make the viewer feel stupid.  So ABC tried to hide how smart the show was; well great job, ABC, you hid it well enough to kill the show.  Selfie was a show that got better with every episode.  If you watch Selfie as a long Rom-com movie it works well, but not perfectly because it was a TV show and was not intended to end after thirteen episodes.

If you want to check out any of these shows, most of them are on Amazon or Netflix.  EZTV also still has most of these shows available as supported torrents.  In a pinch you can give me a 16GB memory stick and I'll load it up with any of the above shows.  However you view these shows, they are all worth you time.

Later

Bob