Recent news that ‘Community’ is being “held in reserve” by NBC for some sort of programming emergency and will not premiere as promised this month has left me in a very cynical state. (Epic run-on sentence, bro!) The expectation that my favorite NBC show is probably on short time is bothersome, but more distressing is the implied expectation from the network that no matter what they do with the property, it’s not going to get any more or less popular than it is right now. After a strong ending to Season 3, this season might have been something awesome, so clearly it was time to fire the show-runner and engage in endless shenanigans about time slots. The dark and cynical part of my brain is just hoping that the probably-never-going-to-be-released episodes already produced will at least make a cool DVD box set.
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is VH1, Robocop 2 and Back to the Future 3. You’re the center slice of a square cheese pizza. Actually, that sounds delicious. I’m the center slice of a square cheese pizza. You’re Jim Belushi, asking: What act of “executive meddling” is the most unforgivable to you and your pop culture obsessions?
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Firefly: the network messing with the scheduling so that episodes aired out of intended order. Just stupid. When it was happening, I knew the show was doomed because it seemed like a repeat of what happened to Crusade.
About ten years ago the SCI FI Channel announced with much fanfare the renewal of its flagship series Farscape for two seasons at the same time–the show’s fourth and fifth. At the time, Farscape was one of its most successful series, and on top of that was routinely listed as one of the best shows on television by magazines such as TV Guide, etc. and, of course, fans. As the show approached the mid-fourth season haitus, however, SCI FI started referring to it as “the final episodes of the season” and that it would be “returning for the next season.” This left many of us scratching our heads.
The shows creators finally leaked the news that SCI FI changed their mind and was in fact not renewing it for it’s fifth season. No one could figure out why, since the show was still getting good ratings and was still a critical success. Not only had SCI FI reversed their decision to renew for two years and instead cancel the series, they tried to underhandedly trick fans of the show into thinking that the latter half of the fourth season was in fact the fifth season that had been promised.
In the end it seems as if the financial troubles of SCI Fi’s parent company spelled the end for the show, in favor of the cheaper and higher-rated (though less acclaimed) Stargate SG1.
1. When people are brought in who have no knowledge or love for a well known property. When you have the right people in charge you get Joss and the Avengers movie. When you get people who know jack in charge you get Barry Sonnenfeld trying to get a Super Man movie made where Super Man doesn’t fly, has no cape and fights a giant spider. Kevin Smith was one of the writers for the script and to hear his version is hilarious and rage inducing.
2. When the people who create a great property are replaced, usually over money or ego. There are a lot of examples of this but the first that come to mind are John K. on the original Ren and Stimpy epsodes, the season one writers for Heroes (there names escape me) and Frank Darabont on Walking Dead.
This is probably the worst. I’d put the second one as Airing the episodes out of order, ala Firefly and The Lone Gunmen (didn’t they do this with Dollhouse too?).
#sixseasonsandweloveyoudanharmon
I don’t know that Dollhouse aired out of order, but the network did insist on a series of ‘adventure of the week’ episodes to establish the premise, which really weakened the series out of the gate. Then in Season two they put it in the Friday night ‘death slot’ hastening the end of the series and rushing the conclusion, which I found less than satisfying. Great show, really good sci-fi premise, intelligent themes, meddled with in its infancy and made much less than it could have, and should have been.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the producers of Star Gate Atlantis killing off Weir and Beckett, not to advance the plot but ‘to shake things up.’
Most of my problems are with the handling of sci-fi series. What happened to Firefly, the cancellation of Farscape and Eureka despite being previously told we’d see more episodes, etc. While some good came out of some of it (The “Serenity” movie and Farscape’s “The Peacekeeper Wars”), it still doesn’t make up for the previous actions the high-ups did.
I’m also quite upset with MGM high-ups for shelving everything Stargate. Now we may never see the SGU wrap-up movie or the further stories of the SG-1 and Atlantis crews that were in the works but were dropped with this decision.
Nickelodeon “sabotaging” of “Invader Zim”, and eventually taking it off the air.
The CW killing Reaper right when it was on a huge upswing.
Oh man i had forgotten “Reaper”! The one thing The CW got right they cancelled!
Yep. Reaper was the best.