HEH! Work It's been Canceled!

[frogboy4]

Gotcha, thanks for the tip, it is important to know exactly when a series got its stride going.

Yeah, the biggest problem people had with the first season is having two very young fellas being given credibility as FBI agents with forged IDs and conspicuous behavior. That's the only real mental leap. Not the supernatural elements. It becomes humorous or credible later on in the series.

The show begins to get better once it deviates from a story-of-the-week formula in favor of a larger seasonal arc. It's really a gamble for shows to dive into serial territory because it becomes harder to gain a new audience. Hulu and NetFlix helps that now, but it was great for them to do that back then. It's what kept me interested. That and they have no trouble with self-referential humor.

 

[Drtooth]

"Grim" and "Once Upon a Time" just aren't clicking for me either. They come off as over-produced versions of 90's SciFi Channel concepts.

I find Grim is pretty decent... I hate the Friday Night time slot for it. It seems a concept that will get better once the show goes forward. I definitely like it more than Once Upon a Time. Grim doesn't take itself too seriously, and manages to come off as something better than the average cop program. Though it does seem like something that would be on the WB in the 90's... sure... but I couldn't get into Once... I know it's a fantastically unbelievable concept, one they ripped from a comic book, but they handle it so deeply, darkly seriously that CGI Jiminey Crickets come off more CGI super imposed Alvin and the Chipmunks than Yoda-like. If the show managed to just be a little more playful, it wouldn't come off so... goofy. It's not even goofy in a camp way, it's just... weird. An unpleasant weird.

Still, it's not that "they don't make good TV anymore" so much as upward and downward swings in trends. It's hard to come up with something new... everything's been done so you're stuck with either a variation on a theme (in other words, something the same with a couple changes) or something that's too far out that it just can't find an audience... and that just makes everyone go back to something the same.

Once and Grim are both results of a premature belief that Twilight-ified Fairy Tales will be the next big thing. We got at least 2 bomb movies from that assumption... anyone remember the disastrous Little Red Riding Hood? I don't mean Hoodwinked 2... There are other shows in the works, including 2 versions of Beauty and the Beast (I can't tell if one's even going to be a remake of the 80's series). I don't know how Grim's doing... Once is somehow doing alright.

The other problem is sometimes you get a concept so strong that it works well for one season, then it Peters out. Everyone loved Heroes, until the second season. Even the writers couldn't think that far through. And let's not forget Prison Break. They really wrote themselves into a corner by having them break out the first season. Which brings me to another problem... the long running epic saga genre show. Sure, Lost managed to keep into production and reach a conclusion, albeit an unsatisfying screw you of a conclusion... but after a while, it was getting harder and harder for everyone to care about that kind of show because, unlike Lost, they never reached the ending... The Sarah Conner Chronicals, The Event, The Cape (which I thought was a misguided attempt to recapture the lightning in a bottle the first season of Heroes that came off a knockoff of Batman)... even My Name is Earl was unceremoniously pushed off the schedule due to politicking with Amy Pohler's vehicle, Parks and Rec (which is basically VR Troopers to The Office's Power Rangers). Other than Once, it seems that everything was starting to go back to being episodic (the one thing I like about Grim is how episodic the episodes are)... but then Fox is going back to the epic genre with Alcatraz and that other thing with Keifer Sutherland... I bet both won't finish the season, and will be replaced by Mobbed or something of equal out of touch 40 year old quality.

The only thing keeping television from being quality is competition television. I refuse to call it reality TV anymore... there's NO CALL for the Bachelor/Bachelorette to be popular again, I'm sorry... and we do NOT need all these American Idol type shows. Only a fist full of them even get to C listdom... Jennifer Hudson was lucky as heck, but there's some pitty there. Does anyone even know who won the last "The Voice?" And I really hate the fact Fox made a show about Flashmobs. No one does flashmobs anymore. That's like a 5 year old Rick Roll in the middle of October.

 

[beaker]

So in the late 90's, Disney's ABC pulls the amazing Ellen show because she came out being gay...oh how far we've come since then.

Only traditional sitcoms I watch now are Big Bang Theory and 2 Broke Girls. Only "office" like shows I watch are Office, Modern Family, Up All Night and Curb Your Enthusiasm...sometimes The Middle.

 

[CensoredAlso]

So in the late 90's, Disney's ABC pulls the amazing Ellen show because she came out being gay...oh how far we've come since then.

It's definitely more normal to see gay characters (or Reality people)on TV now which is great. Though I do hope they eventually move past the stereotyping because that is really getting old. Not every gay man acts like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and not every lesbian is an overbearing em...witch.

 

[Drtooth]

I also have to add to the thread HEH! Allan Gregory is canceled. It's not so much that I find American Dad and Cleveland Show vastly superior to the overrated Family Guy, and I hated the fact that one of them got the 7:30 death slot that claimed Futurama way back when.... it was just an awful show on every level. The look was garish and gaudy pastel... the characters were completely unlikable, and they only 2 character types, oblivious and nasty. I like Jonah Hill and all, but you'd think the star of Get him To The Greek would have came up with something better.

By contrast I'm loving the Napoleon Dynamite show so far. I love the look of it, the characters are great... the humor's pretty solid (slightly different than the movie, but I wonder if that would work in animation as well)... I also quite like Bob's Burgers, even though it feels like it's a cable show. Those I don't mind not seeing AD for... but Alan Gregory was just nasty.

So in the late 90's, Disney's ABC pulls the amazing Ellen show because she came out being gay...oh how far we've come since then.

I thought they pulled it because no one was watching because she came out. I didn't really like that show (way before she came out), though I would watch it again. For the longest time, the only gay characters we could have were cartoonish, Jar Jar Binks like stereotypes. I love how the characters on Modern Family are so uptight about being thought as stereotypes that they wind up falling into the traps involuntarily. I loved the line about Lady Gaga, "It's the only Gay stereotype I allow myself."

Still, the only thing offensive about Work It was that it was labeled a comedy. That's offensive to comedians.

 

[charlietheowl]

I also have to add to the thread HEH! Allan Gregory is canceled. It's not so much that I find American Dad and Cleveland Show vastly superior to the overrated Family Guy, and I hated the fact that one of them got the 7:30 death slot that claimed Futurama way back when.... it was just an awful show on every level. The look was garish and gaudy pastel... the characters were completely unlikable, and they only 2 character types, oblivious and nasty. I like Jonah Hill and all, but you'd think the star of Get him To The Greek would have came up with something better.

I didn't really watch Allen Gregory too much but most of the reviews I read were scathing, and all of them pointed out that the show's writers appeared to loathe all the characters and go out of their way to make them unlikeable, which was odd. There's a place in the world for dark comedy and nasty lead characters (I love It's Always Sunny, and Seinfeld certainly had some darker episodes), but there's got to be some respect and appreciation for their own characters. You have to wonder if the creative team thought the show was doomed and just thought that pushing the envelope towards being "mean" and "dark" would get them attention.

 

[Drtooth]

I like the concept of oblivious people and wacky people and the straightman that always freaks out when things get too crazy. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is one of my favorite anime. But it's like the straightmen were buzz kills who delighted in deflating the egos of the oblivious characters, without any comeuppance. Like that guy in the Pink Panther movies who HATES Clouseau, and goes to great lengths to get him fired and discredited, only to cause injury and humiliation upon themselves. Too bad that didn't happen. I'd love to see their smug little adopted Cambodian daughter fall into her own petard. She was so humorless a character. Not even in a comedically nasty way that Mandy of Grim Adventures was...

The oblivious characters were too obliviously egotistical, and everyone else was a jerk. I kinda see that they were trying for a character who's too out of touch with reality (or normality in this case) and who no one quite understands. But it just falls flat. it's hard to watch, like seeing a puppy get kicked over and over... no one deserves anything in that show.

 

[Drtooth]

Just for the sake of conversation... does anyone actually watch "the Chew?"

 

[D'Snowth]

Just for the sake of conversation... does anyone actually watch "the Chew?"

My mom.

 

[Drtooth]

One person at least... sure.

I'm surprised there wasn't more of an angry protest when The Revolution premiered. I remember the pathetic press conference they had to promote it saying something to the extent of "We're offering something different." No... no you're not. The Nate Burkis show (which got canceled and is only going to have a second season due to contractual obligations) was the EXACT same show and NO ONE watched.

I'm no Soap fan, but again, I sympathize with their angst on the grounds that what happened to children's programming isn't all that different. The head of ABC Daytime is the biggest trust fund baby idiot I've seen in years.