A couple of weeks ago I posted a link to an Internet article “bemoaning,” the failures of television auteurs. Well, I came across another
article, this time from the
Boston Globe. My interest in the article was prompted by the recent cancellation of the only new show of the Fall 2002 television season that I actually watched, Joss Whedon’s
Firefly. RIP,
Firefly, we hardly knew ye. Which was unfortunate, because after recent episodes such as “Out of Gas,” “Ariel,” “War Stories,” and “Objects in Space,” the show was really beginning to hit it’s creative stride, moving towards the seasonal (and perhaps series) arc by beginning to concentrate on the factors that make for great television: continuity, backstory, foreshadowing, and more importantly characterization, as well as any the attendant relationships (in the case of
Firefly, it was the brother-sister relationship between genius/psychic/possibly psychotic teenager River and her brother Simon, Simon’s developing relationship with the engineer Kaylee, the unspoken love between Capt. Mal and Inarra, the true nature of Book, and the trustworthiness of Jayne; plus the show had begun to introduce some interesting villains, Niska, the Alliance Blue Hands, the bounty hunter Early).
Actually, I should have expected the
Firefly cancellation from the start, since FOX, in it’s infinite wisdom gave the show the 7pm CST timeslot of death; shelved the original, two-hour pilot because it was too “cerebral;” shuffled the airings of the episodes out of order; preempted the show due to the MLB playoffs; and other than it’s fairly nifty website, a distinct lack of any real promotion. Also, this is the network that is about to unleash the thing called
Joe Millionaire upon the (probably eager) viewing public; man, I thought that FOX would have learned their lesson from the
Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? debacle, but I guess not. Actually, I’m already offended by show and it hasn’t even begun to air yet; the entire ad campaign begs the question, have the FOX executives no sense of shame?
So where does that leave me? Well, it’s the second show this year that I regularly watched that has been canceled (RIP
Once and Again), leaving me with only five network shows that I regularly watch:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Angel,
Alias,
24, and
Scrubs (this is an aside, but I’m kind of troubled by the ending of last week’s episode, though it’s been a long time coming). I live in perpetual fear that the first three are going to get canceled at some point, and I don’t think that
24 will be a very viable concept after this season, I mean, how much more can they up the ante? I’ve come to the conclusion that my TV interest is only really held long-term by auteur shows; I quickly become bored with what the article refers to as McDramas (my only other real TV habits are
The Iron Chef and
Trading Spaces). Hmmm, I’m suddenly left with a burning desire to get premium cable. Perhaps, HBO will be my savior?
While on the subject of TV, I must confess that I have been seduced by another car advertisement, this time it’s that add for the New VW Convertible, not that you would know from the ad, unless you saw the very end (which I missed the first few times I saw it). Usually, I find advertisements that don’t actually feature the intended products to very stupid, but this one caught my eye because of the cutting, split screens, and the song they use on the soundtrack? Is anyone familiar with the director by any chance?
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