Another retro-post placed in my blog for posterity. Ironically, WC has now started offering the equivalent of 70 cents for every 1000 views for new lists. If I only waited a year, this article could have netted me $22.45...however I would lost copyright on it and could never be allowed to publish on my own blog. So, i guess this is $22 well spent. Enjoy, comments always welcome.
WhatCulture has already talked about a few shows that have jumped the shark or should have quit while they were ahead here and here. So consider this an ongoing series of shows that aren’t necessarily shows that should have been cancelled but more shows that became victims of their own success or shortcomings.
The early seasons of these shows are what made them what they are today, which unfortunately is usually just a shallow imitation of their early years. Perhaps you could split these series up like Law & Order; one half is the set up for all that made these shows great, and the second half is the semi-lame reason why some people just consider these shows ‘okay’.
8. Californication
Must watch Seasons 1-4
Or just start watching from Season 5 and pretend you totally get it.
David Duchovny was absolutely born to play the role of Hank Moody, a New York literary libertarian turned Hollywood wannabe screenwriter. The first four seasons are a hilarious X-rated romp through the libido (and liver) of Hank who basically drinks constantly and screws every woman he meets in LA despite trying to win back the love of his soul-mate Karen and their daughter Becky.
The first four seasons of Californication follow a tremendous, well-detailed story arc that starts with Hank bedding the under-aged daughter of his ex-wife’s new fiance and with the threat of this underage rape hanging over his career manages to maintain your interest for four seasons. Helping matters is the intense sexual comedy that Californication provides. The tight cast of Hank, Karen and best friends the Runkels plus an amazing assortment of guest stars such as Callum Keith Rennie as a Phil Spector-like party animal/music producer, Katherine Turner as Runkel’s sexually harrassing boss, Rick Springfield as himself plus some of LA’s best breasts leads to some of the best adult-oriented comedy I’ve seen that doesn’t pander down to the audience’s intelligence. What other show has someone go down on a woman ‘by accident’ or show a threesome with someone (Hank) obviously not really in the moment, not that it matters.
At the end of season four, it ends perfectly; the story arc started in the first episode is finally resolved and all story arcs come to an end in a way befitting the entire series. In Season 4′s final shot Hank is seen driving off in the sunset in true Hollywood fashion and there could be no better way to end the show.
BUT…
Sadly, most likely due to it’s immense success and the all-important ratings, Californication was brought back to a shadow of it’s previous self, despite having all the main characters again. Season 5 tried to start the series anew, scripting a 3 year absence from LA for Hank Moody who once again comes back and tries to reassert himself into Karen and Becky’s life.
It’s difficult to re-invest in a series that ended so perfectly after Season 4. It’s like your best friend has left you to pursue their life in the big city, leaving you sitting alone at the pub nursing a pint then to discover them 2 months later sitting once again on the barstool beside you. It’s that scene between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting where Ben finally tells Matt that he hopes one day he won’t be there to be picked up to go to his bad job. Hank Moody was/is your best friend who was never going to be the one to stick around and that was okay.
7. The X-Files
Watch Seasons 1-5
Or just watch Seasons 6-9 and don’t tell anyone
If you were alive in the 90s and had access to a TV, The X-Files was the reason to stay home on Friday nights. Following the lead of ‘supernatural shows’ like The Twilight Zone, The X-Files tapped into the zeitgeist of the decade with David Duchovny (once again) playing Fox Mulder, FBI UFO chaser to Diana Scully’s resident FBI sceptic. The show’s main premise relied on following Mulder chase down leads in an attempt to find his sister who he believes was abducted by aliens when they were children.
What follows is an amazing series of shows within a show as the various detours take the two of them on some amazing and odd investigations, with some of them being solved, some of them left to interpretation. The X-Files birthed shows such as Heroes and Misfits (we’ll get to later) that left the audience with the impression that it was a strange and unusual world out there where maybe, just maybe, anything can be possible.
BUT…
Blame it on the climate. After the first five seasons the shooting was moved from the naturally gloomy west coast setting of Vancouver, Canada to the much more hospitable and warm glow of Los Angeles for season 6. As the viewing numbers continued to decline, much was blamed that the bright, sunny skies of California actually hampered the all-important mood that was established in the first 5 seasons filmed in Vancouver. Then Duchovny gradually removed himself from the show (written in as his own ironic abduction) leaving Scully to team up with Robert Patrick Harris for seasons 8 and its swan song in season 9, although as all X-Filers know, Mulder and Scully have teamed up for two luke-warm The X-Files movies with rumours of a third one slated for production.
6. Rescue Me
Must Watch; Seasons 1-6
Must watch Season 7 to get it over with.
Rescue Me was the show that made everyone sit up and say ‘wait, isn’t that the guy who sings “I’m an A**hole”?’ and ‘He can act?’
Set in New York after 9/11 it followed Firefighter Tommy Gavin (Dennis Leary) as he tries to cope through alcoholism with the post-traumatic stress of having his best friend and fellow firefighters die in the Twin Towers collapse. His attempts at trying to reconnect with his ex-wife Janet and their kids is severely hampered by his feelings of guilt he harbors and his need to care for everyone around him, including his best friend’s widow Sheila, who he winds up having an affair with, and her son who wishes to become a firefighter when he grows up.
Despite the raw emotions surrounding the lives of New York firefighters and the ones that are hired to replace them, the show manages to keep one foot firmly in comedy, providing much needed relief to the seriousness of the show. It is obvious Dennis Leary holds the firefighters in much respect and treats the subject matter accordingly, while his fights with alcoholism and domestic abuse remain an ongoing theme of the show. The show touched on father/child relationships, the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, first responders who developed cancer at Ground Zero, women joining the predominantly male profession and of course, sex in all manners.
BUT…
By the end of season 6, the show has run its course; Tommy’s alcoholism is a never-ending battle which his now adult daughter must also fight, he has failed to stop his nephew from joining the fire brigade despite the pleas of his best friend’s widow and the firehouse is on the chopping block due to budget cuts. The season 6 finale pointed to a major death of one of the major characters of the show and despite knowing it was going to happen, the result is still a shock. What would have been the ultimate closing scene for the series was instead brought back for one more season where it was finally put out of its slow demise.
5. Community
Must Watch Seasons 1-2
Must Watch it Sink; Season 3-ongoing
Community is currently the Titanic of American sitcoms right now, if you are interested in watching the devolution of an amazing cult comedy to a gradual sinking of all that made it great, Community is the one to watch. I loved Community when it first came out, as did many others that managed to find it on their radars despite little promotion. It was like Arrested Development, with a strong cult following that thanks to the internet actually gave it a longer life than it would have 10 years ago. The creator, Dan Harmon, worked quickly in establishing that these weren’t just one-dimensional stereotypes but characters that you cared about.
Set in the less than stellar Greendale Community College, the series centered around Jeff Winger, a disbarred lawyer who had to go back and actually earn a college degree. He quickly forms a study group which becomes the basis of the show. I won’t get into the roles but it did feature Chevy Chase in a surprise return to television and the rising star of Dr. Ken Jeong as Chang, the Chinese Spanish teacher, fresh from his larger introduction in the Hangover.
The first two seasons are what happens when creative control is entrusted to a person who continually pushes the envelope, much like Mitchell Hurwitz did with Arrested Development. The first 2 seasons were ingenious in their conception and delivery. The zombie Halloween apocalypse special, the KFC space shuttle and the Paintball finales were some fine examples of what was making this a cult favourite.
BUT…
By season 3 it was becoming a bit evident that Dan Harmon was becoming drunk with power and the format started to stray from the original story line. The show began to dip into an increasingly strange foray into satirical theme shows, a clever 8 bit animation show, an increasingly power-hungry and insane Senor Chang story line and a rather quick toss away of the affair between Jeff and Britta, which carried the first 2 seasons. Season 3 did have some great episodes that rose above the rest, but you can literally see it jump the shark with Remedial Chaos Theory. From then on it felt like it was becoming more and more an exploration into trying to ‘be better than the last episode’.
Chevy Chase became the most vocal of opposing the vague direction of the show which led to a very public dressing down of Chase by Harmon. Chase responded by telling the network it was either ‘him or me’ and the choice was made. Harmon was fired, Community was put on hiatus and Season 4 brought back this Spring as a shadow of it’s former self; watching it has been like eating the generic no-name brand of your favourite cereal. It’s good, but not Harmon-great. As Abed said in an early season 4 episode, ‘I remember when this used to be about a community college.’
The Community ship is sinking but is still willing to take on passengers.
4. Heroes
Must Watch Season 1
Then stop. Just stop.
Heroes should have been a 1 season mini-series. The premise of a group of mutants without a Professor X to unite them was an interesting idea that evolved to an extent by the more youth-oriented Misfits. While Heroes respected an adult audience with adult themed story lines and hero figures the multiple story lines led to some loss of character development as the various 12 lead characters were all gradually led to the big finale; the nuclear explosion that was foreshadowed from early on in the show.
BUT….
That was it. When the explosion was averted in the Season Finale, there was really nothing to fall back on. Cyrus the serial killer isn’t much of a story line to center an entire series around and it lost a lot of it’s initial fan base for no other reason other than they were completely satisfied with Season 1. If the constant introduction of new characters while keeping the older ones around without resolving story lines sounds a bit like a certain popular HBO fantasy show involving thrones and games and dragons and such, you’re not far wrong.
Heroes was a great show that tried to be the new ‘LOST’ but should have either completely re-invented itself or just quit while it was ahead, much like Britain’s similarly themed but much more entertaining show….
3. Misfits
Must watch Season 1-2
Or just start start over from season 4
Misfits hit where Heroes did not. It had humour and a stellar cast that made the show entertaining and tongue-in-cheek that aimed at a younger audience. While Heroes’ origins seemed steeped in X-File conspiracy theology, Misfits straight up informs us that everyone’s powers came from a ‘hailstorm’ that affected some and didn’t affect others. The show centers around a group of juvenile delinquents on probation who’s very first problem is having to kill their probation officer, who was also affected by the storm. The constant rotation of probation officers is handled in hilarious fashion as the group tries to balance the use of their powers or in the case of Season 1′s break-out star Nathan (Robert Sheehan) attempting to discover his, the first two seasons are tight and well-paced. The term ‘Season’ is also a bit misleading to North American audiences, as the first 2 seasons comprise only 13 episodes.
BUT…
Once Sheehan left, the chemistry was difficult to recover. The kids made a go of it, with Rudy (Joseph Gilgun) doing a great job of gradually replacing Nathan as the comic relief but it began to suffer from a story line that did not know how to end or evolve. You can only kill so many probation workers and with the time passing since the ‘storm’, it made it hard to fathom the yet undiscovered powers and people that started to appear as the show went on.
By the start of season 4, all but one of the original cast had been replaced and the stories that were so tantalizingly introduced were all but ignored in order to get quickly to the next idea. The idea of a man that could switch genders had potential but was quickly dismissed with a lazy excuse to give him another power, as was the time loop story line that seemed to end rather too abruptly. Off season shenanigans helped boot Kelly out of the mix so by the end of Season 4 the audience was left to try to create a new relation with a bunch of new characters that were popping up with ‘new powers’ long after the originating storm had disappeared from memory.
2. 30 Rock
Must Watch Seasons 1-5
Or just watch seasons 6-7 to empower the idea of women in television
The idea of a woman as the central character in a comedy is nothing new, Mary Tyler Moore, Tracey Ullman, Roseanne have all done it. It was Tina Fey’s show within a show wink-wink nudge nudge nod to her days (and nights) of being the head writer for Saturday Night Live which is what made this series so great when it first came out. You got the idea that the characters were actual representatives of people that Fey met during her time at 30 Rock(efeller Center). Alec Baldwin gave the show instant cred, much like Chevy Chase did for Community.
A strong comedic core with talented guest stars and a ethnically diverse cast of bit players made for an amusing show as Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon portrays a female Lorne Michaels, juggling her diva stars while trying to learn the business side of television through her mentor, Jack Donaghy.
BUT…
By season 6 there was little more that the show could accomplish other than to address the ultimate 40 year old career woman decision; concentrate on her career or having a baby. Liz Lemon does go through her share of suitors, including Matt Damon and the ‘other’ Wesley Snipes but the medical troubles of Tracey Morgan, which caused him to miss the last half of Season 5 were written in as a David Chappelle-like spiritual journey to Africa. Tracey’s absence from the show was a foreshadowing that 30 Rock was not to last much longer and the show began to focus more on the ‘family’ side of both Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy.
1. Friends
Must Watch to Make Out- Seasons 1-3
Must Watch to Get Laid – Seasons 4-7
Must Watch to Get Married – All of them
Friends is (was? – don’t know, I’m married now) the Go-To topic of dating. It’s a must for any single guy who has trouble finding common ground to talk about on that all important first date. While your date may have trouble understanding what the big deal is about the current Premier League rankings, whip out a Ross/Rachel reference and you are guaranteed something approaching interest for the next 30 minutes as you listen to your date discuss who was best for Rachel and why. It helps to know the basics of the show and the first 3 seasons do that.
Friends set the bar for 90′s group ensemble television and many sitcoms today still try to find the right formula of casting, story lines and humor. While some have accomplished success with little tweaks to the formula (BBC’s Coupling, How I Met Your Mother, Happy Endings, are all great ‘friends-type’ sitcoms) there are dozens of failed pilots and 1 season shows that line the bottom of IMDB’s best sitcom lists to prove it takes a bit more than 6 well-groomed characters thrown together in an apartment in New York to make a sitcom, especially if they are lacking in cultural diversity. Friends is a white show for white people about white people in one of the world’s largest multi-cultural cities but don’t mention that if you just want to get laid.
The big question was would Ross the Nerd ever get with Rachel the Jennifer Aniston? The question was Yes. Then No. Asking your date their opinion if Ross’s excuse of ‘they were on a break’ was fair you might have an idea how the night will end up, or at least get you through the first 30 minutes.
BUT…
That question was resolved by season 3. The trick in attempting to keep your date interested in you is to get a bit deeper into the show, where it was really hitting its zenith with guest stars, with Magnum PI (Tom Selleck) as Monica’s reoccurring boyfriend Richard and guest stars as diverse as Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts to Isabella Rossalini and Gary Oldman. The second phase of the show peaked with Monica and Chandler’s marriage and that is as much as any one man should need to know to impress the girl he is dating to get a bit more freaky with it.
However, if you really love that girl that has the whole 10 seasons of Friends on dvd, it’s best you hunker down for some afternoons of ‘Friends Ketchup’. The bevy of guest stars helps Friends remain interesting to a point and while some characters surprise in comedy development over the seasons (Ross in particular), others become caricatures of themselves (Joey/Monica). The story lines became quite forced (mention the problems of a Joey/Rachel relationship the girl may drop in awe of your Friends knowledge) as there was little for them to do but move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment