MAY 2015 TV THREAD

[Spritenaut 32]

Damn,,,,I should never ever get interested in a show on FOX man. Backstrom had wormed it's way into my viewing schedule pretty fast, and I was looking forward to much more. Feels like Almost Human again.

 

Backstrom was easily my favorite procedural this season, but I realized pretty early getting a renewal would be a hail mary.  Fox put a lot of effort into promoting the show and gave it a decent lead-in, and week 1 ratings were rather awful.  They only went south from there.  It was a tough time slot (Scandal and the Blacklist aired opposite it), but still.....

 

I was kinda hoping Fox would cancel Bones and renew Backstrom to maintain the relationship with Hart Hanson.  That, and maybe a move to Friday night, were probably the only chance the show had. 

[piranesi]

The greatest episode of CHARLIE'S ANGELS is surprisingly from the Shelly Hack season.

 

It's so great.  Timothy Dalton is a jewel thief who is clearly gay and therefore utterly immune to the Angels trying to get in with him and catch him.  He's hilariously dismissive of them:
 

"But I'm just really into sports cars so maybe you could drive me around in yours."
"If you want to learn about cars, shut up and listen to your mechanic."

God, that felt good for some reason.  After four seasons of watching every dumb dimwit criminal turn into a drooling dipshit at the first flip of a feathered bang, that was, like, liberating for all humanity.   WE ARE IMPERVIOUS...well...SOMEONE IS IMPERVIOUS!!!!

They keep dropping Bond references and it's 1979.  That seems weird.  Was there some buzz about him replacing Moore that early?  He wasn't even Prince Barin yet.  It's funny, he's basically playing the same kind of uptight prick here as he did in FLASH GORDON.  Dude was so good looking and so sort of...lame back then.

And then he's going to steal this diamond from an opera singer who ends up being played by

The woman from DJANGO KILL...IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT!

She claims she isn't worried about this diamond because she has a "perfect security system" but won't tell anyone what it is.  When Timothy Dalton finally gets his shot at it, he finds the diamond in a safe box in her dressing room and opens it to find that her security system is...

A MOTHERFUCKING COBRA LOCKED IN THE BOX WITH IT!!!

That is her security system.  She placed the necklace in a box and then got a cobra...SHE. GOT. A. COBRA...presumably the one she brought with her in her luggage on the plane...picked up the cobra and put it in there too.  Remember: She's an opera singer. 

 

So Timothy Dalton..hypnotizes the cobra...with his hand making a snake shape...which of course as we all know from science is traditionally the main flaw of the "get a cobra" security system...how easily distracted they are by a human arm in the shape of a girl cobra.   DJANGO lady is surprised because "Only I have ever been able to handle that cobra!!!"  Is that not just the most deflating moment in some t.v. writer's life, writing that line?

But that's not the best part because this it turns out ON TOP OF ALL THAT is also prodigal son/legend's contract episode because who shows up out of nowhere?  Farah Fucking Fawcett@@@ is back and turned evillll...

DUN DUN DUHHHHHHNNN!!! COMMERCIAL!!!

maybe..teaming with Timothy Dalton to steal the diamond.  This leads to a big confrontation between Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Ladd, which is done exclusively in super close two-shot which means the t.v. screen is turned into a kind of Blonde thunderdome where only one giant mane can survive and eventually tires and overwhelms and consumes the other one creating a unified borg blonde nebula.  

 

This is what it looks like when Farrah Fawcett feeds.  If you can't handle it, then I don't know watch RIPTIDE or something.

All of this leads, naturally, to a kung fu fight between Farrah Fawcett and Timothy Dalton.

JESUS, HOW EPIC IS THIS!!!  IMAGINE THIS IN SLOW MOTION WITH CARMINA BURANA PLAYING!!

Lee/Norris
Chan/Urquidez
Hung/Rothrock
Dalton/Fawcett

It's right in there somewhere.


And if that isn't enough, at one point they're at a party and the guy playing the waiter walking around with oeurs d'oeuvres is President Motherfucking Logan from 24, but when he was like in his 20s.  It was his third credited role.  Right between "Man #2" on an episode of MORK & MINDY and "Religious Zealot #1" in AIRPLANE!.  He was still two years away from a part that didn't have a number in it.

 

But, that's okay, because he was in the greatest episode of the worst show ever.  And that's something I wish I could say.

[Reed]

 

THE PLAYER”

From the executive producers of “The Blacklist” and starring Wesley Snipes and Philip Winchester (“Strike Back,” “Fringe”) comes an action-packed Las Vegas thriller about a former military operative turned security expert who is drawn into a high-stakes game where an organization of wealthy individuals gamble on his ability to stop some of the biggest crimes imaginable from playing out. Can he take them down from the inside and get revenge for the death of his wife, or is it true what they say: The house always wins.

The cast includes Wesley Snipes, Philip Winchester, Charity Wakefield and Damon Gupton.

 

NBC ordered this to series. I doubt it'll win any emmys, but Wesley Snipes fucking up bad people is always a win.

 

Other notes:

 

CBS ended up picking up Rush Hour. I'm kind of intrigued by this show.

 

Fox picked up Lucifer and Minority Report

[odessasteps]

So not a tv show based on the Altman movie?

[piranesi]

That is the most confusing pitch I've ever seen.

 

So, people are gambling on him stopping crimes that they are setting up for him?

Or they're gambling on him stopping other people's crimes that just happen to be going on?

 

If it's the former, then they are not doing these huge crimes because they want whatever comes from the crime itself, but just to give him something to do so they can gamble on it?  Because if the crimes part are really important to them, then having him try to stop them seems like hubris.  But if they're just setting them up for him to solve and they don't actually even care if the crimes happen..then that seems like a little bit of overkill.

 

If it's the other way. Then what would he care?  It's just assholes betting on crimes getting solved?  But he's stopping them, not solving them.  So they must know about the crimes ahead of time...

 

And what he wants is to bring down the "make crimes happen so we can gamble on guys solving them" organization, which is a totally logical thing to exist..because of course they killed his wife.

 

And here I was just making fun of Timothy Dalton hypnotizing a cobra that a lady put in a box to guard a necklace and you go and post this.

[Reed]

Does the Altman movie have Blade killing people in a big casino?

 

If not, then no.

[Reed]

That is the most confusing pitch I've ever seen.

 

So, people are gambling on him stopping crimes that they are setting up for him?

Or they're gambling on him stopping other people's crimes that just happen to be going on?

 

If it's the former, then they are not doing these huge crimes because they want whatever comes from the crime itself, but just to give him something to do so they can gamble on it?  Because if the crimes part are really important to them, then having hi try to stop them seems...counterproductive.  But if they're just their for him to solve that seems like a little bit of overkill.

 

If it's the other way. Then what would he care?  It's just assholes betting on crimes getting solved?  But he's stopping them, not solving them.  So they must know about the crimes ahead of time...

 

And what he wants is to bring down the "make crimes happen so we can gamble on guys solving them" organization, which is a totally logical thing to exist..because of course they killed his wife.

 

The premise seems to hinge on rich people being totally insane.

 

It's not a huge stretch, admittedly.

[Brian Fowler]

The Matrix might very well be harder to understand on paper in script form though.

The real issue is the post script, where Connery took League Of Extraordinary Gentleman specifically because it confused him the same way LOTR did and all that money he'd lost.

He retired from acting immediately after.

[Reed]

Seriously: why would you even offer Connery 15% of the profits anyway?

 

It's Lord of the Rings. It doesn't need one particular actor to be a success. 

[piranesi]

Wait, how do you get confused by the LOTR?  Even if you somehow didn't know it was the most important fantasy series of all time and you only were looking at it for the first time:

 

There's a ring

They have to take it somewere

Monsters try to stop them

 

This is a guy who read ZARDOZ and was, like, "I get this.  This is classic narrative structure."

[Bustronaut]

Seriously: why would you even offer Connery 15% of the profits anyway?

 

It's Lord of the Rings. It doesn't need one particular actor to be a success. 

Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

[Reed]

Wait, how do you get confused by the LOTR?  Even if you somehow didn't know it was the most important fantasy series of all time and you only were looking at it for the first time:

 

There's a ring

They have to take it somewere

Monsters try to stop them

 

This is a guy who read ZARDOZ and was, like, "I get this.  This is classic narrative structure."

 

Maybe Connery read the script and wondered why they didn't just take the eagles all the way there.

[Spritenaut 32]

So Undateable not only got a 13 episode order for next season, they're going to do every episode live.

 

As gimmicks go, that's a good one.  I really haven't paid any attention to the show until this week, but I probably will next season.  Also, I didn't realize until this week that Bill Lawrence (of Scrubs fame) was involved.

[Hail Sabin]

That reminds me I need to watch the live undateable episode on demand.

[RandomAct]

And THIS is why I almost never dive into new shows.  I was loving Backstrom to the point it was one of my favorites, so of course it's gone.  P much done giving FOX chances.

[The Comedian]

They keep dropping Bond references and it's 1979.  That seems weird.  Was there some buzz about him replacing Moore that early?  He wasn't even Prince Barin yet.

 

They were tryna get him for Bond going way back to '68 when Connery first quit and Dalton had just made his film debut in The Lion In Winter...

[Reed]

And THIS is why I almost never dive into new shows.  I was loving Backstrom to the point it was one of my favorites, so of course it's gone.  P much done giving FOX chances.

 

Seriously. I've heard people say "Eh, not watching new shows because there's a chance they'll get cancelled is absurd."

 

But how would you feel about starting to read a book and knowing there was a 50% or so chance it would stop halfway through and you'd never get to finish it?

 

And I'm not watching Wayward Pines unless I know for sure it doesn't end on a cliffhanger.

 

In fairness, Netflix and cable shows are way better with that stuff. It's mostly a network television issue.

[Matt D]

I'm posting this to make us all feel better:

 

 

I mean all of us who are American and born between 1977 and 1982

[odessasteps]

In the interests of equal time for us old codgers

[Reed]

News just in: Fox are considering cancelling all the posts in this thread.

 

We just aren't getting the ratings, guys.

[Spritenaut 32]

 

And THIS is why I almost never dive into new shows.  I was loving Backstrom to the point it was one of my favorites, so of course it's gone.  P much done giving FOX chances.

 

Seriously. I've heard people say "Eh, not watching new shows because there's a chance they'll get cancelled is absurd."

 

But how would you feel about starting to read a book and knowing there was a 50% or so chance it would stop halfway through and you'd never get to finish it?

 

And I'm not watching Wayward Pines unless I know for sure it doesn't end on a cliffhanger.

 

In fairness, Netflix and cable shows are way better with that stuff. It's mostly a network television issue.

 

 

Networks aren't non-profits.  If a show draws an audience and, more importantly, advertisers, it stays on the air.  If it doesn't, it gets canceled.  Backstrom wasn't pulled off the air three weeks in.  Fox ordered 13 episodes, it showed 13 eps, and the ratings don't warrant ordering more.  I liked Backstrom a lot, too, but it's hard to fault Fox here.  Backstrom drew a respectable 8 million viewers for the premiere.  By week 3, viewership was down to 4 million and most of the season drew around 3.5 million.  Total viewership for the finale was 2.8 million.  By contrast, Backstrom's lead-in, Bones, averages 7.7 viewers this year and that was its worst season average in a while.  The shows Backstrom was up against generally draw 9 or 10 million viewers each week.  Throw in what Fox spent on a heavy promotional campaign and it really doesn't make economic sense to keep it on the air.  It's hard for me to fault Fox here.

 

I'll never understand the "I won't watch a show unless I'm sure it runs X seasons" argument.

[Reed]

I do understand it's a business. I even defended Fox when they cancelled Arrested Development because even though I loved it, hey, they give it three seasons...and no one was watching it. Yeah, they gave Backstrom a decent shot by the sounds of things .

 

It's not totally on them, but it is does make it hard to get into shows. 50% of network programming not making past the first season is pretty bad, no matter how someone tries to spin it.

[RandomAct]

Now let's rewind 25 years.  Remember when Seinfeld got dogshit ratings it's first year?  The network stuck with it an actually gave it a chance. That almost never happens anymore.  A good show gets cancelled fo not blowing ratings out of the water right away, then it gets replace with some cookie-cutter bullshit.  I'm sure TV history is full of shows that started with poor ratings and became successul.  That is why I am always hesitant to invest in the rare network show that is actually good, because more often than not, they never get more than one season to grow.

[(BP)]

Has anyone else seen The Casual Vacancy? It's pretty standard small town melodrama, but it has some great performances. Abigail Lawrie, who plays the teenage lead, is spectacular. She has no other screen credits, but this is a fully realized performance that any actor would envy. Michael Gambon and the rest of the ensemble really bring it as well.

[Hail Sabin]

In this environment Full House never would have gotten cancelled it was a top 10 or 15 show ratings wise but got canned because the network said it cost too much.