Gone Too Soon

I think you may have figured out that I'm a bit of a television fan. I prefer to watch series in order, never missing a single episode. It's the plight of the purist, but it's made much easier by TV on DVD, the internet and my BFF, Netflix.

My latest Netflix conquest has been Sports Night, a half-hour comedy/drama by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, the new film The Social Network) that ran on ABC for two pitch-perfect seasons before being canned for low ratings. It marries two of my favorite things-- sports and TV-- and features stellar writing and a killer cast.

So what happened? Why did this show only tough it out for two seasons, while other more mediocre ones last for years? Well, I'm not a television executive, just a nerdy viewer, so hell if I know. I do know that I have a tendency to fall for shows just like this.

Take a sitcom called Kitchen Confidential. You've never seen this show. How do I know this? Because Fox ran a mere four of its thirteen ordered episodes before pulling it off the air. Fox has a violent, bloody history with good TV, favoring instead reality programming about sharks finding love or something. Kitchen Confidential (based on Anthony Bourdain's fantastic book by the same name) got off to a slow start, but by the fourth aired episode, I was laughing out loud, as were my college roommates. It never had the chance to find its audience. Maybe it never would have-- this is no Arrested Development: don't get me wrong, there's a reason why it's not a cult favorite all these years later-- but viewers never had the chance to discover it.

A fledgling series should certainly be given time to come into its own, find its niche, find its audience-- but how much time? If a show hasn't established itself as a ratings-getter within five episodes, should it be canceled? Thirteen episodes? A whole season? There are rumblings right now that Fox (oh Fox, you cut-throat bastard of broadcast networks) is planning to pull Lone Star off the air after only one episode. (Ed. note: Lone Star wound up being canceled after two episodes.) That certainly seems unfair, but what is? TV is a business, after all.

Another issue at hand-- let's say a show is allowed more than four episodes to find an audience, and it does, albeit a small one. How do you determine if a show was truly taken before its time? My perennial favorite Veronica Mars had gone significantly downhill by its third season, which turned out to be its last. Should it have stayed on the air on the promise that creator Rob Thomas could deliver a better fourth, which was set to jump forward in time and feature Veronica in the FBI Academy? Likewise, Arrested Development's run consisted of three solid seasons. Sure, it was never recognized or acclaimed like it is today, never got its due, but is it better that the show ended while it was still near its peak?

Both of the aforementioned series had stumbled in varying degrees before their cancellations, but there are plenty of examples of shows that were going strong, at least creatively, and yet never made it out alive. One doesn't have to scour the internet to find anger and righteous indignation over the tragically short run of Joss Whedon's space western, Firefly. The fans carried on so much that he was able to make a movie tying up loose ends (Serenity)-- thankfully, since the original series was treated like a ginger stepchild. Ten of the fourteen episodes were aired, not in the intended order, with unexplained gaps in between. Time slots were shifted without notice. Advertising was practically non-existent. Is it any surprise that Firefly's home was with Fox?

And what about Freaks & Geeks? Possibly the most egregious example I can think of, as it was pulled after only 12 of 18 ordered episodes had aired despite being a truly incredible show in all aspects. Entertainment Weekly named it the 13th best series of the past 25 years in spite of its short run, and I can't disagree. It's television tragedy that shows like this never seem to last, while others are rewarded for their lowest-common-denominator humor and writing.

Take the WB/CW's Seventh Heaven, for instance. It ran for a whopping 10 seasons and was cancelled with plenty of notice for showrunner Brenda Hampton (Secret Life of the American Teenager) to wrap up whatever endings she needed to. Then the finale, which the network advertised as a series finale, welcomed good ratings. So they brought the damn thing back! In fact, its eleventh-hour, eleventh-season renewal was directly responsible for the cancellation of a show I enjoyed and found to be much better in all ways, Everwood. Where is the justice in this world?

It's fortunate that in this age of archival, these shows aren't lost or forgotten. On the one hand, websites like Hulu and the proliferation of TV on DVD make it easy to discover such cancelled gems. On the other hand, what a pain it is to find a show that's really quality, only to find out there exist a mere 14 episodes, or 22 or even 64-- it never feels like enough. You'll always feel cheated out of the plotlines that never were.

This unfairness, it's really just a fact of life. There are more movie blockbusters cobbled together with explosions and boobs than there are incredibly-crafted indies. Dan Brown books are best-sellers. Some of the best things will always fly under the radar, and you don't have to be a skinny-jean-clad hipster to appreciate that maybe that's for the best. I know I have more of an attachment to some of these shows that really never got any credit. They're the ones I pimp out to friends, recommend to strangers and watch over and over. I think I'm to blame for no less than 15 different cases of Veronica Mars fever, for which the prescription isn't cowbell, but instead hours and hours of trying to figure out who killed Lilly Kane before our intrepid protagonist. If these excellent shows had run for eight seasons apiece, would the desire to get them whatever accolades I can still be there? Maybe. But at Dragon*Con this year, the line for the Firefly panel (featuring four of the lead actors) was the longest I saw all weekend, and was full of over-excited fans wearing Jayne hats. Not too shabby for a 14-episode series that went off the air seven years back. Fans of these kinds of things are enduring.

It's tempting in this TV climate to refuse to start watching a show until it has a proven record of not being canceled. I wouldn't fault anyone who waited until a series came out on DVD or on Netflix InstantWatch before giving it a shot. But I'm willing to start out a promising show even if I know it'll be ripped away from me before I'm ready. Sometimes that's the price you have to pay for true quality.