Want to know what alienates viewers? Mid-season breaks. Take one week off here, three here, three months here (not the summer break, mind you, mid-prime time season), shuffle the time slot for good measure. Stop that! There are a number of shows I was interested in and just never went back after checking in for a few weeks and not seeing a new episode for no reason. If you insist on making 23 episodes, show them consistently, in order, no weird weeks off, and then repeat. How hard is that?

phlegmmo: ...realty TV era...

[www.americanrealtyworld.com image 230x208]

Typo aside, the article actually brings up a fair point. I rarely watch premieres anymore, because I don't want to actually LIKE something only to see it gone 5 episodes later. I made the mistake of getting hooked on Awake just this past year by doing just that, even though it was clear by the 3rd episode or so the show wasn't going to make it.

It's way easier just to wait a season (or midway through the first season if the show is a runaway success). Then you don't get the unneeded attachment to failures, and in these internet days it's incredibly easy to catch up on any show.

Mugato: Jarhead_h: I didn't start watching Voyager until Seven showed up

Good decision, even if it was unintentional. That's when the show started not sucking. Sort of like how DS9 got good when Sisko shaved his head and got the goatee but worse than that because DS9 was never that bad. I wouldn't say Harry was a love interest. He had a crush on her for like one episode and she shot him down. Probably because she figured he wouldn't be alive for much longer since he was always the whipping boy in every episode. If something farked up was going to happen, it happened to him. And yeah, Chakotay. The most boring motherfarker in either quadrant.

And yes, even though Kirk/Spock/McCoy are icons, DS9 was the best overall show. A lot of it had to do with them dropping the "look how perfect and moral humanity is". If it was Picard's responsibility to trick the Romulans into joining the Dominion war, we'd all be speaking Dominion. And if "Hue" the Borg wandered onto DS9 ans Sisko had that paradox virus, the Borg would be one chapter called "The Massacre of Wolf 359...Then the Borg all died somehow".

Section 31... we finally got to the bottom of just what force the Federation had that made the quadrant safe for starship captains to make preachy utopian speeches.

Harry was Ensign Butt-monkey. the saddest thing is that I saw Garret Wang at a convention in Frisco back after he had just finished filming "Non Sequitur." The line-up that day was Jimmy Doohan, Avery Brooks, the guy that played Rom, and finally Garret, and Garret was the biggest surprise and hands down the most entertaining. We all looked at each other simply couldn't believe that they didn't just tell him to be himself on camera. He was hilarious and full of energy, on top of the world. If they had let that guy out more often the show would have been markedly improved.

Mugato: Jarhead_h: The only thing that worked in the Xfiles finale was any scene with just
Scully and Mulder, like all of season eight. And the second theatrical film

I don't remember much of what happened after the first theatrical X-Files but I'm pretty sure they could have ended it there and not lost much. The clear shark jumping moment was when they replaced Mulder and Scully with the T-1000 and the chick from those 1980s movies.

I stopped watching X-Files when Scully put Mulder's name plate in the desk drawer and decided not to look for him, and I had been a DEVOTED X-phile up to that point. I was so disgusted, I have never watched seasons 8 or 9 (though I did buy them on discount to keep my collection complete), but I enjoyed the second movie, except for the M/S romance aspects. I was never a 'shipper, I was a slasher, and lived for Mulder/Krycek and Mulder/Skinner moments and fic.

What was done to my beloved show (and Deadwood and Carnivale and so many others) has permanently soured me on TV.

Now I'll watch things like Top Chef, but I will never get invested in another show again.

Faddy: The Shield had a pretty awesome finale, it was procedural with lots of shows being crime of the week but there were always asides relating to the bigger plot.

"The Shield" was a show that should have set an example for all other shows, police dramas or not. It did *everything* right, IMHO, and should have been the template that other shows followed (and networks, too, of course). Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and the networks have to understand why I, and many like me, don't bother to watch their shows anymore.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: So, give Now and Again a decent ending, then.

Problem solved.

THIS! And Profit!

Damn we were pissed about these shows getting cancelled. At least they gave Alien Nation a couple of movies to wrap things up.

We pretty much never watch network television anymore because of this. I don't even bother to catch up on good shows that managed to survive, like Breaking Bad. Most television isn't worth the effort. I'll stick with things like Game of Thrones.

Mugato: Jarhead_h: They failed miserably with every single character.

I liked 7 of 9 a lot (not just because of those). Of all the characters who tried to learn about humanity and I think there was one on every show, she was my favorite. The other characters were pretty boring.

It's too bad the last X-Files movie was so Godawful. I don't know what they were thinking with that. The aliens were supposed to invade in 2012 too.

I didn't start watching Voyager until Seven showed up. She brought a new angle to the show- we'll call it the "interesting" one. She gave the doctor a project, the captain a surrogate daughter, Harry a love interest, B'Lanna someone to butt heads with, student to Tuvok and Neelix, and her appearance gave Kess a great sendoff. Then Jeri Taylor was replaced with Braga, the show peaked with "Timeless" and then began a death spiral from which it never recovered.....

.....Oh, yeah, and she ended up with Chakotay!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

DS9 was the best Trek series hands down. My only quibble would be making Odo back into a Changling. They should have had the guts to stick with the storyline.

Also, Disney is probably gonna cancel Tron: Uprising, and let it end on a cliffhanger.

Wolverine and the X-Men was going to give us the Age of Apocolypse animated(Finally!!!!), but ended on a cliffhanger.

Sarah Connor Chronicles season two was attrociously boring. S3 was going to have to answer questions like Cameron's real backstory(was she ever actually reprogramed? Was future-John even alive when she went back in time? What was her real model designation and was her new body going to be more human?), AND they were going to have to stop John's uncle from getting shot in the head when they went back to the past.

Eureka ended right where it should have ended. The time reset was a good hail-mary shake up, but it had run it's course.

Dark Angel was a true travesty - spend an entire year destroying the show and then canceling it on a cliffhanger.

Tower Prep is a giant "HUH?" That one still needs a REAL ending.

The only thing that worked in the Xfiles finale was any scene with just
Scully and Mulder, like all of season eight. And the second theatrical film - basically Chris Carter should have given up the show and had someone else tie it up for him.

Have the last three eps of Last Resort on my hard drive, going to watch tonight.

Castle better get a decent ending next season. Prediction: Castle's dad will be instrumental in finally finishing Becket's quest, all live happily ever after.

After seeing the Serenity feature film, I'm glad Joss lost the chance to screw up Firefly. The tonal shift from tv to feature was whiplash inducing, and it seems obvious that he was going to give Mal the same bleak existence that he condemned Angel to.

They should have quit Voyager with season five. Six and Seven got progressively worse and the finale was one of the worst I've ever seen... because I've never watched the finale for Enterprise and X-Files last ep only has like fifteen watchable minutes. Forewarned is forearmed, if you decide to watch Enterprise stop at the penultimate ep of season four

Pushing Daisies only had one year left, and it required a mega happy ending where the pie-maker figures out how to touch the previously dead without perma-killing them.

I don't understand the hate for LOST. The first season was amazing, the second was gawd-awful, the third back to awesome, fourth and fifth kinda blend together, and six was a nice change-up. When people ask about the mysteries, I have to question what show they had been watching because it seemed pretty obvious Bad Robot was making shiat up on the fly the whole time and the important thing about the show was the emotion, and the mysteries were just a vehicle for that.

The Pretender got killed by a merger. I like to pretend that the next movie involves Jarod and Miss Parker teeming up with Sydney and Broots to rescue their son Oliver and finally take down the Triumverate.

Thundercats reboot. Fire whoever canceled it and bring it back.

DC Nation - SAVE IT. Young Justice could easily be better than Justice League. And Green Lantern needs to go PG13(at least) when they do The Blackest Night.

Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles. Sony already has the audio recorded for the last three episodes and apparently intends to sit on them forever when one final movie would be awesome.

How about another installment of GIJoe: Resolute? That was the exactly the followup to the 80's cartoon that we all wanted.

Mugato: rugman11: I honestly don't understand this attitude. Television shows aren't like books or movies. With the possible exception of Game of Thrones, they're episodic in nature so that each episode can be viewed on its own, independent of the rest, even in a serialized show.

I myself like shows that have one big story or like Dexter, one story per season. Shows that are too episodic have no consequences to anything. The first one that comes to mind is Star Trek Voyager. Every episode the ship was left in shambles and next week they were playing on the holodeck. They must have gone through a dozen shuttlecrafts and I don't know how many crew members. They only started out like like 70 and had no re-enforcements. As long as the creators know how it's going to end and that's a big IF, I prefer a story arc.

The drawback being that you have to wait a week for each story, why it's fortunate that I didn't start watching Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy or Dexter until the 4th seasons and just caught up.

Right, but most of those shows still are capable of telling a single story in 40-60 minutes while also weaving in continuity. I can sit down and watch the "Dead Freight" episode of Breaking Bad (with the train robbery) and it's just a damn good episode of television. Sure it weaves in continuity from the season, but it has a distinct story and should be able to be watched and enjoyed without worrying about the show getting canceled before we find out what happens to Walter White.

I just don't understand why people would not watch a show because they're afraid that in four years it'll be canceled after 50-80 episodes and they won't get a full conclusion. Hell, there are people today who will tell you not to watch Lost or Battlestar Galactica because they didn't like the endings as though, somehow, one hour of television can invalidate the 75-125 hours that came before it.

Unlike film, television is as much, if not more, about the journey than the destination. And to lose the trees for the forest to me is just really sad, especially when it creates this cycle of shows getting canceled because people didn't watch out of fear they would be canceled.

rugman11: FuryOfFirestorm: BullBearMS: I get pissed off by science fiction shows that hit their stride, only to be canned.

Stargate Universe, Sarah Conner Chronicles, Enterprise....

Grrrrr...

...and Sliders, The 4400, Alphas, Tower Prep, Kyle XY, No Ordinary Family, V...

I haven't seen all of those, but Sliders went at least two years too long. There are about a million reasons that show went wrong, but to say it was "hitting its stride" in season five would be a gross misrepresentation of that show.

No Ordinary Family was okay, and I really liked the storyline with Autumn Reeser's character, but that final fight scene may have been the worst thing ever filmed. I was honestly ready for that show to go after that scene.

V was only "hitting its stride" in the sense that they had finally killed off all the annoying characters. They might have been able to do some more interesting things later, but I think it had its run.

BizarreMan:

and Eureka....

I really like Eureka, but that show had the frustrating habit of rebooting the show anytime things started to get really interesting. They probably could have gone on longer, but that's another show that probably ended at a good time.


The thing is, the networks for supposedly being run by smart people are pretty fraking stupid.

They wail and moan that nobody is watching serialized dramas with long story arcs....and yet when they have a serialized drama with a long story arc, that isn't bringing in as many viewers as they think they should be getting, they can it. Leading the viewers to not watch the next one because...fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I honestly don't understand this attitude. Television shows aren't like books or movies. With the possible exception of Game of Thrones, they're episodic in nature so that each episode can be viewed on its own, independent of the rest, even in a serialized show. The example I always use is Lost. That pilot is an awesome piece of television and I ...

The Shield had a pretty awesome finale, it was procedural with lots of shows being crime of the week but there were always asides relating to the bigger plot

NeoCortex42: Okay, I'm going to have to stop you there. I love Sliders. The first two and a half seasons were great, but it was not cancelled in its prime. Season four was terrible, and season five was abysmal.

Oh, I agree that the last 2 seasons of Sliders was a trainwreck, but it should have been allowed to run a little longer to give the writers a chance to atone for their sins with better material or at least tie up all the loose ends.

The X-files made me dump my cable tv.

NeoCortex42: Star Trek: TNG had a pretty universally liked finale. Of course, that was an almost purely episodic show. Serialized shows with finales? I don't think there's a way to have one without pissing off a large number of the fans. Maybe Babylon 5, if you ignore the rest of the season 5 episodes?

See, I'm one of the few I guess who liked Season 5 of B5. Granted, many of the plot points that were meant for Season 5 were condensed into Season 4 when they thought the P-Ten network was going under and there wouldn't be a Season 5 (TNT bought and saved them at the 11th hour). I heard that Season 4 was originally supposed to end with Sheridan's capture and interrogation, but that Season 5 would start off trying to resolve the Earth conflict by mid-season, and leave the rest as "empire building" with the Telepath crisis and other issues dealing with the new Alliance....and of course Centauri Prime. However when they forced the Earth stuff all into Season 4, it didn't leave a ton for Season 5, but what we did get I thought was good. Some of the best Londo/G'Kar stuff in the entire series, the struggles of setting up a new alliance/government, and a great 4-5 episode wind-down of the show. I really enjoyed Season 5 (well, except maybe Bryon, but I'll admit his character was well portrayed and necessary, he was just as annoying as he probably should be).

NeoCortex42: Speaking of unresolved cliffhangers, what about Babylong 5: Crusade? Sure, the show was terrible, but they never even bothered wrapping up the plot. Even though they had at least one TV movie after the series was over, they ignored the fact that the entirety of Earth was doomed to die.

No, they didn't. The finale of Babylon 5 shows that Earth is just fine and dandy some 17-18 years after the Shadow War, and some 12 or so years after the Drahk attacked. Also in the episode "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" at the end, Delenn's epilogue states that they "won the Drakh War." So it was a foregone conclusion that somehow a cure to the Drakh plague would be found. As with B5, the series was never going to be about the Drakh plague itself, rather the search for it would uncover the core part of the story. It would be the equivalent of in B5 thinking that the Raiders were the central enemy after a few episodes.

Words from JMS were that the core part of the story would likely deal with leftover Shadow tech from the war, and deal more and more with the Technomages. There was a series of books who delt with them, but the overall ideas that Crusade was to reveal were never brought to light to my knowledge. But it was never going to just be about the Drakh Plague. It was another 5 year arc.

No mention of Soap?? I randomly stumbled on a marathon Comedy Central was airing for this show like 15 years ago and got completely hooked. I watched every episode over the course of the weekend but then thought I must've missed the damn finale somehow. It wasn't until way later that I found out the series ended on a cliffhanger. Sonofabiatch! Did Jessica die? What happened to Burt??? Come on!

FuryOfFirestorm: BullBearMS: I get pissed off by science fiction shows that hit their stride, only to be canned.

Stargate Universe, Sarah Conner Chronicles, Enterprise....

Grrrrr...

...and Sliders, The 4400, Alphas, Tower Prep, Kyle XY, No Ordinary Family, V...

I haven't seen all of those, but Sliders went at least two years too long. There are about a million reasons that show went wrong, but to say it was "hitting its stride" in season five would be a gross misrepresentation of that show.

No Ordinary Family was okay, and I really liked the storyline with Autumn Reeser's character, but that final fight scene may have been the worst thing ever filmed. I was honestly ready for that show to go after that scene.

V was only "hitting its stride" in the sense that they had finally killed off all the annoying characters. They might have been able to do some more interesting things later, but I think it had its run.

BizarreMan:

and Eureka....

I really like Eureka, but that show had the frustrating habit of rebooting the show anytime things started to get really interesting. They probably could have gone on longer, but that's another show that probably ended at a good time.


The thing is, the networks for supposedly being run by smart people are pretty fraking stupid.

They wail and moan that nobody is watching serialized dramas with long story arcs....and yet when they have a serialized drama with a long story arc, that isn't bringing in as many viewers as they think they should be getting, they can it. Leading the viewers to not watch the next one because...fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I honestly don't understand this attitude. Television shows aren't like books or movies. With the possible exception of Game of Thrones, they're episodic in nature so that each episode can be viewed on its own, independent of the rest, even in a serialized show. The example I always use is Lost. That pilot is an awesome piece of television and I go back and watch it on its own every now and then. If Lost had been canceled after its first season, would that have made the show any less worth watching? If a show is really that good, closure should be a bonus, the cherry on top at the end of a great ride. And most of the time, when we do get closure, it just end up pissing off a lot of viewers anway. When's the last time a long-running show that got to end things on its own terms had a finale air to universal acclaim? Lost, Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, Chuck, Fringe all pissed off some segments of the fanbase to varying degrees.

I get pissed off by science fiction shows that hit their stride, only to be canned.

Stargate Universe, Sarah Conner Chronicles, Enterprise....

Grrrrr...

I'm still mad about the way they ended Forever Knight... with Lacroix about to stake Nick! That was just not nice to the fans! :( They knew the series wasn't ever coming back, why not end it the way it was originally written to be ended - with everyone dying and Lacroix going up to the roof to burn in the morning sun... would have been better closure.

Journeyman is the first show that pops in my mind when I think of shows cancelled too soon. Others are: Earth 2, Space Above and Beyond, Enterprise, Alien Nation, Chicago Hope, and Chicago Code. (Must be bad luck to have Chicago in the title)

Mugato: I'm showing my age here but I'm pissed we never found out who won the election on Benson. It was Governor Gatling vs Benson vs some other guy and the episode/series ended with Benson and Gatling holding hands (not in a gay way) about to see the results. And that was it.

President Reagan mercy-nuked the country to death before the final results were tabulated. Sorry to burst your bubble.

FirstNationalBastard: I'm still pissed about Duckman ending on a cliffhanger.

I'm also pissed off about Sliders. Not just how Siffy ended it on a cliffhanger, but how they and Fox ruined the show by putting hacks in charge and by being scared of anything but movie of the week world.

Once they strayed from the "What if?" premise and replaced Wade with an uppity skank, it all went downhill. Killing off Arturo was like watching the shark jump a pile of dead sharks.

NuttierThanEver: Yeah but his performance was just awesome.

Oh, Jason Isaacs is boss. Really dug his work in The Patriot.


NuttierThanEver: Would love if the US shows could be written more like good UK ones with a definete story arc and ending in mind from the get go

I hear ya on that, aye.

Incidentally, one of my favorite series is a BBC show that ended on a FRUSTRATING cliffhanger: 2008's Survivors.

Ishkur: Plan on doing that for Heroes

Honestly just watch season 1. It does end on a semi-cliffhanger, yes, but season 2 sucked so hard it's better to just create whatever ending you want in your head.

Mugato: Sort of like Lost. But Alcatraz didn't even seem to have a premise.

Lost tried to juggle more than it could keep in the air.

Alcatraz had... well... Alcatraz, I guess.

/Two seasons of awesome, and then the bad guys reams everyone and exits stage left, smiling.
//CAWKSUCKER!!!
///And don't even get me started on Firefly.
////But, I don't know what to say about that show that hasn't already been said.

Ishkur: Plan on doing that for Heroes and The Wire next (I'm a little behind).


I wouldn't recommend that for Heroes.

Seriously, don't bother.