By Nathan Alderman – May 28, 2007
It was a long goodbye: Three years of checking the ratings, sweating every renewal, wondering whether this would be the season when Veronica Mars finally bit the dust. A smart, subtle, continuity-intensive teen mystery serial on broadcast television’s most barrel-scraping network should rightly have enjoyed all the odds of survival of an ice cube on the surface of the sun. But Veronica, like all great noir protagonists, was one cool customer, even when the heat was on.
UPN and now CW chief Dawn Ostroff deserves sincere thanks for having the guts to stick with this show for so long, in the face of ratings whose gains were modest and glacial. But that courage seemed to shamefully desert her in the end, and the show wasn’t so much cancelled as given a cowardly back-alley execution. The CW hemmed and hawed about the show’s fate right up to the upfronts, and beyond; when cornered by upset reporters, Ostroff made some obnoxiously vague noises about maybe possibly doing some sort of a kind of spinoff that may or may not involve the same creative principals. Maybe. If the network felt like it.
Word is that the network fears unleashing the wrath of the show’s devoted, rabid, (and occasionally deeply obnoxious) fans if it just comes out and declares the show dead. Gee, given its thoughtful, courteous treatment of one of its most fiercely beloved and critically acclaimed shows, I really can’t imagine why.
Still, oft-cancelled creator Rob Thomas — sadly operating under the assumption that he had a decent shot at a fourth season — gave viewers a superb finale, one of the series’ best episodes in years. After a season of network-mandated experimentation with the show’s format, breaking the show into a series of mini-mysteries, Thomas and Diane Ruggiero’s final episode had their super-smart heroine’s pursuit of justice unfold into trouble and tragedy far beyond her initial scope. Veronica Mars was never afraid to let its title character be too smart for her own good, causing serious damage to her own life and others in her desperate need to get back at anyone who tried to mess with her.
That sort of depth and complexity extended to the series’ whole sprawling cast of vivid characters, and never flagged during the show’s otherwise uneven (but always watchable) run. Even the best, most noble characters did illegal, immoral, or just plain terrible things, and even the very worst could be startlingly human and decent when you least expected it.
And oh, could Veronica bring the funny. Season Three alone saw the writers using an eleven-year-old girl with wildly optimistic notions of romance to sweetly, snarkily chide the show’s relationship-crazed fans. And the finale, after a string of glaring, no doubt network-mandated product placements, had one character responding to news of a Matchbox 20 reunion by declaring, “Rob Thomas is a whore.”
It takes a pretty damn good show to unite Stephen King, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and yes, right-wing crazypants Bruce Tinsley in praise. Veronica lacked the budget, and the wild visual and narrative pyrotechnics, that make the likes of Lost and Battlestar Galactica so buzzworthy. Like the consistently strong performance of star Kristen Bell, the show was good in subtle, unassuming ways, letting its intelligence and sheer darkness creep up on you. But for characterization and storytelling, I’d rank it easily side by side with Deadwood, The Wire, and BSG among television’s very best.
The show didn’t end on any egregious cliffhanger, but there’s definitely more of Veronica Mars’ story to tell. The CW may have scotched Thomas’s chances to tell those stories on TV — they seem to have filched his ambitious notion of a four-year flash-forward and handed it off to the inane One Tree Hill — but there’s been rumblings of a possible movie version, a la Serenity. Having Joel Silver as the show’s producer certainly can’t hurt that possibility.
But even if the show’s big sleep doesn’t prove to be more of a short nap, I’ll still be content. I never thought the show would last a season. Instead, the show’s small but loyal viewership got three, packed with winning characters, brain-busting whodunits, and consistent entertainment.
Trouble was Veronica’s business. And business was very, very good.
By Monty Ashley – May 24, 2007
I hear a lot about how the Sopranos is “ratcheting up the tension” and “stampeding toward a bloody finale”. This perplexes me, because as far as I can tell via my patented technique of “watching the show every week”, nothing is happening. And nothing has happened in quite some time.
Now, before I defend my thesis, I need to point out that I’m going to talk about the show. That is, to explain why nothing is happening, I’m going to have to describe some things that have, in fact, happened. If you haven’t watched the current season yet and you’re worried that reading about what has happened will ruin what meagre enjoyment you hope to squeeze from the show, I encourage you not to read on. Also, you should maybe consider watching the shows when they air like everyone else. Just a thought.
Okay, let’s recap the situation. Season Five ended on June 6, 2004, with Steve Buscemi getting killed in retribution for his misbehavior over the season. That was a pretty good story arc, if you ask me; Tony had to deal with his conflicting loyalties to his cousin and the Family, plus it had the aforementioned Buscemi.
Then there was a break of just under two years until Season Six started on March 12, 2006. There were twelve episodes, mostly about Vito being gay. There was also some stuff about AJ being an annoying loser and Christopher getting married and a dream sequence. Remember the dream sequence? Man.
Then they took another hiatus from June 2006 until April 2007 and started “the rest of Season Six”. That’s what we’re watching now. And my basic objection is that this season isn’t about anything. Or at least, it’s not about anything I care about. Anthony Jr. has established himself over the last six seasons as an uninteresting character and it’s way too late to try to make me care about him. We’ve already had a storyline where the Sopranos have to deal with a kid who starts acting educated and I didn’t care about it the first time.
I do not believe, as the claim in my first paragraph puts it, that they are “ratcheting up the tension”. I think what is happening is that they’re “playing out the string”. Even when something potentially interesting happens, like Tony killing Christopher, it’s drained of all tension and excitement by the circumstances (a car crash? So much for the protagonist making decisions that drive the plot) and the results (Tony… goes to Las Vegas and takes peyote?). Remember the scene where Silvio drove Adriana to the spot where we knew he was going to kill her? That scene, without dialogue, was more dramatic than this whole “season”. And it had more tragic results, if you count the airing of “Joey”.
I believe the problem is in the enormously long breaks between seasons. I also believe that “Season Six” is obviously two seaparate seasons and the only reason they won’t admit it is because they already said it was the “final season” before they figured out a way to end the show.
I’m still going to watch the final two episodes, because I’ve come this far. But my expectations are so low I’ll be happy as long as the last episode isn’t a 70-minute-long AJ dream sequence.
By Lisa Schmeiser – May 23, 2007
I read comics. I read comics to the point where our garage’s storage space has been given over to my library and the proprietors of several shops know me on sight. My brother and I caused each other’s relapse into carpel tunnel syndrome when an IM debate over how we’d rank the Green Lanterns turned ugly (we differ sharply on Kyle Rayner’s relative worth); the husband and I once whiled away the hours on I-5 by conducting a March madness-style tournament between Marvel and DC characters. (Image, Top Cow and Wildstorm characters would have played in the NIT, but we ran out of freeway before that tourney.) And, as readers may recall, I also watch TV. If comics and TV were the two circles in a Venn diagram, I would be living in that spot in the middle.
You would think this would make me the perfect audience member for Heroes. And through November 2006, you would have been right. I was with the show through its eleventh episode, the one that aired on December 4, 2006. Then NBC yanked the series off the air for seven weeks, and I … found other things to do with my time. I haven’t watched an episode since — despite liking the show — and had decided I may wait for the season one DVD to come out and revisit the whole series at once. I think of this as the television equivalent of reading a graphic novel.
Heroes is not the only serial I’ve skipped because of hiatus. When I found out that Lost was pulling their six-episodes-and-out stunt last fall, I deleted the season pass from my TiVo. I am under no obligation to make sure a show stays on the air — especially when it scampers off the schedule whenever it pleases in some weird, Nielsen-fueled perversion of The Rules.
I like my serial TV like I like my serial comics — to come on a steady basis. However, serial comics tend to do two things that serial television series do not: they rarely go on hiatus, and they like to do serial story arcs that contain a resolution. Contrast that with the odious TV practice of wrapping up a lengthy narrative stint with a cliffhanger.
(There are exceptions: each season of The Wire, also known as “the Platonic ideal of television shows,” boasts self-contained season-long story arcs. It also calls back to previous seasons and lays groundwork for future ones. This is because The Wire is written by novelists — some of whom know a thing or two about balancing sprawling narrative against brisk pacing — and, again, it is the Platonic ideal of television shows.)
(I am also hopeful that Brian K. Vaughn will whip Lost into shape, since his pacing and plotting on Runaways, Ex Machina and Y: the Last Man have shown that he knows how to balance the need for short-term narrative gratification against the sustained satisfaction of a series-long story arc. But not quite hopeful enough to restore the season pass on my TiVo.)
Although comics geeks have not taken over the nation — only its cinemas — it is nice to see that we’re not alone in disliking long hiatuses and fatuous cliffhangers. Networks are now avoiding the hiatus strategy and planning on running uninterrupted seasons of Heroes, Lost, 24 and other new shows. I love this news. I love it mostly because I am gullible enough to think that finally, finally, someone who works in scheduling has realized what we viewers have been saying all along: we watch TV on our convenience, not the nets’. It’s our time you have to respect, not the other way around. And if you’re going to parcel out a story in installments, make sure you remember the cardinal rule for the audience: we’re not going to wait around forever, no matter how good the story may be.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check to see when the Heroes DVD comes out. I have a feeling I’ll be back next season.
By Dan Moren – May 22, 2007
While many network shows are coming to a close this week, meaning that I expect to start suffering from withdrawal symptoms imminently, it’s never too early to look ahead and start planning for the fall’s TV slate.
Often the upcoming TV season involves networks trying to capitalize on the format of shows that were a hit in the previous season. For example, after the success of Lost, sci-fi mystery shows with big ensemble multicultural casts were de rigueur: Invasion, Threshold, and Surface all appeared the subsequent fall, though none of them garnered the same following. Even Heroes, the current season’s breakout hit, took a page from Lost (on that note, be sure to read this joint interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring and Lost creator Damon Lindelof, who previously worked together on Crossing Jordan).
This year, the copycat effect seems surprisingly absent. The only network using the Heroes format as a jumping off point is NBC itself, which has commissioned a six episode spinoff, Heroes: Origins. Shows seem to be focusing on smaller, more intimate casts. Content’s another story: while cop, lawyer, and medical dramas remain the staples of what passes for television creativity, sci-fi and geek-oriented shows seem to be stronger than ever.
Friends often ask me what they should be watching, so I’m compiling a list of all the shows that I’ve been able to watch clips for (TVWeek has assembled a great collection of them). The list below isn’t comprehensive, and of course, it’s only based on a very small sample of the shows in question—I haven’t read the scripts or seen the pilots, though in some cases, I have heard “buzz” from those who have.
Once the season gets closer, I’ll probably refine the list based on reviews, buzz, and the episodes that I do get to watch. I’ve tried to keep these initial impressions short.
Monday
Sam I Am (ABC): A woman suffering from amnesia finds out that she was a bitch. I forget: have we overused amnesia as a premise?
The Big Bang Theory (CBS): Nerds befriend a beautiful woman. Ha ha, geeks are funny. Surprisingly enough, this concept may actually have been better when it was a reality show (Beauty and the Geek). I hope it stays on long enough for Jason to completely mine it for his dissertation and not a second longer. And it’s an awful title, unless intentionally meant as a sex joke.
Aliens in America (The CW): A family completely freaks out when the exchange student they host ends up being Pakistani. Could be funny and incisive if done well, or crude and groan-worthy if not.
K-Ville (FOX): I would use the Crockett and Tubby joke, but Hot Fuzz beat me to it. Anthony Anderson did a memorable turn as kingpin Antwon Mitchell on The Shield. Now he’s purloined Michael Chiklis’s shtick as a walking-the-line cop. Unfortunately, he just looks like he needs a hug. It’s all right, big guy—we’ll always have Hang Time.
Journeyman (NBC): I’ve heard little to nothing about this pilot, but the clip struck me as interesting. A San Francisco reporter can go back in time to help people. Early Edition, in reverse. Creators worked on The West Wing; let’s hope the good seasons rubbed off on them. It’s taking up the post-Heroes spot, where NBC is betting that sci-fi will play better than Studio 60 did.
Tuesday
Cavemen (ABC): The Geico commercials become a half-hour sitcom and thinly-veiled race parable. Turning ad campaigns into television may be the most brilliant idea ever concocted by network executives after having devoured their lackeys’ brains. If only they’d thought of it in time for the Budweiser frogs. From what I’ve seen, still funnier than The Big Bang Theory and Carpoolers.
Carpoolers (ABC): Four dissimilar (and yet strangely stereotypical) guys share a commute and clichéd banter about life. For those of you keeping score at home, there’s the stand-up honest guy, the whipped guy, the token black guy, and Jerry O’Connell. Plays more like a commercial than even Cavemen.
Cane (CBS): Why is that even when Jimmy Smits is playing a Cuban-American mobster, he still sounds like he’s running for president? (Hint: you can tell them apart because evil Jimmy Smits has a goatee). And if Nestor Carbonell is there, how can he be on the island?
Reaper (The CW): I vowed to never watch The CW again, after what they put Veronica Mars through, but this Kevin Smith-directed pilot about a slacker who discovers that he’s a bounty hunter for the devil looks surprisingly decent (which, I’m guessing, means it won’t last long). And Tyler Labine, you may have played second fiddle to Ryan Gosling back in the Breaker High days, but you’ll always be first in my heart.
New Amsterdam (Fox): A handsome, brooding immortal (wahhh, I can’t die until I meet my soulmate) works as a New York City homicide detective. See Moonlight.
Chuck (NBC): Dramedy about a computer geek who’s drafted into top secret government work. The first maybe twenty seconds of the clip made me laugh out loud, but it started to get a little stale and sophomoric after that. Probably worth a watch. It boggles my mind that Josh Schwarz (The O.C.) is running both this and The CW’s Gossip Girl (which see).
Wednesday
Pushing Daisies (ABC): Hands down my pick for best upcoming series. Lee Pace (Jaye’s brother from Wonderfalls) plays a man who can temporarily bring people back from the dead, a skill he uses to help police solve crimes (think Raines but better). Created by uber-genius Bryan Fuller, who also created cult hits Wonderfalls and the similarly morbid Dead Like Me and subsequently worked on Heroes. This clip strikes the perfect balance between creepy and hilarious. Of course, having now singled this show out, it is now doomed to failure.
Private Practice (ABC): Goddamnit, ABC’s going to get Tim Daly his own series one way or another, though I wish they’d bring back the short-lived Eyes instead of shoehorning him into this Grey’s Anatomy spinoff. Cast also features Taye Diggs, Alias’s Merrin Dungey, Veronica Mars’s Chris Lowell, Judging Amy’s Amy Brenneman, and Grey’s Kate Walsh (who, ironically, played Daly’s estranged wife on the aforementioned Eyes). Though for some reason I instinctively wanted to dislike this, one of its chief writers is Buffy vet Marti Noxon, and the clip was actually somewhat amusing. And I still like Tim Daly, god help me.
Dirty Sexy Money (ABC): The clip doesn’t really give you much to go on, but two words: Peter Krause. Oh, Peter, I hope ABC treats you better this time.
Gossip Girl (The CW): Seriously, for this you cancel Veronica Mars? Admittedly, Blake Lively is hot enough that she should be considered a weapon of mass distraction, but the two minutes I saw of this show, about spoiled high school girls in New York, made me for the first time actively consider doing shots of Drano.
Back to You (FOX): Kelsey Grammar returns to TV, leaving behind his iconic role as an overbearing blowhard of a psychiatrist to play an overbearing blowhard of a TV anchor. I’m glad they put the laugh track in—otherwise, I might not have known it was supposed to be a comedy. Seriously.
The Return of Jezebel James (FOX): Indie film queen Parker Posey plays a woman who can’t get pregnant, so she tries to convince her sister to do it for her. From Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created Gilmore Girls. I like Posey, and though I’ve never gotten into Gilmore Girls, Sherman-Palladino is by all accounts, quite talented. The clip didn’t set me on fire but it might be good. (Oh, and what’s with the laugh track fetish, FOX? Drop it.)
Bionic Woman (NBC): Remake of the seventies series (itself a spinoff from The Six Million Dollar Man), masterminded by David Eick, the Battlestar Galactica producer whose name is not Ron Moore. I like the clip shown here, but I fear the inevitable Lindsay Wagner cameo. That NBC has hired Jason Smilovic (Kidnapped, Lucky Number Slevin) to work on the show means that I’ll be watching.
Life (NBC): A cop who was wrongly imprisoned (Damian Lewis) gets a second chance to come back to the force. Lewis was slam bang awesome in Band of Brothers, and this preview strikes the right note, but can an “edgy” network cop show survive in this age of The Wire and The Shield?
Thursday
Big Shots (ABC): This drama about the trials and tribulations of four high-powered CEOs has a good cast, including The Practice’s Dylan McDermott, Alias’s Michael Vartan, and Sports Night/West Wing alum Joshua Malina (though Malina’s so adorable, it’s hard to imagine him having a mistress). The punchline of this clip sums it up nicely: “Men. We’re the new women.” I think that they’re hedging this show to appeal to both sexes, and as a result, it will probably attract neither.
Canterbury’s Law (FOX): Lawyer drama about a female attorney who takes on risky and unpopular cases, starring Julianna Margulies (ER). Snoozerama.
Friday
Women’s Murder Club (ABC): Desperate Housewives, except they’re solving crimes instead of perpetrating them.
Moonlight (CBS): A good vampire becomes a private eye. This show was better when it was called Angel. Or Nightwalker. Or even Forever Knight. Why is it that whenever a vampire wants to redeem himself, he gets typecast as a detective? Look, vampires can be whatever they want. Where are all the shows about vampire doctors and lawyers? Here’s my pitch: Blood Bank, a heist drama about a noble vampire thief who plans to rob a blood bank so he never has to feed on humans again. There, how hard was that?
Sunday
Viva Laughlin (CBS): A musical drama, produced by Hugh Jackman, who will also appear in several episodes, about a man who founds a casino in Laughlin, Nevada. Even Jackman doesn’t believe he’s straight anymore. Based on a British series, Viva Blackpool; British remakes have been hit (The Office) and miss (Coupling) when transplanted to America, but this might be quirky enough to make it.
Life is Wild (The CW): A mixed family moves to South Africa. Supposed to take 7th Heaven’s spot as the “heartwarming” show on the network. They would have been better off keeping Everwood, the fuckers.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles (FOX): I’m guessing this will be the most talked about show of the season. Taking place between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, it deals with the stories of Sarah (Lena Headey) and John Connor (Thomas Dekker) trying to avoid the deadly robots and avert the apocalypse. Dekker was good as Claire’s friend Zach on Heroes, but the clips I’ve seen him make him more whiny than anything else. Summer Glau (Firefly) does look great as their mysterious protector.
Lipstick Jungle (NBC): Someone described this as Sex in the City meets Sex in the City. Nuff said.
Midseason/TBD
Cashmere Mafia (ABC): High-powered women try to juggle careers and family, with an impressive cast: Lucy Liu, Miranda Otto, and Frances McDormand. Apparently women are also the new men.
Eli Stone (ABC): A lawyer (Jonny Lee Miller) starts having hallucinations after finding he has an aneurysm, and begins to believe he’s a prophet. Also with Natasha Henstridge (Species) and Victor Garber (Alias). Clip was promising.
Miss/Guided (ABC): A high-school guidance counselor (Judy Greer) goes to work at her old high school. The clip was amusing, and Greer (Adaptation, The Hebrew Hammer) has genuine comic flair; she’s always a pleasure to watch.
The Rules for Starting Over (FOX): A comedy about newly single 30 somethings re-entering the dating scene. By the Farelly Brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary). You get what you pay for.
