Jonzey
05-18-2006, 04:58 PM
So the past week has had the season finales of Smallville, Family Guy, American Dad, Scrubs and Bones, with 24, Simpsons, House and Lost all to come in the next week. Now that's all the programmes I watch at the moment. This brings up a number of issues:
1. Cliffhangers. Why? They are the most annoying things ever. You can have an entire season of medicore episodes, but end it with a good cliffhanger and you can drive people crazy. Smallville did this. Bones did this. Scrubs did this, although to be honest it did seem kinda stuck on when they found out they're getting another season. And I can guarantee that Lost will have a doozy of a cliffhanger.
2. The long drought. Now we're left with a whole summer when we're expected to go outside and have fun or something, while television shows re-runs. Now it's not all bad, there are a number of shows (I think they run on cable channels in the US and are less popular, and mostly sci fi) which I can watch over the summer (The 4400 and the Dead Zone starting in June, Stargate and Atlantis starting in July, with Doctor Who already running on the BBC), but aside from that there is an absence of viewing material.
3. The wait. So our favourite shows decided to end their season with some amazingly cool and completely unexpected cliffhanger. Now we've all gotta wait until the show starts back up again before we can find out what happened. Thankfully, Lost's crappy schedule of being spaced out for weeks and weeks means that the conclusion of our super awesome cliffhanger ending will come with less wait. Scrubs, on the other hand, showed double episodes for the whole first half of the season, so now it's ending at the same time as all the other shows, but we've gotta wait until January before we get a new episode.
4. Series finales. Now, none of the programmes I've listed so far are ending (thank God), but rest assured when they do end, they will most likely go for the cliched happy ending. You know, where the main male lead and the main female lead finally get together, while the secondary male lead gets tragically killed somehow and brings everyone together- and if the main female lead is pregnant she will have a baby and name it after the dead secondary lead. Remember the ending to Friends? Where, to quote Homer Simpsons ''Everything's all wrapped up in a neat little package!!''
But all that leaves us with the end of what has been a great season of television. Thanks to programmes like Lost and 24, people are taking risks with their writing and not dumbing down shows as much as they used to. I remember a few years back when there was a boom in terrible reality TV shows, and very little else. Also thanks to the popularity of Lost, a lot of shows are copying it's format of having one giant story flow through the whole season and cutting it up into chunks, rather than serialising it (like the X-files). Not to say that that's bad, but it does make a programme that much more gripping and worth watching every week.
Now, my last niggle is something which I'm sure drives a lot of people mad:
Cancellation. So a show isn't doing so well in the ratings. Even if it has an amazing writing staff, great acting, is well shot and has a terrific story, if it's not a chart topper, it's not worth having. Now I don't know if anyone watched Threshold, but that was a great show. I would describe it (and I think it was actually advertised this way here in the UK) as the X files meets Lost. It had a strong X files vibe, but the Lost style of having one running story going through it. But that got cancelled after 13 episodes.
I know it wasn't going to win any awards or anything, but I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed Joey. But now that's gone the way of Firefly too (only I hope they don't make a movie of it, because that just wouldn't work).
Then I hear Invasion got cut. I don't really care, because I watched the first ten episodes of it and got bored since nothing happened for ages and ages, but I am pissed that it lasted almost twice as long as Threshold.
So that's my rant for the evening. Sorry it's a bit bloggy, but discuss it or add your views or something.
(NOTE: mx crashed the first time I clicked new thread, and if not for my 1337 copy paste skills I would have lost all this hard work. I really should be revising for my exam instead of analysing television though...)
Edit: Holy crap that's long!
1. Cliffhangers. Why? They are the most annoying things ever. You can have an entire season of medicore episodes, but end it with a good cliffhanger and you can drive people crazy. Smallville did this. Bones did this. Scrubs did this, although to be honest it did seem kinda stuck on when they found out they're getting another season. And I can guarantee that Lost will have a doozy of a cliffhanger.
2. The long drought. Now we're left with a whole summer when we're expected to go outside and have fun or something, while television shows re-runs. Now it's not all bad, there are a number of shows (I think they run on cable channels in the US and are less popular, and mostly sci fi) which I can watch over the summer (The 4400 and the Dead Zone starting in June, Stargate and Atlantis starting in July, with Doctor Who already running on the BBC), but aside from that there is an absence of viewing material.
3. The wait. So our favourite shows decided to end their season with some amazingly cool and completely unexpected cliffhanger. Now we've all gotta wait until the show starts back up again before we can find out what happened. Thankfully, Lost's crappy schedule of being spaced out for weeks and weeks means that the conclusion of our super awesome cliffhanger ending will come with less wait. Scrubs, on the other hand, showed double episodes for the whole first half of the season, so now it's ending at the same time as all the other shows, but we've gotta wait until January before we get a new episode.
4. Series finales. Now, none of the programmes I've listed so far are ending (thank God), but rest assured when they do end, they will most likely go for the cliched happy ending. You know, where the main male lead and the main female lead finally get together, while the secondary male lead gets tragically killed somehow and brings everyone together- and if the main female lead is pregnant she will have a baby and name it after the dead secondary lead. Remember the ending to Friends? Where, to quote Homer Simpsons ''Everything's all wrapped up in a neat little package!!''
But all that leaves us with the end of what has been a great season of television. Thanks to programmes like Lost and 24, people are taking risks with their writing and not dumbing down shows as much as they used to. I remember a few years back when there was a boom in terrible reality TV shows, and very little else. Also thanks to the popularity of Lost, a lot of shows are copying it's format of having one giant story flow through the whole season and cutting it up into chunks, rather than serialising it (like the X-files). Not to say that that's bad, but it does make a programme that much more gripping and worth watching every week.
Now, my last niggle is something which I'm sure drives a lot of people mad:
Cancellation. So a show isn't doing so well in the ratings. Even if it has an amazing writing staff, great acting, is well shot and has a terrific story, if it's not a chart topper, it's not worth having. Now I don't know if anyone watched Threshold, but that was a great show. I would describe it (and I think it was actually advertised this way here in the UK) as the X files meets Lost. It had a strong X files vibe, but the Lost style of having one running story going through it. But that got cancelled after 13 episodes.
I know it wasn't going to win any awards or anything, but I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed Joey. But now that's gone the way of Firefly too (only I hope they don't make a movie of it, because that just wouldn't work).
Then I hear Invasion got cut. I don't really care, because I watched the first ten episodes of it and got bored since nothing happened for ages and ages, but I am pissed that it lasted almost twice as long as Threshold.
So that's my rant for the evening. Sorry it's a bit bloggy, but discuss it or add your views or something.
(NOTE: mx crashed the first time I clicked new thread, and if not for my 1337 copy paste skills I would have lost all this hard work. I really should be revising for my exam instead of analysing television though...)
Edit: Holy crap that's long!