It’s that sad, sad time of year again. The TV season is winding down, our favorite shows are preparing to say goodbye for the summer (or longer… or forever) and news of official cancellations are beginning to trickle down. Life just got the axe from NBC, and I’m sure guillotines will drop in the coming days.
It’s not all bad news though, as some shows will get renewed for next season, if they haven’t heard already. One of those shows is Fringe, which FOX just picked up for next year. I’ve never been a fan of Fringe; I had high hopes for it at the beginning of the season, but the characters and creep-out-of-the-week never held my attention. I didn’t really mind the show until today when I found myself angry and depressed at its renewal. It’s a little something I like to call renewal resentment.
There was really no reason that I should have been upset at the news that Fringe was renewed. In fact, it should be good news when any show, especially in a niche genre that I usually champion, gets a second season with the way networks are today. However, all I could think about were Dollhouse and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. These are two shows that I really like. I feel like they’re quality shows, and most likely they will both be canceled.
That is when the resentment set in. Fringe is getting a spot on the schedule instead of a couple of my favorite shows. I understand that it would be working the exact same way if the tables were turned. If Terminator or Dollhouse were getting renewed instead of Fringe, all the Fringe fans (who way outnumber the fans of the FOX Friday lineup) would be just as pissed as I am. I suppose that’s the burden of being a TV fanatic, isn’t it?
As for Life, I imagine a lot of you fans are thinking of lots of nasty names to call Jay Leno. I wasn’t even a fan of Life, but I’ll be calling him dirty names anyway, as he will be taking up the spot for five potential shows.
Am I alone, or do you suffer from renewal resentment too?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on May 05, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
We could even play “one network at a time renewal resentment” … off the top of my head, I resent FOX for failing to stand behind Back to You, K-Ville, Standoff, and Justice, and for not giving us a conclusion to Vanished. At least put the episodes you have online instead of making us pay for it!
K-Ville? Really? “Back to You” I kinda sorta understand because I love Kelsey Grammer but I hated the new daughter. Ok I have a crush on both the Marano sisters ever since Gilmore Girls but that’s not the point. K-Ville? Standoff was a decent show but I also understood the business decision. Hell I even would understand if they cancel Dollhouse simply due to the ratings but the problem with all of this is the god damn programming (!). The ratings always justified the cancellation of all of these shows but most of the time it was the network’s fault for those ratings. I mean come on don’t you think you could easily program Dollhouse right before or after Heroes on NBC (not on NBC but on Fox)? If the fans are already there why not use that advantage?
You know when I was 15 I played a neat little game call “Mad TV” – it was a little PC game from some german developers in which you had to run your own TV station against two other guys. The playing field was a tall building with about 22 different stories where you’d run around, get advertising, buy cheap movies and in your office, plant new TV stations all over america. I loved this game because after a while I found out how easily I could bet it – part of it was outsmart the competition and to this day I honestly don’t get the “business decisions” the powers that be at all these networks make every day. They keep shuffling everything around like a bunch of manatees – how “Bones” is able to survive is beyond me – the way Fox is treating it is ridiculous but what’s even more frightening is that the audience moves with the show wherever it goes – there should be support groups for all those “Fringe” addicts.
Anyway… K-Ville? Really?
Yes, really. I think Anthony Anderson is great.
You know, just for that I may drop in to every one of your Friday Night Lights posts and just write “really?” ;)
I won’t mind, that show is awesome :-P
Aryeh,
I really wanted to like K-Ville. Specifically because I like Anthony Anderson, but I also really like Cole Hauser. Mainly because I liked how it explored a post Katrina-New Orleans. However, I could never get into it. I watched every episode that aired, but I never found a reason to watch the show other than because I wanted to like it.
Dorv – I felt the same way for much of the season, but at some point, I realized that Anderson and Hauser made a really enjoyable team. And, I liked that a lot of things circled back to Katrina. It was a unique idea that simply wasn’t fleshed out well enough.
I even considered watching Law & Order to get some Anderson and Sisto (who’s also great), but, alas, Law & Order has never been the same without Jerry Orbach.
Back to You, I can’t believe they canceled that show and kept Til Death! Til Death still lives on, that was renewed for a 4th season in January even through they haven’t shown 15 episodes from season 3!
That’s a joke, right? Please tell me that this horrible show didn’t get a renewal. Please. That’s just… god. That can’t be.
Most of the shows I watch: 24, The Office, Rescue Me, and Lost are perfectly safe. All I have to wonder about is Chuck and when/if that gets cancelled I will unload full blame on Jay Leno. And Southland because I have a sneaking suspicion that took Chuck’s slot.
I really resented Til Death after they cancelled Back to You, and I haven’t even seen Til Death. Both showed got around the same ratings, so all Back to You had to do to stick around was cut costs, and Fox didn’t even ask the producers to do that. But Fringe deserves a second season. It’s waaaaaay better then it ever was during it’s first few episodes, in the same way that Dollhouse is unrecognisable from it’s first 5/6 episodes. Fringe is going to drop without American Idol as a lead in, but I still think it did alright after House this year.
In general, yes. I hate watching shows I think to be inferior get renewed when my stuff gets dumped. But I disagree about Fringe. It definitely started slow, and I almost gave up. However, sticking around was a great decision because it picked up.
Yes, I’m very bitter about this Leno experiment. And, as Oreo mentioned in another thread, I’m bitter about people who are watching Celebrity Apprentice and the Bachelor and letting stuff like Chuck and Life flounder.
The oddity is that I normally would argue Oreo’s point here, and to this end: Aryeh mentions fox, specifically Standoff and Justice. I liked these two shows, and watched them each week. However, I was not surprised, nor disappointed really, when they didn’t get picked up, because, despite how much I liked them, I didn’t think that they were that good.
(But, as long as we’re on Fox, lets not forget the Inside, Wonderfalls, or Firefly)
100% agree with you here Dorv.
One other aspect of the networks’ asinine pickups is that many people now are just not willing to give new shows a chance, they’d rather not watch a show at all than to start loving it and seeing it butchered. I know several of my coworkers have not watched Dollhouse for this exact reason, given FOX’s history with Firefly and AD.
Life was a most excellent show that was put up against most UN-excellent time slots, let alone bounced around, regardless of what some people think or say. But, just like Nothing But Canceled is good for, they swept it away permanently. Not surprising considering their track record of the last half dozen years or so, but still VERY dissappointing. If only USA or TNT could have given it a try, I really believe it could have sustained at least a decent following there. So that it may be…….
See I resent not watching it cause I thought it would be canceled. Looks like I was wrong. Now I kind of wanna watch Dollhouse but it’s not looking like it will be picked up. I’ll just watch it on DVD. Don’t worry I’m not a Nielsen family.
I am happy Fringe was renewed. I never have seen Life, so I can’t say anything about that one. I wish Terminator and Dollhouse would get renewed. I think the networks need a new rating system, I still don’t know anyone with a Neilsen box. Maybe they should start a petition along with the box; so fans can vote once for their favorite shows and then the networks will know how their actual viewers feel. At least offer the canceled ones online if they have a following; most people have the internet now a days.
You’re not alone. I tried Fringe but between the grossouts and the emphasis on the charisma-free Anna Torv, I gave up. Also gave up on Heroes this year. Tried The Mentalist and Lie To Me and got bored after a couple of episodes.
Any show I got bored with and quit this year got renewed. All of them. Almost everything I like has or is going to be canceled. Damn straight I’ve got resentment.
Let me just hint at what I said before – Jay Leno is perfect at his job and NBC’s PTB are a bunch of A-holes.
I don’t resent Fringe being renewed, or Castle, should that get picked up. I gave up on those shows because they didn’t appeal to me personally, but I can see their inherent quality.
However, I expect both Terminator and Dollhouse to be canceled, and would have a big problem if only Dollhouse came back, especially since its ratings have now dropped to Terminator’s levels. I’ve watched most of its episodes and find that it’s just a terrible show in every respect. I would be apoplectic to see that replace T:SCC without having at least twice its ratings. The above suggestion to pair it with Heroes makes sense in terms of the writing and acting on both shows, but to put it in House’s slot would be just laughable.
Leno’s resurrection could not be loathed more, but losing Life, Kings and possibly Chuck as well won’t help.
I like Fringe and I’m glad it was renewed.
However, I’m still in shock that NBC renewed Celebrity Apprentice and cancelled Life.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.