Cancelled!
Oh, what a cruel business television can be. Every year as the television season comes to an end, shows with actual merit get axed by the networks because, unfortunately, a show with "merit" does not always mean a show with "viewers." The injustice is that new shows often must pander to the masses if they want to stay on the air, thus stifling originality. If a show's creator and writers are unwilling to do this, they might actually produce something great, which doesn't necessarily have mass popular appeal and the ability to attract a wide audience. As a result, the network will view that show as not financially viable, mutter some nonsense about wanting to go in a new creative direction with their programming, and add another reality show about fat people dating (see: new FOX show, More to Love).
Granted, the sword falls on shows that deserve to disappear as well as those that don't. I know very few people who were sad to say goodbye to Lipstick Jungle, Moonlight, or Back to You. And I know even fewer who even remember the horribly painful Viva Laughlin, a crime musical set in a Nevada casino--it was yanked from the CBS schedule after 2 episodes. When a network gets rid of a show that deserves to continue, however, devoted fans become outraged. A few years ago, people started launching campaigns for their favorite shows when news indicated that they were in danger of being cancelled. They do this because, sometimes, it actually works. In 2007, CBS decided not to order a second season of Jericho. Fans started sending nuts in the mail to CBS studios, an homage to something that happens in a Season 1 episode. After CBS received about 40,000 pounds of nuts, they changed their minds about a second season and asked people to stop mailing them nuts.
Another one that has been able to survive despite ratings never being very high is Friday Night Lights, the show about high school football in Texas. It features some of the most realistic and inspiring acting, writing, and producing being done right now. Filmed in Austin, TX, the actors of Friday Night Lights have well-written scripts to follow, but they often improvise their scenes based on what flows naturally between their characters. They don't do rehearsals or use constructed sets or block out every movement. As a viewer, you forget that you're watching a television show because it seems so real--just normal human beings experiencing normal things and reacting in ways that we can all understand and relate to.
NBC could have made a purely business decision and cancelled Friday Night Lights after Season 1 or 2 because of its small audience. But, because it's so good, critics love it, as do the fans, many of whom are in the entertainment industry themselves. When it was being considered for renewal, people sent plastic "Save FNL" footballs to NBC, in addition to donating thousands of dollars to a charity connected to the show. For Season 3, NBC made a deal with DirecTV that would keep Friday Night Lights on the air. It was recently announced that this deal was renewed for a fourth and fifth season.
But these are exceptions to the rule. In most cases, fans can write letters and sign petitions until they are blue in the face, but that is not going to stop studio executives from canceling a show. A notable example is Veronica Mars, the show featuring Kristen Bell as a witty teenage private investigator who solved small cases for her fellow students in addition to big crimes in her town. The CW waited until the last minute to decide not to order Season 4, resulting in a frustrating and unsatisfying conclusion. Another example is Pushing Daisies, from the whimsical imagination of creator Bryan Fuller (the follow-up to his equally unique Wonderfalls, also cancelled before it had a chance to prove itself). Pushing Daisies is about a pie-maker named Ned (Lee Pace) who has the ability to bring things back to life with the touch of his finger. After growing up with this gift, he has learned certain rules that come with it, one being that if he revives something and then touches it again, it will be dead forever. So when Ned's childhood sweetheart is murdered, he goes to see her body in the funeral parlor and can't help himself--he touches her, knowing that he will always love her but can never touch her again.
Among the rest of the taken-too-soon shows, there are some whose cancellation still hurts the fans who loved them, such as Judd Apatow's clever, short-lived series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Joss Whedon's sci-fi western, Firefly, remains one of the greatest travesties ever committed by the FOX network, which did not even allow its final episodes to air so that people could have closure to the first and only season. FOX's mistake is clear, given that even now, 5 years later, it has a cult following of people known as Browncoats who gather for conventions around the country on a regular basis.
A show does not need to have a small number of episodes to be considered "cancelled too early." Sometimes it's just when the people who make a show want to get one more season to finish their story but are denied. Gilmore Girls is one such show. It had 7 seasons, which is a pretty long time, but executive producer Daniel Palladino wanted to conclude with the eighth season and without that opportunity could not bring the plotlines to a satisfying end. As someone who loves television and watches a lot of it, my greatest wish is always that a showrunner gets to decide when is the right time to stop. For Ricky Gervais' British comedy Extras, it was only 2 seasons. Ronald D. Moore decided upon 4 seasons for Battlestar Galactica. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse announced a couple of year ago that they had mapped out LOST to finish after its sixth season in 2010. In each of these instances, the producers knew how long they could create good stories and, with permission from their networks, were given that control. The result is a set of episodes that represent a complete history of the characters and the world in which they live. Like the Harry Potter books, you can return to those shows on DVD and rewatch them from the very beginning, knowing that there is an ending--no ambiguity, no abrupt stop. Unfortunately, networks are rarely inclined to give that much power to a show's producers. They make their decisions based on Nielsen ratings and advertising revenue.
There is a ray of light for those who want to find shows with the creative freedom and potential to become true genius: the recent rise in original programming from cable channels. The same things can be said for all of those channels--they give their shows time to grow. The fear of being axed is not constantly looming over their heads. The results? FX's Rescue Me, the show from Denis Leary about post-9/11 firefighters in New York City; TNT's The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick as an LAPD Chief with Southern manners and a twang who specializes in getting criminals to confess; USA's Burn Notice, about a former spy who was fired and got trapped in Miami, where he helps people fix their fraud/kidnapping/extortion problems while he searches for the people who made him lose his job; AMC's Mad Men, Matthew Weiner's show about advertising executive Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and life in New York in the 1950's. These examples are representative of what cable has to offer--and that doesn't even get into premium channels HBO and Showtime that produce shows like The Sopranos, Dexter, Big Love, True Blood, and Weeds, that push the boundaries in what television can portray.
Every one of these shows is completely original and fascinating. They are all critically-acclaimed and award-winning. The reason--their showrunners are given free rein to follow their vision and have intricate characters and stories that evolve over time. Were these same shows produced by one of the networks instead, they would feel pressure to make their early episodes flashy so that they could instantly draw in many millions of viewers. Gone would be the slow development and subtlety of these cable shows. Networks definitely have a few quality shows to offer, but they could take a lesson in creative practices from the cable channels, or perhaps just take themselves out of the strictly business mindset as they have on those certain occasions. They may find that they achieve a legacy of consistent greatness that will outlast a few Nielsen numbers and money from some 30-second commercials.
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