What's your favorite cancelled show?
In honor of KQ and The Nine, I was wondering what your favorite show that got cancelled was. Before everyone picks SportsNight, the only shows valid for this discussion are ones with lots of unanswered questions. For instance, if Lost was cancelled today, it would be #1 on my list. Here's my first shot at a list:
- Profit - Fox never really gave this show a chance, I think they only aired like 6 episodes before killing it. It began my fascination with Adrian Pasdar, who has done nothing interesting since (until this season with Heroes). The show centered on Jim Profit (Pasdar) as an evil corporate executive who was willing to do anything to get to the top. Clearly one of my heroes. I wonder if that's why I'm getting an MBA now.
- John Doe - Before he got framed for killing the vice president's brother, Dominic Purcell was a genius with amnesia. He could remember everything except his own history. There was a shadowy government agency (surprise) trying to (re?)capture him, while he tried to figure out who he was. All I know is the song "My Funny Valentine" had something to do with it.
- X-Files - The original ask-more-questions-than-you-answer show. While it lost me before it actually got cancelled, I still have no clue what was going on. The show was too successful (one thing I worry about with Lost), after David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson left, they should have just wrapped up the loose ends. They thought they could carry on with replacement actors/characters, and wanted to leave the door open for movies down the road. Major mistake. A series finale with Mulder and Scully finally figuring it all out would have been sweet. (Disclaimer: It's been awhile, maybe they did figure out the big questions. Is that why I lost interest?)
posted by wood at 7:51 AM
4 Comments:
Duh- Firefly. And Angel. Darn you, Joss Whedon! Incidentally, I didn't really watch either until after they were cancelled (although I did watch the Angel series finale when it originally aired), but it's frustrating nonetheless. I would feel better about Firefly if I knew that additional movies were in the works (as originally planned) to wrap up the story. Serenity was great and answered some big questions, but a lot of loose ends still need to be tied.
As for Angel . . . sigh . . . everyone got screwed by that! Wesley and Illyria were going all kinds of strange and dark places emotionally, Spike was the rising LA star, Angel was a corporate sellout, Gunn was an even more tortured corporate sellout than Angel, Adam Baldwin was juuuust getting started, and Lindsey was back! Argh! All of that was interesting. I'm still pissed it got truncated. And, judging by the final episodes and DVD commentary, so was Joss Whedon.
Yeah, Firefly and Angel. Don't know how I forgot them. I don't know that Angel really fits though, it definitely got cancelled before I would have liked, but I don't really feel like there were big questions that were waiting for answers. Firefly getting cancelled was horrible, but Angel had been around a while. I think my disappointment about Angel was more about just missing the characters than wondering about what the big answers were.
Fair enough- I guess my complaint with Angel is that, understandably, everything got wrapped up really quickly and fairly sloppily. "The Girl in Question" is a prime example: Spike and Angel have to somehow work through their differences and reconcile the fact that they're both still in love with Buffy before the show ends
. Of course, for whatever reason, Sarah Michelle Gellar wouldn't or couldn't be in the episode, so they spend the whole time trying to find her in Rome and we see little flashes of blonde hair (ugh!)and, as with another episode in season 5, we get Andrew as the token Sunnydaler instead. It sort of worked as a plot device, but the whole "we're just going to have to get over her, mate" sort of ending without having any real Buffy-time or meaningful resolution felt forced, and it WAS forced.
And then we get another "payoff" in finding out that Fred's death was used for the greater good to infiltrate the evil Circle of the Black Thorn- please! They had, like, 5 episodes to resolve the Illyria issue and I applaud their efforts, but it felt completely tacked on. And it WAS. Stupid network executives!
SportsNight! Viva la SportsNight!
Band of Brothers is pretty darn good too, but I guess it doesn't fall into the "cancelled" section.
Joey, the Friends spinoff, wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. There was a show a long ways back called Key West, which was surprisingly good..
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106045/
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