Gone Before Its Time

A few weeks ago I watched the entire series of  My So Called Life (God does love us and showed us by streaming Netflix through my Wii).  All 19 episodes.  How, the hell, did this show get cancelled and crap TV goes on forever (didn't Jersey Shore just film in Italy or some such nonsense?)???  Got me thinking that there are quite a few shows that were laid to rest long before they should have been.

1. MY SO-CALLED LIFE The above-mentioned drama that told it like it was.  In the 90's, with lots of flannel.  When the show was on I thought it was cool but watching it as an adult , it made me ache with nostalgia.  Oh my gosh, I loved me some grunge boys.  And overalls, YES!  They were so comfy and forgiving!  And Doc Martens.  But aside from the fashion of the show, Angela was every girl.  Every girl has felt that alienated in high school.  We've all felt the longing for the guy that is just so wrong for us.  Or the betrayal of the friend who stole that guy.  The absolute weariness of how uncool our parents were.  The disdain for the dorky guy that adores you.  19 episodes was not enough!  Please bring this back with all the original characters, especially Jordan Catalano, who's like,  a big time rock star now.  
2. BETTER OFF TED had such sharp wit and biting insults slung so rapidly that I can only guess it got cancelled because it was too smart.  From Portia de Rossi's aggressive boss lady to Ted himself, the cast was spot on crazy.  They had a whole episode where the motion sensors work off skin reflection so do not register for people with darker skin tones.  Hilarious when this leads to them having to hire white shadows for the black workers and then black shadows so they aren't considered discriminatory.  Genius infinite loop.  But some of the best parts were when you'd think it was going to commercial and it would be an ad for the TV company:   RIP Better Off Ted, you deserved more than two seasons!
3. PUSHING DAISIES I'm going to guess that the some of the same writers were involved in these two shows.  The concept for Pushing Daisies was so fantastical, the characters so quirky and caricature-like, the sets and costumes so Broadway-esque and with Kristin Chenoweth as a main character you can bet there were musical numbers (They Might Be Giants? for the love of God, it was PERFECT!)  I adored this show, couldn't wait for it to come on.  I was devastated when it got cancelled but I understand that it wasn't mainstream.  But that was why it was so good!  And I miss Lee Pace's hang dog face.
4. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT What can be said about a TV show that had a daughter named Maeby?  Or the VERY best-named lawyer, EVER:  Bob Loblaw!  A show that  made you fall in love the most dysfunctional family possible.  That brought us Jason Bateman (sigh) and Michael Cera and Will Arnett.  A show with the Fonz and narrated by Richie Cunningham.  Only that this show should still have remained on the air forever!  Not snuffed out after three seasons! There is talk of a movie and if Sex and the City can do it (twice) I'm hopeful these guys can get it together  (I also just realized that Portia de Rossi is in this too and quite brilliant, go Ellen!)
5. FLASH FORWARD Ok, this show didn't have sharp, witty dialogue.  In fact, it often bordered on cheesy and formulaic.  And the characters were not all that memorable or likable and a lot of them were left-overs from Lost so I got a little confused.  But what the show had going for it was a wickedly cool story that got more complicated the more it tried to provide answers (quantum entanglement anyone?).  I think JJ Abrams was involved or it felt like he was.  We'll never know if the whole world blacks out for another 137 seconds but it was entertaining while it lasted.  And Joseph Fiennes was in it.

Tweeps' honorable mentions:  Freaks and Geeks, Firefly, Life on Mars, Ugly Betty...

the non-Dancing/Singing shows on TV...

Hi Delicious-

Nope, still haven't watched the end of SYTYCD...one of the cons of living with a working musician...he came in at 5 am and who knows when his day will start.  BUT I love that he loves SYTYCD so I'll wait.  And fill my blog with all the other shows I AM caught up on:

MODERN FAMILY
If I haven't yet mentioned this show, I should have.  If Glee is the best comedy/musical, Modern Family is the best sitcom to come along since The Office!  It is exactly like The Office in the fact that you are plopped down into the middle of these characters seemingly normal lives and you instantly know who they are and are fascinated by them.  They are such well-developed characters with their dialogue and their interactions with each other I feel, already, like I've been watching this show for years.  Also, like The Office there is an apparent camera crew following them around that they sit and talk to every now and then.  Why?  It's never explained and who cares???  I never would have thought that Ed O'Neil could be anyone other than Al Bundy but he seamlessly is and his one-liners as the patriarch of this non-traditional (but probably more the norm than anything else these days) family sets the tone for everyone else.  Last week the first five minutes before the credits were so funny we laughed so hard we had to keep rewinding cuz we kept missing more jokes!  Watch it if for nothing else other than Cameron and Mitchell, the gay couple who have just adopted a Korean baby girl's, banter.  (Cameron: "I'm sort of like Costco. I'm big, I'm not fancy and I dare you to not like me.") I dare you not to want to be part of their family!

FLASH FORWARD
I am a HUGE JJ Abrams fan which started with the nearly perfect (never happens) movie remake of Star Trek last year.  It was just so good that J and I went back and watched 4 seasons of Lost in about 2 months---no small feat!  And now we've started Fringe just because his name was on that too (and my long lost Pacey has come back!).  So while we wait for Lost to come back for its supposed final season (and hopefully all the explanations, that better not suck!) we were excited to get into Flash Forward.  So far it hasn't disappointed!  This concept I think might be the biggest he's tried yet and it alone makes it a brilliant attempt:  everyone on the planet blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and sees a vision of what they're doing six months in the future.  The implications are endless---your vision doesn't match your signifcant other's, you have a vision that you now have to fill in the explanation for, you're killing someone or probably most disturbing, you don't have a vision at all.  How do you handle what you saw?  Can you change it or is it now predestined?  It's also interesting to think how the world would handle an experience that knows no divide, something every single person has in common. 
I have to say the dialogue can get a bit cheesy and the characters are not so much developed as they are defined by what they saw but the plot keeps it moving along, much like I felt with the beginnings of Lost.  I had no sympathy or attraction with 42 people stranded on a desert island for half of the first season.  Probably because most of these people are seriously flawed or just a little bit annoying but you have to know what happens to them and more than that, what the possible explanation can be.  You also have to be a little creeped out everytime they show the shadowy figure of the one guy who was awake and walking around a football stadium while the rest of the entire world was passed out.  I'm sure that Joseph Fiennes and his harshly affected American accent are taking us somewhere and I'll stick around to find out. 

V
I vaguely remember the original of this series and loving it.  It's another one J and I can sit and watch together and like Flash Forward it borrows people from Lost (Juliet is now an FBI agent) so you kind of instantly feel compelled.  It also hinges on a great concept:  Visitors fly into all the major cities on Earth and proclaim us as their friends and would like to swap some of our necessities for their knowledge.  I think they did a good job updating the series and mking the most of the advances we've made in CGI and technology.  Plus they added Morris Chestnut and there's nothing wrong with that :)  It will be interesting to see if this has staying power or if, once the revelations have been made the intrigue wears off.  Someone over at ABC is doing something right though cuz all three of these shows live there!