A
Joss Whedon show on
Fox on
Friday gets RENEWED.
That much good luck had to come at someone's expense, karmically.
BAH. Much as I'd love to bash Fox, I just can't. The show wrote it's own grave, frankly, by choosing to come slow out of the gate after the hiatus. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves and all that. And the slow, meandering self-indulgent episodes blew the show's best chance to acquire new viewers.
Did I love the show? Yes. But the ratings slump was predictable and Fox's decision to cancel them was rational.
Fuck them for moving it to Friday night in the first place, though.
Ah, well. Farewell, show. You were the smartest sci-fi on TV for quite a while. You showcased the hidden talents of an unlikely cast(let's face it, who WASN'T cynical about Summer Glau? Let's not get into Shirley Manson, for that matter). You breathed new life and a soul into a dead franchise.
*raises glass*
I await the talents of the cast and crew in other shows. The writers especially.
Why can't the people who answer Nielsen ratings love the shows that I do?
EDIT:
Friedman's response:
By now most of you have heard the news that T:SCC is cancelled. I received a call earlier today from Peter Roth at Warner Bros. and I appreciate both his personal and professional support throughout this show’s life. I know a lot of you are angry about the cancellation and want to find a place to direct your anger and to that I say do yourself a favor and find a way to move past it. Every network wants a big fat hit, especially one with a brand name behind it, and Fox was/is no different. They supported the show, they supported my vision of the show, and they gave it plenty of time to find an audience.
And what an audience we found: passionate, intelligent, kind of nuts in a good way. My only complaint about the T:SCC fans is that there aren’t ten million of them. But I prefer to be happy for the ones we had instead of lamenting the ones we didn’t.
Good shows are cancelled every year; smart shows, worthy shows, shows which move their viewers to write blogs and have viewing parties and create action figures and bury executives’ email accounts under thousands of messages. I miss Deadwood and The Wire and Arrested Development but thank God that I still have Rescue Me and The Office and a recently renewed Party Down written by ex-T:SCC writer John Enbom.
Bad shows are cancelled, too. And certainly there are those who did not like what we did and had their own vision for what a Terminator TV show should be. It’s easy to look at low ratings or cancellation as “failure” and for those who believe we’ve gone about this all wrong I’m sure today’s news will only serve to confirm a world view that I would never try to change. We’ve written the show as best we can, executed it to the best of our abilities, and sent it out in the world knowing that we worked out asses off to do something that wouldn’t be a waste of anybody’s forty-three minutes.
Thanks to a brave and talented cast, a feature crew working on a TV schedule, and everyone else who I could list but won’t because they know who they are. Mostly I’d like to thank those of you who’ve supported us and fought for us and given up hours of your life to watch our show. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. The watching.
Hope we do it again soon.
Josh Friedman
"Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men? We are the United States Goverment - we don't DO that sort of thing!" - Sneakers. Best. Quote. EVER.
Periodic Pwnage Pantry:
"Faith? Isn't that another term for ignorance?" - Gregory House
"Isn't it interesting... religious behaviour is so close to being crazy that we can't tell them apart?" - Gregory House
"This is usually the part where people start screaming." - Gabriel Sylar