The Model 1894 Winchester, a descendant of the Henry mentioned in the penultimate paragraph.Last fall I wrote about some new sci fi shows that had begun on TV and which pleased me greatly. Only one of them will survive into a second season of new episodes, I believe. That one is called Fringe. I finally realized recently where I'd seen the actor who plays the mildly insane, absolutely brilliant physicist named Walter in that show. He's the same fellow who played to the hilt the role of the Steward of Gondor in the Tolkein films. You know, the father of Boromir and Faramir? Whoa! What an actor. His show deserves to live on and apparently it will.
But I've noticed a trend throughout my life which manifests itself so consistently that it bespeaks of a plot of some kind. I don't know who's behind the plot, but it's definitely there. It works like this. Someone comes up with a great show. The situation is cleverly different, the characters well drawn and well played. The music, costumes, photography, and direction all scintillate. It promotes thought. It thrills the intellect and the heart all at once. It entertains. It is wonderful!
It is doomed.
A really good show will never last. Someone, and I don't know who but I suspect he's in league with Satan, always sees to it that a great show gets cancelled. This usually happens after its first thirteen episodes, but sometimes it happens even sooner. Occasionally, the secret forces behind this phenomenon will allow the show to run for a whole year before jerking the rug out from under our feet. Once, back in the eighties, a tremendous series which was set in 1963 and was called Crime Story, made it all the way to the end of season two. Then, in the last episode of the season, and with NO WARNING WHATSOEVER, all the major characters go down in the same airplane! To this day there are probably people who lived in Moscow at that time who still get cold sweats after dark and ask themselves what the source was of that unearthly howl which split the Idaho panhandle's night air. But I know. It was my own lament, torn from my throat by the wrenching realization that Dennis Farina's character, Michael Torello and Anthony Dennison's character, Ray Luca, would never again trade vicious threats and warm lead. Pauly Taglia (whose surname means "cuts") would never again casually drive over someone with a semi in order to provide transplant organs to save a dying mafioso. Nor would he ever again say something delightfully stupid like when he asked Ray "Who is this guy Dom Perrignon?" Pauly thought he might be trying to cut in on their action in the alcohol trade.
I was enthralled by a show last year called New Amsterdam. A 17th century Dutch guy saves a Native American girl's life from another cheese-head who gets drunk and comes after her with a sword. The good guy winds up "mostly dead" (sorry, Miracle Max.) The girl's mom blesses the good Dutchman with long life. Really long life. So long, in fact, that he has to reinvent himself every twenty years or so in order to keep people from realizing that he's really 400 years old. For a while, he'll go by the name Amsterdam. Then he'll use the monicker York. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. The city has been called both since its settlement in about 1624. First, New Amsterdam, then New York.) Sometimes people almost catch on, like the time a girlfriend recognizes his 30-something face in a painting that was more than 70 years old.
The perpetually young hero sometimes pours out his sorrows to an aging bartender - - who is really Amsterdam's son whom he sired when he had a fling in the thirties with a gorgeous black singer. This show was wonderful in every respect. So, naturally, it's gone.
Sanctuary, about a 150 year old woman who doesn't look a day over 36 and is at least as appealing as her gorgeous teenage daughter, was another "too-good-to-last" show. Actually, I think they're going to re-run last year's episodes on the Sci Fi channel which has recently redubbed itself SyFy for no apparent reason. It was about a place which acts as both safe-haven and control for creatures and variant-humans which society isn't ready to know about just yet. The centenarian beauty who runs the outfit owns a Germanic castle which has somehow escaped the notice of everyone else on the outskirts of NYC. OK. I didn't say it was perfect. I just said I liked it.
Life on Mars was another fun one this past winter. A police detective from today gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He's still on the force in the same Big Apple, but his clothes are way out of style. So is his hair. So are most of his opinions and attitudes. But he's so good at his job that New York's finest of 1973 decide to keep him on. He gets weirded out occasionally, like when he sees someone on TV whom he knows will soon be assassinated or when he sees his 6 year old self or his alcoholic father, or his needy and lovely mother. He really wants to help her, but if he hangs around too much, she'll take it the wrong way. And she wants to take it the wrong way, because she has no idea that the nice guy with the clean-shaved sideburns is actually her son.
The girl just down the hall in his apartment building slips him some drugs and he wakes up handcuffed to his own bed and without benefit of clothing. And people who have no idea that AIDS is just around the corner are practicing "free love" with an expertise which might imply that they need no practice at all! To complicate all this, he occasionally hears people from the present trying to contact him. He assumes that he's in a coma and just needs to wake up for all the 1973 stuff to go away. But he's developing a soft spot in his heart for the uniformed only-girl-on-the-force down in his office.
Naturally, this one got the axe, too. At least I think it did, because the network hasn't mentioned it in months. It has ever been thus.
I recall a western back in the seventies which Shaynie and I really liked. They made a pilot movie and said it would be a new series. But it never was. It mixed western grittiness with a bit of spooky quasi-magic. It was called Hunter's Moon. The protagonist rode around with an inverted sheepskin vest on and a Henry rifle resting on his right knee. The ignorant network wanted to imply that there was something extra powerful about the Henry, but, of course, the only thing special about it was not its power but the fact that it would go bang 15 times before you had to stop to reload it. But I was willing to overlook that faux pas if only they would run the series. They didn't.
I'd be willing to bet (if I were a betting man) that this has happened to you, too. Some show that seemed too good to be true turned out to be just that. It disappeared before you had a good mouthful of it. Perhaps you'd be good enough to share some descriptions or titles of such stillborn series with me. But don't bother if it's going to upset you. Really! I understand...
But I've noticed a trend throughout my life which manifests itself so consistently that it bespeaks of a plot of some kind. I don't know who's behind the plot, but it's definitely there. It works like this. Someone comes up with a great show. The situation is cleverly different, the characters well drawn and well played. The music, costumes, photography, and direction all scintillate. It promotes thought. It thrills the intellect and the heart all at once. It entertains. It is wonderful!
It is doomed.
A really good show will never last. Someone, and I don't know who but I suspect he's in league with Satan, always sees to it that a great show gets cancelled. This usually happens after its first thirteen episodes, but sometimes it happens even sooner. Occasionally, the secret forces behind this phenomenon will allow the show to run for a whole year before jerking the rug out from under our feet. Once, back in the eighties, a tremendous series which was set in 1963 and was called Crime Story, made it all the way to the end of season two. Then, in the last episode of the season, and with NO WARNING WHATSOEVER, all the major characters go down in the same airplane! To this day there are probably people who lived in Moscow at that time who still get cold sweats after dark and ask themselves what the source was of that unearthly howl which split the Idaho panhandle's night air. But I know. It was my own lament, torn from my throat by the wrenching realization that Dennis Farina's character, Michael Torello and Anthony Dennison's character, Ray Luca, would never again trade vicious threats and warm lead. Pauly Taglia (whose surname means "cuts") would never again casually drive over someone with a semi in order to provide transplant organs to save a dying mafioso. Nor would he ever again say something delightfully stupid like when he asked Ray "Who is this guy Dom Perrignon?" Pauly thought he might be trying to cut in on their action in the alcohol trade.
I was enthralled by a show last year called New Amsterdam. A 17th century Dutch guy saves a Native American girl's life from another cheese-head who gets drunk and comes after her with a sword. The good guy winds up "mostly dead" (sorry, Miracle Max.) The girl's mom blesses the good Dutchman with long life. Really long life. So long, in fact, that he has to reinvent himself every twenty years or so in order to keep people from realizing that he's really 400 years old. For a while, he'll go by the name Amsterdam. Then he'll use the monicker York. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. The city has been called both since its settlement in about 1624. First, New Amsterdam, then New York.) Sometimes people almost catch on, like the time a girlfriend recognizes his 30-something face in a painting that was more than 70 years old.
The perpetually young hero sometimes pours out his sorrows to an aging bartender - - who is really Amsterdam's son whom he sired when he had a fling in the thirties with a gorgeous black singer. This show was wonderful in every respect. So, naturally, it's gone.
Sanctuary, about a 150 year old woman who doesn't look a day over 36 and is at least as appealing as her gorgeous teenage daughter, was another "too-good-to-last" show. Actually, I think they're going to re-run last year's episodes on the Sci Fi channel which has recently redubbed itself SyFy for no apparent reason. It was about a place which acts as both safe-haven and control for creatures and variant-humans which society isn't ready to know about just yet. The centenarian beauty who runs the outfit owns a Germanic castle which has somehow escaped the notice of everyone else on the outskirts of NYC. OK. I didn't say it was perfect. I just said I liked it.
Life on Mars was another fun one this past winter. A police detective from today gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He's still on the force in the same Big Apple, but his clothes are way out of style. So is his hair. So are most of his opinions and attitudes. But he's so good at his job that New York's finest of 1973 decide to keep him on. He gets weirded out occasionally, like when he sees someone on TV whom he knows will soon be assassinated or when he sees his 6 year old self or his alcoholic father, or his needy and lovely mother. He really wants to help her, but if he hangs around too much, she'll take it the wrong way. And she wants to take it the wrong way, because she has no idea that the nice guy with the clean-shaved sideburns is actually her son.
The girl just down the hall in his apartment building slips him some drugs and he wakes up handcuffed to his own bed and without benefit of clothing. And people who have no idea that AIDS is just around the corner are practicing "free love" with an expertise which might imply that they need no practice at all! To complicate all this, he occasionally hears people from the present trying to contact him. He assumes that he's in a coma and just needs to wake up for all the 1973 stuff to go away. But he's developing a soft spot in his heart for the uniformed only-girl-on-the-force down in his office.
Naturally, this one got the axe, too. At least I think it did, because the network hasn't mentioned it in months. It has ever been thus.
I recall a western back in the seventies which Shaynie and I really liked. They made a pilot movie and said it would be a new series. But it never was. It mixed western grittiness with a bit of spooky quasi-magic. It was called Hunter's Moon. The protagonist rode around with an inverted sheepskin vest on and a Henry rifle resting on his right knee. The ignorant network wanted to imply that there was something extra powerful about the Henry, but, of course, the only thing special about it was not its power but the fact that it would go bang 15 times before you had to stop to reload it. But I was willing to overlook that faux pas if only they would run the series. They didn't.
I'd be willing to bet (if I were a betting man) that this has happened to you, too. Some show that seemed too good to be true turned out to be just that. It disappeared before you had a good mouthful of it. Perhaps you'd be good enough to share some descriptions or titles of such stillborn series with me. But don't bother if it's going to upset you. Really! I understand...
2 comments:
Boy, did you open a can of worms with me! I too am convinced that if I like a show that it will soon be cancelled. This year alone I lost two of my favorite shows...of all time. Pushing Daisies, which I think was the most imaginative and most beautifully directed show EVER!!! And Eli Stone. Brilliant cast, and such a fun, unique show. They were both replaced by reality shows. I died a little inside.
I still haven't recovered from Frank's Place being cancelled in the late 80's.
When I'm a producer in heaven, I'm going to reunite these casts and let them finish things off, the way they should have been able to in the first place!
The guy that plays Boromirs father IS a really good actor!
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