NBC fascinates me.
If you don’t know already, they started the year at the top
of the pile of the big four (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox). Granted, it was by a narrow margin, and it
was mostly due to two shows: The Voice and Revolution.
Both of those shows went off the air in November.
And NBC? It dropped
to FIFTH place. Behind Univision, which
wasn’t even in the running.
And the truth of it is, they can’t staunch the flow of
viewers as they slip-slide away. The
Office is ending this year. 30 Rock put
up terrible numbers and also ended.
Smash came back and didn’t just tank, it taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanked.
On one particularly bad night, a couple of their shows got
eclipsed by the CW.
(The CW is a whole ‘nother thing. I don’t really know how they stay on the air
at this point. I mean, I can guess. They keep their prices down, they produce
most of their material in-house, so they can monetize it on iTunes and online
and on DVD , and they probably keep most of
the money from syndication as well…
(But yeah. I don’t
worry about the shows I like getting cancelled.
I worry about the channel coming to an end.)
How desperate is NBC?
They’re planning to UN-cancel The Sing-Off, most likely because the
ratings, though terrible, are better than a lot of their current running
programs.
(Another aside: They’re also going to get rid of Jay Leno,
who has won his time slot almost continually for 21 years straight, to bring in
someone younger. Because that worked SO
well last time? It is the equivalent of
having nine bad horses and one champion horse… and then shooting that horse in
the face.)
At any rate, next week, their big bad voodoo shows are
back. The Voice is returning. And Revolution is about to make a
(triumphant?) return.
Of course, there are flaws in the plan. Running The Voice twice a year just sounds
like a terrible idea. While it brings in
eyeballs (or has, anyway) the three winners so far have made almost no splash
in the actual music industry. They
probably would have gotten just as close to a having a record coming out if
they’d won The Price is Right.
Eventually, saturation is going to set in, and it’s going to
be sooner rather than later.
Revolution:
And then there’s Revolution, which has been off the air
since November. Nearly four months have
gone by since anyone saw it. There are
no DVDs available. You can pick up the
show in Amazon and I’m guessing on iTunes, but it’ll cost you $30 to catch it
in HD.
And I just learned that they cut the season order from 22
episodes to 20… probably because they realized that they want it to line up
with The Voice EXACTLY in a desperate attempt to keep the show afloat.
In other words, even NBC doesn’t trust one of its biggest
hits.
You want the truth?
NBC is scrambling at this point to hold onto anything that’s going to
fill time. They’ve got shows dropping
off left and right, and sooner or later they’re going to have to choose to hold
a line and try to rebuild.
On that level, however, I think they’re pretty much done
now. The Voice/Revolution combo might be
a one-two punch, but it’s one that’s going to lose steam quickly.
They need to start building for next year, and they need to
do it now.
More on this further down the path.
American Idol:
I always forget that Idol has patches where they throw you
six hours of programming a week, which is insane.
I made my predictions, and then Idol did something
fascinating, and told you where most of the contestants fell on the
spectrum. And Lazaro was number four.
Ugh. Look, I don’t
want to pick on the guy. I suspect he’s
dealt with that his whole life, and I understand that. And I think he has a nice voice. But he is in no way deserving of fourth
place, which means he’s either getting a massive boost from Vote for the Worst,
or people are responding to his sob story, and either way, something is borked
about the show.
Especially if Amber, who really seems like she could be the
next Whitney Houston, is sitting at number five. (And then this week, is falling to the bottom
three.)
If anyone was asking me (they ain’t) my biggest admonition
to the performers would be to never, ever, ever, ever get out of your comfort
zone. Scotty spent the entire season
singing country and won. Phillip spent
the entire season singing like Dave Matthews and won.
Do what you do, play it as safe as possible, win. That seems to be the formula.
Hoo, mama, it’s going to be a brutal year.
Modern Family:
Still funny. I still
expect the show to run for ten years, after which the kids can retire and never
work again. If only we all had that
option in life.
Supernatural:
I said last time I did one of these that I’d totally watch a
Men of Letters show.
You know what? I
think we’re watching it now. And it’s a
GREAT show. It is, I think, getting near
season three levels of greatness, and I’ve gone from liking the show a lot to
loving the show again. Because I know
that each week it’s going to be a little scary, a lot funny, and a great way to
kill an hour.
Bravo guys and girls of Supernatural. You really accomplished something – making an
eight-year-old show totally vital and fun.
The Vampire Diaries:
Recently, my wife hasn’t been as into the show, but when I
press her about why, she really doesn’t seem to be able to pinpoint it. Well, maybe a little. The show is/was, at first anyway, about a
girl and two brothers, and unfortunately the girl at the center of the show is,
most weeks, the worst part of it. This
is not the fault of the actress, who is flat-out great, but because her
character undergoes SO much drama that she spends most of her episodes either
sad, angry, or mean. She’s been more
“fun” these last couple of weeks mostly by becoming completely amoral, which is
the kind of thing that gets tiring quickly.
But if I had to guess what my wife’s primary aggravation is,
it’s probably fatigue.
It’s a fast show, it’s ALWAYS been a fast show, and even now
it’s still trying to push along at Mach 6, and it can’t quite get there. The seams show sometimes. The character work gets a little
sketchy. (See above, re: main female
character.)
The show is going an interesting place now, with an ancient
being and a single dose of a “cure” for vampirism. The show is trying to up the stakes (ahem)
more and more, but…
I can really only see one way out of what they’re
doing. There’s talk of bringing back the
dead, which would include all of the good people and bad people who haven’t
totally moved on.
This would turn the show into more of a spin-off of itself,
as the primary cast works to fight off all the suddenly-raised bad guys.
I can’t say that’s my favorite idea, but it would take the
show into a new place at the time when it kind of needs to go to one.
We shall see how it plays out.
Community:
Here we must talk about NBC again. Community was always kind of half-dead show,
shunted to Friday until they decided to mid-season it.
And the ratings haven’t been great. There was a solid drop, a slight uptick, a
big uptick, and now it looks like it’s gone down a bit again.
But there’s nothing else to take it’s place.
1600 Penn is dying.
The Office and 30 Rock are over at the end of this season. NBC has to build something, and they need to
do it now.
So… I still think Community has a shot at one more season.
And I’m good with that.
I got down on the first episode of the new season for not quite
“getting” the show, but since then it’s shaken out the cobwebs and started
offering episodes that feel like Community in its normal groove.
It’s imperfect, but it’s also a show in its fourth
season. This was probably inevitable no
matter who held the reins.
Great? By no
means. But there’s a whole LOT
of good, and that’s enough for me.
The Big Bang Theory
I keep saying this show is just okay, and in some sense
that’s not fair. This last week brought
us an episode about Howard and how his dad ran away.
What it demonstrated is that the cast can really bring A+
performances when the material warrants it.
And it showed that the writers can do more than make nerd jokes.
So good job guys. My
only request is that you remember you can do that. Thanks.
Glee:
*sigh*
I might have told this story before, but I need to tell it
again.
A few months ago I went on YouTube and pulled up Don’t Stop
Believin’, as performed on the pilot episode of Glee.
There were, and are, so many things to talk about from those
three or four minutes. Placed up against
the episode from last week, they don’t even seem like the same show anymore.
I mean, consider the characters: Finn, Rachel, Artie(!),
Tina(!), Mercedes(!). The cheerleaders
who eventually became part of Glee were still mostly random mean girls.
Sue actually kind of made sense. Will was a sad sack with a confusing life
instead of… whatever he is now. Some guy
who seems to have no adult friends, who did something in Washington
You know what? I just
dunno, man.
Equally ridiculous are the now-constant attempts to explain
why people aren’t there from episode to episode. The obvious real-life answer is, of course,
they can’t afford that much cast. But,
ugh. This is a problem that stems from a
fixable issue.
Namely: It’s time to cut some dead wood.
Like, say, all the kids who graduated and moved on and
finished their emotional arc pretty well and correctly and fairly.
But you know what?
Let’s take a minute and talk about what I do like about Glee:
I occasionally still enjoy the musical numbers. I’d guess about half. My primary complaint is that I feel like they
take fewer and fewer chances with their choices, often just remaking music
videos and giving us the exact same song we heard on the radio, but with
different voices.
On the other hand, once the show is off the air, I don’t
know where I’m going to hear whatever is sitting at the top of the musical
charts these days. So I’ll let that at
least partially go.
I think I’m the only one, but while I don’t like Jake all
that much by himself, I do like him with Marley and I do like him with
Puck.
Surprisingly, I also kind of like Kitty with Puck. It’s random and odd, but they have a
surprising chemistry.
Not sure what to make of that, really.
What else do I care about?
The Unique storyline seems to be trying very hard to go somewhere, and
it might yet make it. Sadly, Degrassi is
doing something similar and making Glee look stupid.
I do kind of like the whole Sam/Blaine friendship. Actually, I’ve gotten to really like Sam in
general. He’s sort of becoming The Fonz
of the show, inasmuch as he can be sprinkled nicely through the show and raise
the entertainment bar by 16%.
Otherwise?
They gotta wipe the cast.
All the old students need to go. New
York
There’s talk of a season five now, and in my darkest hour I
must admit I will watch it. I’ll watch
until the end.
But when I watch Don’t Stop again, I’ll feel a little sad
that we’re never gonna get back to those innocent, carefree days again. When we thought we might get a Tina episode
that didn’t suck. When Rachel Berry was
totally obnoxious but more fun because she didn’t get what she wants all the
time, whether it’s a boyfriend or to not be knocked up or to get into the
school of her dreams.
You know, maybe that’s what bugs me – the fact that the show
is trying to “very special snowflake” these characters.
As a high school student, one of the things that really
stuck with me was the woman who came back to speak at a “what to expect in
college” seminar. She flat-out said that
one of the hardest things to deal with was how you went from being the star,
and from being important, to being the very, very, very small fish.
I think there’s a great story in that idea. What if Rachel got to school and discovered
that everyone WAS better than her? What
if she didn’t get into the school at all?
There’s a much more interesting dramatic show in our “big three” trapped
at home and trying to figure out their next move, realizing that high school is
genuinely over.
They kinda-sorta did it with Finn, until the show let him
off the hook and put him in charge of the Glee club.
Heck, we even know there’s a local community theater on the
show, why not get them involved in that, and have them try to work out what
they’re really going to do with their lives?
I would have even been fine with Rachel eventually getting into her big,
fancy, school, but mostly I want her to fail for a while.
Yeah, yeah. I
know. None of that is going to
happen. Such is life.
Spartacus:
I went on and on about how sad I will be when this is gone,
and how much sadder I will be if this show doesn’t eventually grab and keep an
ever-expanding audience.
Suffice to say, if you’re not overly averse to adult
situations and graphic violence, it’s a brilliant, brilliant show.
We’re only a week and change from April now, and soon shows
will start to slip off the air.
Spartacus only has three episodes to go, which clears the path for us to
watch Game of Thrones. Walking Dead only
has a couple more week to kill (hah!) and then we’ll be into May, and it will
finally be time to watch all the Bunheads and Parks and Recreation episodes
I’ve been hoarding.
Who knows? Maybe
we’ll finally finish watching Lost this summer…
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