The problem with schedule shuffles is that they end up losing a significant amount of the viewers who are apparently hooked up with the ratings boxes they pay attention to. Which in turn leads to the cancellation of the program.

So PVR viewings don't count towards ratings? That sounds like a pretty skewed dataset... oh wait. Unless the thinking is that PVR viewings don't count towards ratings, because PVR users won't be watching the adverts. That would make a sick sort of sense.

Peter

The Nielson company that does the ratings didn't include PVR stats for a long time. Likely something technical. Now I believe they do PVR stats as well. But many people (myself included) believe the networks place far too much confidence in the Nielsons.

The bigger problem however is that advertisers (also) look at the same ratings and won't be inclined to advertise on shows with low numbers. That's why it doesn't matter how good a show is nor how many people watch it or its commercials. It's all about what numbers the people with the magic boxes report.

Thankfully there are specialty cable channels where the bean counters think differently than their counterparts at the broadcast networks, which has lead to the creation, and continuation, of a number of fantastic series which would not have lasted a half season on broadcast, if they were picked up at all.

Passionate fans don't bring in the advertisement revenue, the number of fans does. Since networks aren't on the payment plan of something like the HBOs or Showtimes of the world, they need a certain number of fans so they can justify ad slot prices, which in turn pays for the show. I'm not sure many of the networks are in the business to lose money.

I'm definitely not happy about some of the choices (like Firefly, but I didn't see it until a while after it was canceled), I can see the reasoning behind it though.

Well, yeah, I don't disagree with you. I think you missed my point.

It's not an injustice to cancel an unpopular show, no matter how good it is. My point was more about how they cancel them. Really, how difficult would it be to give a show a chance to wrap up its story? The good will they'd garner would be worth it, IMO.

I think the problem is some of the stories just drag on without a real ending in sight. If they are bleeding money, they just want to fill that slot up with something profitable as soon as possible. I'm not sure wrapping up a lot of series would even be possible under those circumstances.

Many years ago, DC Comics licensed properties from TSR, the role-playing game company, and produced, IIRC, four comics. One of them was based on Gamma World called Gammarauders. It did not sell well, and was scheduled to be canceled at issue 12, and the creators aimed to wrap up their storyline. However, it sold so poorly that DC changed its mind and decided to cancel it at issue 10 instead. The creators were unable to wrap up the storyline, so issue 10 included several pages of lightly illustrated text describing the plot to wrap up the storyline.

It would be great if TV show creators would do the same thing. I'm not suggesting they have someone narrate the plot at the end of the last episode, but posting a summary online would be excellent.

That said, there has been at least one instance of continuing a TV show as a comic book series: Buffy.

Just like the successful series: Heroes, Lost, ad infinitum.

Run a Star Wars scroller (in reverse, possibly) for the final episode...?

Wow, Bitt, I've often had the exact same idea. Sometimes that actually happens, too! For example, I watched all the aired episodes of the failed Nathan Fillion show Drive. It honestly wasn't a great show but he was fantastic in it (of course! when is he not?), and the story was somewhat compelling. After the show was canceled, the creator didn't exactly give the entire wrap-up, but he did give away most of the coming surprises that they would have slowly revealed throughout the series.

But that's an excellent point you make. It's clear that in this country, the networks are not going to care enough about us to do this, and it's not any effort for a show's creator to write up something and put it online.

I don't really consider Buffy as an example of this, though. I thought that show wrapped up pretty neatly, and ended before it dragged on too long. 7 seasons is a long time for a show to run, and I can't think of any off the top of my head that have run successfully longer than that (and I don't mean commercial success). I think Angel is a better example. I think that show had more story to tell. The comic is pretty good too (though sometimes I hate the art).

Carlton Cuse, one of the two showrunners for Lost was the showrunner for a show many years ago called The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.. It was an oater with some SF elements, kind of like Wild Wild West. There was an overarching storyline about a gold orb and a villain obsessed with it. The show was cancelled before it was ever explained well.

In recent years, Cuse gave an interview in which he mentioned Brisco and the gold orb plot. He said that the writers had no idea where they were going with that storyline, that it caused a lot of problems, and that he was never going to do that again. (I wish I could remember where I saw that interview. It may have been in the special features of the Brisco DVDs.)

Now, he could have been blowing smoke up our asses, but the plot elements of Lost hold together pretty well so far, with a lot of callbacks to seemingly unimportant details from distant prior episodes, so I'm inclined to say that he does know where the plot is going. In addition, they have a contract for about 32 more episodes over two more years and the show will end (and they knew that 16 episodes and a year ago) so if they didn't have an endgame before, they have had more than enough time to come up with one.

I know that your argument wasn't that it didn't have an ending, but that it was not in sight, so sorry if I'm arguing a point that you weren't trying to make. Still, I think a lot of people have learned something from The X-Files: that it's a bad idea to go into a show with a story arc and not at least know some major plot points and the ending.

Lost has a lot of broken plot points and numerous examples of broken continuity. While there was an idea of what the show was about when it was first conceived, it has been mentioned many times that plots and story lines have been adapted, enhanced, altered, or completely re-imagined from initial concepts.

No matter how much I've ever seen a show creator brag about how well conceived their project is, they all seem in the end to mostly make it up as they go along. This has been evident in Lost for a long time. To their credit, they have managed to tie back a lot of loose ends and make some corrections along the way. Last season rescued the show in my opinion, because it was previously already circling the bowl about to drop the last inch down the drain.

The first two episodes of this season were decent. I have confidence that we may see a season as good as the last one. Fingers crossed. Some plot elements are probably best left in the past without trying to tie them back in. I find convoluted or contrived tie-backs much more annoying.

Heroes has come back this season and somewhat smoothed out some of the damage they did last season, but it's still a pale, pale ghost of what it was during its first season. I don't believe for a second that anyone at that show has a strong idea of how episodes and the seasons fit into the overall plot. IMO, it suffered in a large way from lack of planning. An obvious thing this show's creators might want to keep in mind is character development and consistency. They take far too many liberties by pushing the characters, well... completely out of character.

More specifically, I was pointing out that, just when you think you're getting closure on a story arc, something else happens to justify stretching it out to another season.

I was about to offer '24' as a counterpoint, because each season does reach closure, and then they move on (yeah, I know it's not exactly high art). Thinking about it, however, I can't really offer '24', because I tend to buy/rent the box sets and then watch them in 4 to 6 hour slices, which (I guess) means I don't have to suffer wandering story arcs for too long.

My main problem is that I'm never in regularly enough of an evening to really get into a show, so unless I can dip in and out without thinking "WTF?" too often (or I suppose I could just watch the whole season in one go...), I tend to lose interest quite quickly.

Heck, I'd be happy just to know the story behind Book.

"He's no Shepherd..."

tanstaafl.

I hate to call you out, but I'd like to hear some of those examples.

I don't fully understand your points. It's not like the creators of Lost planned out and wrote exactly 117 episodes of their show, but I have faith that they created a good enough framework to hang a whole lot of great stories. Sure, they've changed course on a few plots during the show (ie Nikki and Paulo), but that doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing.


Heroes, on the other hand, is not better this season, it's worse. The problems I had with it before (terrible characters, ridiculous dialogue, absolutely no vision, and a complete lack of hope and joy), are still there and have worsened in most cases. It's just bad.

Argh! I hate that! I'm hoping it gets answered in a comic or something...

I'd argue that the characters aren't terrible, merely intentional archetypes and that the "ridiculous dialogue" is also somewhat intentional. It's supposed to be a comic book after all. (I know, not all comics are like that, and I'd be the first to say that and argue against that stereotype, but that's clearly what the creators are going for.) That said, I understand where you're coming from, and if you don't like it, you don't like it.

I'd argue with the notion that there's no vision. I like where the plot seems to be taking us. Yes, there have been some serious missteps, but it's not like it's Garcia Marquez.

But the part I don't get is "a complete lack of hope and joy". WTF does that have to do with relating a plot or having compelling characters or telling a story or anything else literary or cinematic? There is a long tradition in the field of literature that you might have heard of. It's called "tragedy". Look it up sometime.

I'd love to post some right now, but I have to think about it for a bit. I had a few in mind last week after watching the two new episodes, but didn't write them down - I'm not that anal.

I'm not speculating when I say that the Lost creators don't (or at least didn't) have a solid plan for their series. I'm going by what they and cast have said in interviews/press. One very early example was not killing off the Jack character. Another is the Hurley character. Both characters were changed and heavily influenced because of, and by, the actors cast for those parts.

It's good to have some flexibility in the design and plan for a show and for the most part Lost has made it work. Two seasons ago it was getting a bit tired and I absolutely hated the flash-forward finale. They made it work last year.

Anyway, if I can remember the items I had in mind last week or anything else I'll list them for you.

I agree with you about your Heroes points for the most part, but I still think last year's partial-season was total crap. That whole central american road-trip was terrible. They had way too much Mohinder (who used to be a decent character in Season 1). The whole Peter in Ireland thing was ill-conceived and completely superfluous. They killed off the Nicky character only to bring back the actress in the role of a long-list sister. That's my biggest complaint carried from last season to this. It does seem they severed the majority of last season because the continuity with this new one is negligible.

The bottom line is that I find the current season of Heroes much more watchable than last.

Bitt, I do think you give the people behind Heroes too much credit though. There has been some very bad writing on that show and a complete ignorance of character bios and traits by some writers. If any of this was purposeful then I'd have to say it makes it an even bigger blunder.

About the worst season of a formerly decent show I've ever seen however was the previous season of 24 (the 2006-2007 season). Powers Booth should never be on TV again.

I'm surprised we've had all this discussion of shows losing the plot and no discussion of Babylon 5 has ensued. Clearly, JMS had the whole thing mapped out in advance, but that mapping took quite a beating as actors changed, as the network tried to kill it off after four seasons rather than five, and so forth and so on. Still, despite all the insanity that happened in the real world, the story in JMS's world actually hung together pretty well.

You can say similar things about many of the different HBO and Showtime miniseries over the years. (I'm still bummed they killed Carnivale after only two seasons, although they did sort of vaguely kinda pay off the main tension that show had been building to for those two years.)

As to giving away enough details to reach closure, I suppose JMS is another good example of how this can (or might not) be done. He's got the whole damn world in his head. He could certainly tell us how the plague on Earth is sorted out. But he hasn't. (Damn him!) JMS would probably argue that he choses to keep these things to himself so they retain commercial value later on. Of course, if he gets hit by a bus, we all lose.

I'd argue that the last season of B5 was absolute crap. He went out of his way to wrap everything up (quite well, I might add) in the 4th season that he had nothing to do in the 5th, and people started acting well out of character for no reason. (Lennier comes to mind. I'm still pissed off about that one.)

I'd personally argue that the plague on Earth is somewhat irrelevant to the story. I'd also argue that JMS is a great plotter (even if he did lift large portions from The Lord of the Rings), but a lousy scripter. (As evidence, I submit every standalone B5 "movie".) And he'd present that story as a standalone plot, and it would suck. So that may influence my opinion of its relevance.

Wow, that was patronizing. I was trying to keep my responses short for once, so I apologize for not expanding on my point. I also felt I had already discussed my opinion on this in another thread, so I'm sorry if you didn't see that.

Here's a train of thought as an example of what I mean (sorry, I'm tired and I'm not sure how to explain this):

Almost every main character on the show does not enjoy having their powers. How emo are the writers of this show? All these people with amazing abilities and all they do is complain non-stop. Actually, there are only three characters in the whole series that I can think of that truly enjoy having their abilities: one is Claire's short-term boyfriend, and he was written off pretty quickly. Next is Micah, who was encouraged to not use his powers, and has since been practically written off for no reason that I can see (frankly, I'd much rather see his story than have another second of any of Ali Larter's characters). Then the last is Hiro. Oh, Hiro, what have they done to you? Aside from Peter, it's arguable that he had the best power of anyone, and look what they've done with the character. They spent the entire first season giving him tremendous personal growth, and have spent every episode since then turning him into a clown and an utter failure.

And don't give me this "tragedy" crap. The episodes of this show are not Shakespeare. When they sent Hiro back in time and had him reconnect with his mother, it was really well done. Then, in an almost comical way, they had Arthur pop in, steal Hiro's power, and pop out again. I think it took about five seconds. That's not compelling, it's not saying anything, and it's just frustratingly annoying because they had just essentially done the exact same thing a few episodes before, so what were we supposed to get out of that?

Anyway, go ahead and tear this assessment apart too. Try not to be so patronizing though. That was uncalled for.

I'll just sum up by saying it once again: every issue that Heroes is stumbling through with a heavy hand, The 4400 explored with a good deal of insight. That show had its problems, but at least it actually had some things to say, and didn't feel the need to actually say them out loud in a ridiculous narrative (and yes, I can see it's an attempt at something "comic book-eque," but that doesn't mean it works).

So thanks for making up my mind, I'll be happy to dump Heroes from my Tivo. If anyone on this board eventually tells me that the show suddenly greatly improved, I'll think about going back and catching up, but I think the chances of that are unlikely.

Sorry. That came off more patronizing than I meant it to. Still, just because people aren't happy doesn't make it bad. (Other things can and do. I recognize that there are elements of the show that are … less than ideal, but I still think it's entertaining, in a melodramatic, goofy way.)

Heroes is mostly ripping off a fairly good era of Uncanny X-Men, some thematically, some directly (check out Days of Future Past). But the main idea is that people with super powers were representative of people who were societal outcasts, from Jews in 1930s Germany to homosexuals in 1980s America, and like many of those peoples, wanted to hide their true selves from society at large. That is not a story of joy.

I get that theme, and it's one that really impressed me about the X-Men. The difference in Heroes is that society doesn't know about them, so these people are making themselves outcasts before they even know how the world will react to them. And that's my complaint, I suppose: all the characters on Heroes are a bunch of whiners

I wasn't able to watch more than about three episodes in season two and haven't bothered watching it since. I was kind of surprised it was still on the air. I'm not sure what changed, but season one I thought was awesome and season two just missed the mark totally for me.

I guess it was kind of like BS:G for me. I loved the first season and couldn't wait to see where they were going with it. Then, they just kind of lost it for me in either the second or third. It no longer had the same 'feel' I guess and went waaaaay too philosophical for my taste.

BS:G has indeed gotten very, very strange. But, unlike X-Files, there seems to be some measure of coherence to the crazy. In other words, even as they're piling it on, they're also simultaneously peeling back the onion and explaining some of the mysteries from earlier seasons. BS:G has clearly learned some of the lessons from B5, namely having a clear plot arc worked out from start to finish, which allows them to get away with the gradual reveals.

Heroes, on the other hand, is a total disaster. Season 2 was just am embarrassment. Season 3 at least got the pacing right, but kept unceremoniously killing people and/or leaving behind perfectly good characters who could/should be playing more of a role. Heroes had such potential, and they've just totally blown it. I'm just waiting for somebody to mention midichlorians.

It's worth noting that the Heroes showrunners were let go in November. I expect to see some changes in the coming months.

Not only that, but Bryan Fuller will be returning. That is the only thing that might keep me watching Heroes, though I didn't think the first couple episodes he wrote after his return were all that great - certainly not "Company Man"-great. That's definitely the best episode of the series, IMO.

I remember reading that it will be around the 20th episode before we would see any changes due to Bryan coming back.

20th episode? I didn't think any series was going 20 episodes this season 9other than "24"). The networks seem to be settling just above what the specialty cable channels have been producing. 12-16 episodes. Which is unfortunate when you're following a quality show. But it leaves them more room for a wider variety of (crap) programming.

I'm glad that Lost seems to be off to a really good start this season. I've quite enjoyed the first three episodes so far. Could be as good or better than last season.

I'm not sure what you mean. As far as I've seen there haven't been any shortened seasons this year aside from Lost, but that was planned since before the strike***. All the other shows seem to have their usual 20+ episode season. Right now Heroes appears to be scheduled for 19 episodes through March 9th, and usually the networks end their seasons in late June/early May.


I'll agree there, Lost appears to be running full-steam towards the finish line, and they're doing it from 30 episodes out, so that's impressive


*edit*

*** - and if you look at it, the original plan was to have these last three seasons be 16 episodes each, which would have made two regular 24-episode seasons if ABC weren't so desperate to hold onto their one good show.