Killing The Best Show on TV
How much do I love Arrested Development? So much that this absurd bit of hyperbole doesn’t seem like that big a stretch :
For believing that the earth orbited the sun, Galileo died under house arrest.For laying the groundwork for ethics and philosophy, Socrates was sentenced to death by poisoning.
And for creating the most intricately woven, wickedly smart series ever to make it to television, Mitchell Hurwitz has to watch his “Arrested Development” get slapped around in the ratings by the likes of “Yes, Dear,” “Still Standing” and any number of schlumpy-guy-with-a-hot-wife sitcoms.
Humanity has a long history of punishing visionaries, but this is ridiculous.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the punishment is getting worse :
The Bluth clan of Fox’s “Arrested Development” is also headed for the exit after Fox has cut back the third-season order on the Emmy-winning comedy to 13 episodes.
The fact that the ratings for Arrested Development are crap is hardly a secret. Creator Mitchell Hurwitz even acknowledged it as he accepted his second consecutive Emmy a few weeks ago :
We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out the fact that the academy has twice rewarded us for something that you people won’t watch. Tomorrow you have a chance – tomorrow at 8 o’clock – you know we’d appreciate it. You’ll get back to CBS in time for `Two and a Half Men.
It seems to me that there are two big obstacles standing between AD and the enormous popularity that it deserves :
Arrested Development is on the worst network at the worst time with the worst shows. This may have helped the most critically acclaimed comedy on TV attract the five or six people who are fans of Prison Break and Kitchen Confidential, but for the rest of us, Monday nights on Fox is hardly the ideal venue for your best show. Especially when the already shitty schedule is interrupted for a month by baseball and is about to be interrupted again to make room for a double-helping of Prison Break during sweeps. The show rewards repeated viewings. Granted, it’s not harder to get into than a show like Lost or Desperate Housewives, people aren’t accustomed to anything other than the easiest of laughs from a 30 minute sitcom. True, there’s a lot of silliness on the show, but all of the friends I’ve tried to attract to the show didn’t become big fans until they watched 3 or 4 episodes. This is especially difficult when you consider that the show probably lost a lot of viewers who watched a single episode to give the show a chance and walked away thinking it was all hype.
That said, these are hardly insurmountable problems. I’m entering fantasyland at this point, but here’s what I’d do if I had the power to save the show :
Before the ink is dry on the cancellation notice from FOX, the show should be picked up by NBC to add to their Tuesday night sitcom lineup alongside “The Office” and “My Name Is Earl”. If ever there was a perfect audience for a neglected show, this is it. They should give away a DVD with five episodes from the first season. This might sound weird, but it worked (for me, at least) with “Everybody Hates Chris”. I like Chris Rock and I was curious about his show after all the hype I’d heard, but I don’t think I would have ever watched an episode if UPN hadn’t stuck a DVD of the pilot into a copy of Entertainment Weekly. I don’t watch UPN and I’m really weary of new sitcoms, but this promo let me see the show on my own time and sat on my coffee table as a reminder of the show until I set TIVO to record it. A similar promotion with enough episodes from the first season for people to really get a taste for why AD is so great would be a perfect way to re-introduce people to the show as well as build up sales of the DVD box sets.
So please Mr. TV-Man, save the funniest show on television. The Bluth family is too young to die.
UPDATE : A fellow fan over at The Huffington Post vents :
I’m one of Arrested’s biggest fans and yet during its first two seasons I’d say I only saw a third of the episodes because of confusion over it’s air time. Week after week I’d tune in to find it was continually pre-empted and rescheduled because of Sunday Night Football and Malcom in the Middle re-runs (the most frustrating part of this was when I finally would catch an episode it would typically be a re-run of one of the few I’d actually seen before!) THEN, when they finally put it on Mondays and I think I’ve got a handle on the show’s schedule they preempt the damn thing again for FIVE WEEKS because of baseball! Their website stated at the start of the hiatus that the show would be back Oct 31st, but then when I checked that night, it was two straight hours of that assinine Prison Break show (a guy goes to prison to break his brother out? does that make logical sense to anyone?!). If I hadn’t stayed in the room during the commericla break of the first episode last Monday I wouldn’t have known there was another on at 8:30.Seriously, how do the brainiacs at Fox not realize that their inability to capitalize on the show’s incredible buzz is based solely on their inconsistant programming schedule?! I mean, it would seem to me that should be one of the must fundamental principles to growing a show’s fan base. Same time, same night, week after week. Don’t preempt, don’t postpone. DUH!
As David Cross ranted at the end of the blooper reel on the season two DVD, the programmers at FOX aren’t the only ones who deserve some scorn :
“I’ve got an idea for what you can do, why don’t you fucking fire your complete marketing team and get a new one there that knows how to market a show that won five motherfucking emmys, golden globes, SAG awards, WGA awards, DVA awards, Producers Guild Awards, critic’s top 10 list; you know if you can’t fucking market that kind of show and get better ratings then maybe the problem doesn’t lie here maybe it lies with marketing.”
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If only you become president of NBC in time! Seriously, the future is bleak if Arrested Development is cancelled. Where’s an useless internet petition when you need one?
Comment by Joe — November 11, 2005 @ 6:18 pm
I feel like we should thank our lucky stars that we managed to get three seasons out of Fox on this one. TV history is littered with television shows that were amazing but only managed to see one or two seasons. A fourth season would be nice, but this is one time I’m not going to complain. Fox has shown a willingness to stick with shows (24, Family Guy, Arrested Development) that I think other networks would have bailed on a long time ago.
I’m also thankful that there are some other sitcoms on network television this year that are actually funny.
Comment by E-Rock — November 12, 2005 @ 6:01 am
Actually, Fox treats its best shows like bastard children. What they really have is a willingness to greenlight shows, for reasons I can’t imagine, only to abandon them without reason. If I had a dollar for every show that started on Fox and was really interesting, only to see it cancelled without meaning, I’d be rich.
(Hell, I’m surprised King of the Hill has lasted 10 seasons. it’s brilliant, therefore, fox should have cancelled it).
Remember Undeclared? brilliant, and cancelled before an audiance was found. And don’t forget, family guy was also constantly preempted, until it was finally cancelled in it’s (haphazardly aired) 3rd season. The only reason it has been renewed is that the DVDs sold faster than anyone thought possible, and the show became Cartoon Network’s most successful Adult Swim show.
Speaking of, Futurama is another inexplicable cancellation. When they cancelled it, the ratings were better than Family Guy (it’s a vastly superior show too, so brilliant and underrated). Apparently, they were fighting with Matt Groening at the time, they couldn’t cancel the Simpsons, so they cancelled his other show. Like Family Guy, Futurama is also being brought back, but only because the DVDs sold remarkably well, and because it also has been a huge hit on Cartoon Network.
24 makes sense because, as incredibly awesome as it is, it also is pretty much right wing fantasy-porn. Government agents torturing people, breaking the law, doing WHATEVER IT TAKES akes akes akes to fight evil, regardless of the morality of their actions, of course Fox is going to promote that. 24 is aired withoout any interruptions in the schedule. They released the DVDs with huge fanfare and they promote the shit out of it. The only reasonthe next season has been delayed at all, is so that they can air 24 episodes over 24 weeks without interrupting for the holidays.
My point is that Fox, for whatever reason, chooses the fate of its best shows – some survive, and some don’t. They wanted AD to die, and probably would have killed it sooner had it not been for the multiple emmys. Why anyone with a cool idea would ever try to get it on fox is beyond me, but I hope that people will stop doing that.
Comment by Ross — November 12, 2005 @ 10:10 am
Futurama was canceled because it was a spectacularly expensive show to produce. Family Guy is produced for chicken feed and could be profitable just on basic cable. The difference should be obvious to anyone who watches five minutes of either show.
Comment by steve — November 12, 2005 @ 12:14 pm
The people at Fox are idiots. The only reason “Everybody Hates Chris” is on UPN to begin with is because Fox bailed out on it. I just read that “Prison Break” may be going on a six month hiatus, though, so who the hell knows what’ll happen?
Comment by mona — November 12, 2005 @ 4:32 pm
Fox “sticking with” Family Guy is hardly to their credit. A show that deeply and wilfully dumb by rights should no be discussed in a thread on the often sublime Arrested Development.
Comment by John E Thelin — November 13, 2005 @ 10:31 pm
Firma Ruffel & Bygg kånkar.
Fox har lagt ned Arrested Development. Den nyligen påbörjade tredje säsongen kommer att avslutas halvvägs, efter avsnitt 13. I blott två och en halv säsong fick vi njuta av familjen Bluths förvecklingar. Detta fr…
Trackback by Gärningsmannaprofilen — November 14, 2005 @ 5:08 am
Dvd is really the best way to watch Arrested Development, the only problem is that just selling DVDs won’t raise enough for the show to continue off of broadcast TV — if only it could be picked up by another network, but I can’t see Murdoch and his minions allowing that to happen.
Comment by rev.paperboy — November 14, 2005 @ 7:46 am
Then you understand how I feel about Danny the Douchebag Goldberg firing Marc Maron from Air America’s Morning Sedition program.
Comment by Jill — November 14, 2005 @ 9:50 am
Seriously, how do the brainiacs at Fox not realize that their inability to capitalize on the show’s incredible buzz is based solely on their inconsistant programming schedule?!
Sounds like they’re taking strategy seminars from the pre-Reid Democratic Party – find a way to screw it up.
Comment by joseph — November 15, 2005 @ 8:02 am
If the iTunes TV episode sales work out, there may be an alternative distribution method. I would pay $2/episode. If there are even 500k others like me, they could make $1M off an episode that costs $800k to produce. Ron Howard could bankroll it himself.
It will never happen, but I can dream, right?
Comment by Doc — November 15, 2005 @ 9:40 am
I heard an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with one of the creators of Arrested Development. He said that they had problems getting scripts done on time – that was one of the reasons one of the seasons was cut from 22 to 15 episodes.
It looks like there may be a little of Ren&Stimpy and Moonlighting syndrome going on: great show – unable to produce on time. So the network cuts back on the number of episodes and starts shifting the schedule around. Hard to break out of that cycle.
What really pissed me off about Fox was cancelling Firefly.
Comment by Dave — November 15, 2005 @ 11:56 am
Video for David Cross’ rant is here. Reading it is not the same as watching him deliver it in his Mrs. Featherbottom bra…
After a word of mouth campaign finally got a bunch of new people ready to watch this brilliant show this season, FOX decided to change it’s night to accomodate a five-year old retread cartoon, pre-empt it for a month with baseball and then jerk it on and off the air to show “Prison Break” repeats. No wonder it couldn’t “get enough ratings.” How many ads did I see for goddamn “Prison Break” during the playoffs? Perhaps they might have spread the ad money around a little? Maybe built up a franchise night, with good shows leading into other good shows…? Thought far enough ahead to realize “Prison Break” is only good for one season?
Idiots. They lucked into hiring some talented people to come up with a brilliant show, it wins Emmys and everything else, and then they pull the plug without ever giving it a chance.
So what’s on FOX last night? Last week’s “Prison Break”, followed by this week’s “Prison Break.” Ingenius.
I guess FOX viewers must really be too stupid to follow a serial. Or, to program their TiVos and VCRs…
Comment by Mr Furious — November 15, 2005 @ 12:46 pm
How can you possably get this worked ups about a low life show on a low life network on a low life medium?
Comment by couser — November 15, 2005 @ 2:05 pm
Actually, Fox treats its best shows like bastard children. What they really have is a willingness to greenlight shows, for reasons I can’t imagine, only to abandon them without reason.
Bingo. And to Futurama and Undeclared, add Firefly and Wonderfalls. Reportedly, Andy Richter was another excellent show they killed. At a slightly lower level, there’s Tru Calling.
Fox’s new motto should be “Graveyard of Quality Television”.
Comment by Tom Hilton — November 15, 2005 @ 2:30 pm
It’s perfect for HBO. They could air it their Sunday night comedy spot following their hour long dramas.
Then we could see Liza Minelli naked.
On second thought, maybe HBO isn’t the right home for the show.
Comment by Patriotboy — November 15, 2005 @ 2:33 pm
A low life medium? Do you realize that mindset is as close-minded and ignorant as that of anti-intellectuals who refuse to read books? Decrying an entire medium because its most popular content is crap is like not listening to music because Creed sucks, refusing to go to the movies because of Deuce Bigalow : Male Gigalow, avoiding the theater because Andrew Llyod Webber is an overrated hack, or hating every painting because Thomas Kinkade’s work is syrupy and obnoxious.
Comment by greg — November 15, 2005 @ 2:33 pm
Don’t let Scrubs- one of the last smart and funny sitcoms- become the next casualty:
http://www.supportscrubs.com
Comment by devin — November 15, 2005 @ 2:39 pm
Wonderfalls was on Fox too, for its 4 episode run. It’s out on DVD so you can see all 13 episodes, and they are all great. Damn shame, but you can buy the DVD.
AR at least got a couple seasons, although trying to establish an audience with all that bouncing around the schedule is mighty difficult.
Comment by QrazyQat — November 15, 2005 @ 2:40 pm
did anyone see the “Standards & Practices” episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force?
here you go
“Standards and practices are a vital link in keeping good and funny shows away from you, the viewer.”
Don’t forget about institutional pressures to keep entertaining shows off the air, or at best marginalized.
Comment by g — November 15, 2005 @ 2:54 pm
Anyone dissing “Family Guy” is a fucking idiot. The show was hilarious, Fox dumped it after about two seasons, then picked it back up after the DVDs turned out to be best-sellers, and the reruns were hugely popular on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.
The new episodes are great too. Now AD is equally great, and Fox is predictably shitting the bed, but I see no reason to knock Family Guy in the process.
For something truly amusing, check the first episode of this new season, where Peter Griffin runs down the entire list of shows that have come and gone on Fox since the last season they were on–it’s literally about 20-30 titles.
Comment by Michael — November 15, 2005 @ 3:15 pm
My only fear is that the characters turn into one dimensional gags to chase ratings.
Arrested Development is the only television show I watch, other than Rome, of course.
Please let HBO have it.
Comment by ChrisS — November 15, 2005 @ 3:20 pm
If “AD” goes to HBO or any cable channel, it’ll be essentially cancelled for me. We got rid of our cable for obvious reasons. I do miss The Daily Show, but that’s all. Can’t rationalize paying nearly $60 a month for TDS.
I have turned so many people onto “AD,” and all of them ended up loving it.
Stupid Fox. And stupid people who watch shit like CSI: Whocares or The Ghost Whisperer.
Comment by lisa — November 15, 2005 @ 3:32 pm
I’ve never watched the program, I have to admit; but my wife is on an e-mail list (that has nothing to do with AD) where the fans are mailing around DVD sets of the past seasons. You get it in the mail, watch the entire set, and then mail it on. That’s dedication. Season 2 is at our house right now.
Comment by earwicker23 — November 15, 2005 @ 4:00 pm
turn off that fucking thing!
Comment by roberto — November 15, 2005 @ 4:40 pm
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
NBC (at least based on their record with The Office and My Name is Earl), needs to poach Fox’s entire show-finding team.
We love AD, and Kitchen Confidential is actually quite good, but Fox seems to be willfully trying to kill them. The oddest thing about it to me is that it’s a very poor way of making money.
Of course, that gets me into tinfoil-hat mode, and then I start thinking that it’s a right-wing plot to ruin intelligent television. :)
Comment by Alec Munro — November 15, 2005 @ 8:00 pm
What about “The Tick”?
that was genius….and, of course, fox killed it.
R
firefly
arrested development
futurama
oh yeah, i highly second greg’s comment above.
media snobs drive me nuts with their stupidity….content snobs, now that’s something else
Comment by who — November 15, 2005 @ 8:49 pm
Speaking of brilliant shows killed by Fox, let us not forget “Get A Life” – where have you gone, Chris Elliott?
Comment by paperboy2000 — November 15, 2005 @ 9:53 pm
I am so sad to have to add Arrested Development to the Firefly, Wonderfalls (which is SO good — check it out on DVD if you haven’t seen it!), Futurama (Is it coming back? — I haven’t heard that)bin of great shows FOX canceled. At least AD got 3 seasons; Wonderfalls got 4 whole episodes. I’ve started to wonder if FOX hasn’t just decided that DVD sales are more profitible than actually putting on a network schedule. They show a couple of episodes as a preview, then in a few months you can by the DVD! Instead of a network, they have a DVD preview showcase!
Sad.
Comment by Jamie — November 15, 2005 @ 10:02 pm
I don’t think this can be blamed on timeslot or network (in the sense that “fewer people watch Fox, so it gets bad ratings” – I think the Fox people bear much blame in other ways).
Basically, I’m not sure what’s wrong with the timeslot. Prison Break is apparently reasonable popular, for a Fox show (and, imo, a fairly enjoyable show, if rather absurd), and, anyway, AD’s on at 8 PM so it’s not like other shows are giving it crappy lead-ins – it is the lead-in. And its competition is “King of Queens” on CBS, which is awful; “Surface” on NBC, which I assume based on my own reaction that nobody has ever heard of; “Wife Swap” on ABC, which also is crap, and which almost certainly gets poor ratings (besides the really big reality shows, most reality shows get awful ratings – they’re just so cheap to make that the networks love to do so); “Seventh Heaven” on WB, which sucks; and “One on One” on UPN, which I’ve never heard of.
This is hardly a competitive line-up – I assume “King of Queens” gets good ratings, but the rest shouldn’t be a problem.
What is a problem is the constant preemption. The biggest problem is the World Series. I have no idea why Fox would have wanted exclusive rights to the baseball postseason, but it completely screws over any chance they might have to establish an audience for a new show before sweeps, unless they start the show in the summer (as they did for Prison Break, and, a few years ago, the OC). Looking at Fox’s line-up, almost all the shows are either ancient – Simpsons, King of the Hill, COPS, America’s Most Wanted, That Seventies Show, Family Guy (sort of), Malcolm in the Middle; or new this season – Prison Break, Bones, War at Home, Reunion, American Dad, Kitchen Confidential, Stacked, something called Killer Instinct that I’d never heard of before.
There are only a few shows in their second-fifth season or so – Bernie Mac, Arrested Development, House, the OC (which started in the summer), and that’s it (well, you could count Trading Spouses, but I won’t). Basically, the issue seems to be that Fox is almost completely incapable of turning any of its new shows into hits. The only show to survive from last season is House. AD and the OC are the only shows from the season before that, and AD is constantly on the verge of being cancelled. There are no shows from the season before that. Bernie Mac is the only show from the season before that. And there are no shows from the season before that (Malcolm in the middle was a mid-season replacement from 1999-2000).
I’m not sure if the other networks are much better in this respect, but this seems like a dismally poor record. In the same “starting between fall 2001 and midseason 2005″ period for which Fox has a pitiful 4 surviving non-reality series (with one on the edge of cancellation), ABC has 10. CBS and NBC are closer to Fox, with 6 and 5, respectively, but both have considerably more shows which started in 1998-2000 than Fox. And for CBS, at least, many of the shows are one hour dramas, as compared to Fox, which has two dramas and two half hour sitcoms.
Comment by John — November 15, 2005 @ 11:44 pm
Here’s the useless internet petition…
Save Arrested Development
Comment by Karl — November 16, 2005 @ 6:15 am
I work in sales at a FOX broadcast station. I can’t add much to what has already been said in this thread other than to say that these same problems drive us insane, too. FOX will not give shows a chance. They constantly move shows based on what seems to be pure random chance.
I’d just like to add another great FOX show to the list of the prematurely canceled, “Space Above and Beyond”. It was a good military sci-fi show coupled with intelligent dramatic writing. Sort of like the new Battlestar Galactica.
Comment by Aluvius — November 16, 2005 @ 6:48 am
I’m sure Wife Swap has an audience. It’s terrible, but very hard to stop watching an episode once you’ve started.
Comment by tps12 — November 16, 2005 @ 6:52 am
>Futurama was canceled because it was a
>spectacularly expensive show to produce.
>Family Guy is produced for chicken feed
Proof, please.
Comment by bartkid — November 16, 2005 @ 7:00 am
They’re showing it on MONDAYS??!! I have been checking the Sunday TV Guide religiously waiting for it to come back on after Baseball and now it turns out it have been on Mondays!! We LOVE that show and make a special point of watching it. What a bunch of completely moronic a**holes at Fox. Between them and USA network I’ve had it.
I guess I’ll need to buy a Tivo.
Comment by Steve Jung — November 16, 2005 @ 11:49 am
>Futurama was canceled because it was a
>spectacularly expensive show to produce.
>Family Guy is produced for chicken feed
Proof, please.
The relative quality of the two shows is proof enough for me.
Comment by Tom Hilton — November 16, 2005 @ 12:00 pm
It was sad news for me, too, when the news of AD being reduced to 13 shows hit the internet. Consoling myself with the first two seasons did indeed make me laugh, but only served to cement the fact that it’s just so unfair to pull the plug on a show that, for severe lack of network promotion & support, isn’t sucking in the casual viewer. Put it on any night and stick with it, for the love of all that is just, and it will take off. *sigh* But it may be too late…
Comment by Peter — November 16, 2005 @ 12:08 pm
They’re showing it on MONDAYS??!! I have been checking the Sunday TV Guide religiously waiting for it to come back on after Baseball and now it turns out it have been on Mondays!! We LOVE that show and make a special point of watching it. What a bunch of completely moronic a**holes at Fox. Between them and USA network I’ve had it.
Shows frequently get moved around between seasons. How on earth is it Fox’s fault that you couldn’t be bothered to find out when one of your favorite shows is on? I understand that the constant preemptions make things difficult, and I’m not defending Fox here, but it is also up to us to figure these things out, to some extent.
Comment by John — November 16, 2005 @ 5:25 pm