[Edited for topicality]
Brent -------------------------------------------- http://www.tvguide.com/ask-matt Matt Roush Friday, September 14, 2007 The end of Battlestar Galactica; Men in Trees left hanging; and Matt's fall picks Question: Love your columns, and I wanted your insight on something. In the next year, The Shield, The Wire and Battlestar Galactica all begin their final seasons. As three of the greatest television series of all time come to an end around the same time, which do you think will pack the biggest punch in its last episodes?- Annan Matt Roush: Love the question, but it's impossible to know in advance which will knock us out the most, and it's risky playing one against the other in gauging their impact as we prepare for their swan songs. (Battlestar's being muddied by questions about its final-season scheduling, as I'll address further down.) I would say that of the three, The Shield has probably had the greatest impact on the overall TV landscape, single-handedly establishing the FX brand as something bold, adult and risky: HBO with commercials, we liked to say at the time. The Shield has also been remarkably consistent (much more so than FX's other breakthroughs, including Nip/Tuck and recent episodes of Rescue Me) and continues to set the bar for the network. Whereas The Wire is undeniably one of the greatest and most searing urban dramas ever produced, it never really resonated with the public at large (as well as with the cluelessly blind Emmy nominators). It's a blessing that series creator David Simon got the fifth and final season he desired, but the show's passing is likely to be more of a critical rather than cultural sensation. As for Battlestar: It will go down as one of the all-time great sci-fi/fantasy series, and it has slowly and surely gained industry as well as critical and fan respect, but again, it is regarded as more of a "cult" phenom. It reinforced, though probably didn't define, the Sci Fi brand the way The Shield did for FX. Still, each of these series will leave a remarkable footprint and legacy, and we'll always say we were lucky to have had them. Question: I'm not sure you actually get why we "greedy" fans are so upset about the Battlestar Galactica scheduling issues. Unlike all the long-hiatus shows you mentioned in your recent column, these episodes will have already been written and filmed, even gone through postproduction, and the Sci Fi Channel would be simply refusing to show them, just to package the DVDs separately and stretch the shelf life of their flagship show. Yes, patience is a virtue and we'll get the episodes eventually, but this would be a terrible marketing move. Heroes had a significant ratings drop after just a few weeks on hiatus, and the network responded with the exact opposite strategy: no midseason breaks at all. As you said, this meant a longer wait between seasons for Heroes fans, but that's the price for a full, unbroken run of episodes that hooks people and tells a complete story. Meanwhile, the way to send Galactica out with a bang is... to go off the air for eight months (already), then insert an unnecessary, excessively long break right before the finale? Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune made the best analogy: For BSG fans, it's like being told right before the release of the long-anticipated final Harry Potter book that you can only read the first half. Casual viewers lose interest in a serialized show that's been off so long they can't remember what was happening. (Is The 4400 still on the air? I had no idea until you mentioned it.) Diehard fans will always tune in, which is what Sci Fi is banking on, but that's a reason to respect our love of the show, not insensitively push our limits. It feels to me like the network takes our cult devotion for granted, and they've given up on anyone else ever watching the show.- Nicole, New York Matt Roush: You may be amused to know that the very day this e-mail arrived, the lovely and talented Maureen Ryan weighed in to yours truly, challenging my glib dismissal of Battlestar fans' concerns. And can I just say: mea culpa. Especially considering the way Sci Fi left The Dresden Files devotees dangling so long before confirming the news of that show's cancellation, at the very least I should have acknowledged the fact that making BSG fans wait nearly a year between halves of the final season would be a slap in the face, truly taking their support of the show for granted. But once again, Sci Fi insists no decision has yet been made on how the final season will be scheduled and how long the break will be between the first and second halves. Maybe the early outcry (I won't call it whining anymore) will bring them to their senses. However, where BSG is concerned, I do sense that the network has pretty much given up expecting the ratings to ever grow, and even should the entire final season air without a break (which isn't likely to happen), it's not like this most demanding and daring of space dramas is going to become a sudden hit. The fans will show up whenever these episodes air, and obviously it would be better if the split were something like winter-summer rather than a break from winter '08 to winter '09. Still, considering what happened to Farscape back in the day, getting this final season however it's scheduled is something to celebrate, not lament. .......... Question: Someone wrote in recently about there not being any shows on the air that have a lead character of color, even in an ensemble show, and you said you couldn't think of any, either. I can think of at least one, and it happens to be one of my very favorites: The Unit. Jonas (Dennis Haysbert) is very much the lead character of that ensemble cast, and a fantastic one at that. Please don't overlook this excellent show: It wouldn't be the same without Dennis Haysbert's Jonas Blaine. He is the star.- Norman E. Matt Roush: No argument. The Unit is less a classic ensemble drama than a military action adventure with a strong domestic component, but there's no question about Haysbert being the authority figure. Ditto for Regina Taylor as the spiritual den mother. And I missed another one in this discussion, as Jennifer reminds me: "While I won't argue that there should be more minority casting, I did want to point out that a major network has built an ensemble around a minority actor: Ugly Betty. That show definitely starts with America Ferrera. This being said, I do agree that it will be nice when an ensemble is based around someone because of their acting ability, not just their look." Question: I was just reading the Fall Preview issue and I don't remember ever being this excited over so many new shows. Pushing Daisies, Chuck, Bionic Woman and Journeyman all look great. But if most of these new "genre" shows catch on, how many can survive? I worry that with so many to choose from, some great shows will suffer and maybe some old favorites will suffer and end up being canceled because the networks have little patience and people can only watch and DVR so many shows. They gave Ugly Betty and Friday Night Lights time last year and thankfully listened to the critics; let's hope they give these a little time also if necessary. It helps that critics like you and newshounds like Ausiello love many of them. And it's great that NBC paired Heroes with Chuck and Journeyman. This likely will become my new "must-see TV" night; I just hope they do as planned and draw on each other and the new shows stay around.- Karen Matt Roush: You've posed this season's multimillion-dollar question. Last year at this time, we were fretting over the glut of serialized thrillers, and rightfully so. This season we're going to learn just how many high-concept heroes the weekly schedule can withstand. I can't imagine they're all going to succeed equally, and it's a fact that not all genre shows are created equally (Repeat after me: A show isn't necessarily good just because it's in your favorite genre). I imagine a few will be disappointments and fast fades - my bet is on Journeyman, unless it gets a better grip quickly on its time-traveling and emotional logic. But you never, ever really know. Although I will say that NBC's all-hero Monday strategy is a good one, and I hope it pays off, especially for Chuck, although in that early hour, ABC's Dancing with the Stars is going to be fierce competition. Question: I like the cavemen commercials, too. I never watch sitcoms; I mostly stick to news programs and the History and Discovery channels. The last sitcom I watched was ALF, and I'm 61 years old now. I'm just trying to figure out what time it's coming on.- Marsha C. Matt Roush: So funny, I was just doing a Fall Preview presentation the other day and someone likened Cavemen to ALF as a show that may be seemingly so dumb it's smarter than it looks and that could end up staying on the air (in ALF's case, for four seasons) much longer than anyone would have expected. I had "no problem" with ALF myself - in fact, for several years I had a miniature ALF attached to my computer terminal at work for some reason - but ALF had no pretensions of being anything but silly, goofy fun. Cavemen, at least from the original pilot we've screened (to be replaced by another we haven't seen yet), is aiming to be something of a racial allegory, which is just about as crudely distasteful as it is unfunny. I'll be curious to see if they tone down that aspect of the show and if there's anything left in this one-joke concept. ..........
