Bye-bye Black Donnellys

I guess I kept watching because of the main character. He was trying to be a good guy, and the situation just kept getting worse. Was it great TV? Absolutely not. But it was better than (YEEEEEAAAAAAAH!!!!!) David Caruso.

 

I really, really liked the first episode. After that, it's been a good bit of hit-or-miss.

 

This was not a terrible show and the cast was not, by any means, a bad one.

It suffered from several things, the most obvious being that the writers tried a little too hard to push action instead of allowing things to play out naturally. There was just too much shit going on too soon.

And NBC acting as if a serial drama is somehow aided by a Deal or No Deal lead-in is a pretty solid indication that that network is clueless.

NBC's best move at this point is to hire anyone even remotely related to program scheduling at ABC or CBS, because it's not like they haven't had decent shows. It's that they've killed those shows by putting them in terrible, terrible timeslots.

And that "Thank God You're Here" show could be very funny. It would obviously work better on cable, but with the solid comedians they've landed, it has potential.

 

I liked that show the first time I saw it. When it was called "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Suck it NBC. That's what you get for shitting all over Studio 60.

 

I was just talking to my dad about this last night. He mentioned that one of my parents' favourite shows, "Crossing Jordan," is now on Wednesdays instead of on Sundays.

I said that I could remember, as a kid, that a show's timeslot was like its home. It moved very infrequently, if at all. As an example, "Happy Days" was always on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC, followed by "Laverne and Shirley." It was like that for years. Nowadays, shows jump around like Richard Simmons on acid, and networks wonder why they "can't find an audience." Hey, nitwits, it's more like the audience can't find the frigging show. Duh.

 

You could argue that NBC has more depth (Heroes, Studio 60, the L&O trilogy, Medium, Friday Night Lights, Earl, Office, 30 Rock, Scrubs, ER) than any other network. It is just missing that one monster hit that draws viewers' attention to the rest of the lineup.

And yes, the scheduling sucks.

 

That's a great point about scheduling. I was thinking that only comedies were shuttered around the lineup--long-lasting shows such as "That 70s Show" and "Scrubs" seem to be more valuable to the network as utility players who can be plugged into a hole anywhere in the lineup--but what remains in the same time slot for years at a time now? 24 has moved. Lost has moved. People our age are willing to deal with scheduling shifts. People like my dad (and DoubleJ's dad)? Not so much.

Morons. (The network execs not our dads)

 

Watch ABC and CBS work the schedule, though.

Take Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal, Grey's Anatomy and Brothers and Sisters. Housewives and Legal debuted at the same time, on the same night. Housewives was a hit long before the first episode aired, which is rare. They left it and Legal together for a full season and then started the second season with the two together. Midway through, they subbed in Grey's, which would attract roughly the same audience as Housewives and Legal. And when Grey's held an audience, they left it there for a while and to let people get sucked in.

Then, when they had a firm audience for all of them, they started moving them around in order to build viewership for other new shows, and they inserted another new show -- Brothers and Sisters -- behind Housewives.

CBS has done the same with its hits, running comparable new shows behind Survivor and CSI in order to build a quick audience for them. After the audience hangs around for a few episodes, they can be moved.

NBC is the only network not doing that. Had they put Heroes and Friday Night Lights together from the start, they'd have two monster hits. Instead, they've got one sizeable hit and a critically acclaimed drama that can't find an audience. They've lost several very good shows because of they're idiots. Kidnapped was a damn good show with an excellent cast, and what did they do? Put up against Lost with a Deal or No Deal lead-in. It was dead from the jump. Their other dumbass move was when they left Medium and Scrubs off the fall schedule, despite both shows being ready to air. You don't think some of those comedies would've done much better with Scrubs on before or after them? You don't think some of those new dramas could've benefitted from having the lone Emmy-winning show in NBC's lineup -- Medium -- in a slot?

The bottom line is that you can move a hit show once, maybe twice to put it in a better position to help your network. But you can't keep bouncing new shows around and then bitch when no one follows them.

 

I tried my best to get into this show. I DVR'd it, but can't watch. The show doesn't have the flow I thought.
I'm a S60 guy, so I hope they bring it back soon.

 

I've been spoiled by HBO. That show was strictly amateur hour.

 

To be fair, NBC traditionally is the first network to announce its fall schedule. Why this is, I don't know, but it has never had the benefit of seeing what the other nets do first.

This past year -- when it, among other things, moved Studio 60 away from Thursday after ABC announced that Grey's Anatomy was going there -- was the first time I can remember it making a post-adjustment. And I can't think of a single one of those moves that worked out.

 

Didn't care for the show but, just to be argumentative, there are elevated trains in Manhattan. Check out the stretch around 123rd & Broadway.