I'll admit it. I'm not the biggest fan of television. I probably never have been.
That doesn't mean I haven't had my favorites. And with the advent TiVo, I was able to keep up with those favorites even when I worked the night shift over the first six or seven years of the decade.
But I've learned something as even a casual viewer of popular television: Don't get too attached to anything good, it will likely be canceled. Quality and quality Nielsen ratings have never gone hand in hand, but in this day of "reality" television and the such, the gap has never seen wider.
Why am I so bitter? Experience, my friend, experience.
Following is a list of five shows that won awards, won over viewers but got the axe regardless.
There's no doubt that the cancellation of HBO's "Deadwood" brought a few choice words from the mouths of the faithful in this part of the country.
I, too, had a soft spot for the show that depicted the historic growth of the early days of my hometown in the Hills. But it wouldn't upset me nearly so much if it had simply died a quiet death because of flagging ratings or that it's audience had stagnated.
Actually, it was quite the opposite. Deadwood's most difficult season was it's first. Although it had received quite a bit of press for is flourish of foul language and unique epithets, it improved during it's all-too-short three years.
The humanization of arch-villian Al Swearingen in the second season made the show oh-so-much-more watchable, and it seemed to really get moving in the third season as civilization was knocking on the gold camp's door.
And then the news. There would be no more "Deadwood."
Apparently, HBO would settle for nothing less than "Sorprano" like ratings, looking to catch lightning in a bottle twice. The disturbing part, though, was that they took creator John Milch's skills and tried to develop what they thought would be a more entertaining and more watched series in "John From Cincinnati," which was about as big a bomb as one could hope for.
I wasn't the only one who was disappointed. Ian McShane, who played the notorious Swearingen and won a Golden Globe for his part, had one of the best interviews regarding the cancellation.
Luckily, all three seasons are on DVD and the publicity from the show sparked a tourism boom that the town in the Hills still benefits from. And I no longer have to pause the TiVo a half-dozen times or so while watching it because one of the kids wanders into the living room.
Once again, I'm going to say I'm showing a bit of favoritism here.
I was a grade schooler when "Lou Grant" went on the air. I didn't see "All The President's Men" until I was a senior in high school, so the "Lou Grant" was the premier show about journalism available to young punks such as myself.
The great thing is, you didn't have to be a journalist - or a hopeful, someday journalist - to like the show. The characters were rich, the acting was pretty good, and if you could stomach sometimes left-leaning politics (it was the 1970s, after all), it was among the best TV shows of its day.
But there was that politics thing.
After five years of consistent ratings in the top 10, the CBS brass pulled the show. Only "The Smothers Brothers" show ever suffered such an indignant fate.
Surprisingly, "Lou Grant" is one of the few popular TV series of the past 40 years that is not available on DVD, but word is its available on iTunes and other download services.
"My So Called Life" was really good. And as far as television goes, it was kinda close to reality. Close in that the show rarely wrapped things up in tidy packages and it's movements were less along the lines of dramatic movements as they were the moody things that make up young adulthood in the America, at least 1990s America.
The acting wasn't all bad, led by Claire Daines and also featuring boy hunk and future rock star Jared Leto as the slacker king Jordan Catalano.
The problem with the show was, it was really good, and it was kinda close to reality. This is not the stuff that is easy to package for viewers, let alone viewers. Especially when it was put in the prime time slot opposite "Friends" and "Mad About You."
In the end though, it was Danes who probably doomed the show, as she and her parents said they would not move forward with the show if it survived into a second season.
It didn't, but it remains a precursor to the bevy of teenage shows so prevalent on alternative networks such as The WB and UPN that followed.
I wasn't a fan of "Arrested Development" when it was on. In fact, it wasn't until TiVo began recording it in reruns on some channel I've never heard of before I saw my first full episode.
I didn't know what I was missing.
It's humor is as good as the classics such as "Seinfeld" or "Cheers," but a bit more off kilter like the long lost "Police Squad" with Leslie Nielsen. It irreverence but always sly and intelligent look at its characters and its refusal to make them standard cutouts like other past Fox Network classics such as "Married With Children."
As much as any other television show in the history of the television, though, "Arrested Development" may truly have been too good for its makers. The best of reviews and its eventual demise (which had been threatened pretty much every season and sometimes several times during the same season) was written by TV squad.
Of all the shows in the history of television that have been cancelled, this one got me angrier than all the others put together.
First of all, I just liked it. Not only was it well written, it was written to coincide exactly with my days as a young high schooler. It was funny, but funny in a way that was less sight gags and situational comedy than the just the reality of how things can turn on you when you are a teenager.
The details were immacualte, recreating the look and feel of a high school in the early 1980s.
The acting was good. Some of the stars, such as James Franco, Jason Segel and Seth Rogen have gone on to star in major motion pictures such as the "Spider-Man" series, "SuperBad" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshal," to name only a few.
Joe Flaherty had already been a staple of the classic "SCTV" crew.
And the show had a dedicated following.
But what made me mad about the show was it was given zero chance. When you debut a show in the Saturday Night opening prime time slot, you are pretty much saying, "Well, it might need some time to grow on people, but maybe we can grow it here."
Nope, not NBC. Instead, they let it start getting a following and then promptly moved it to Monday nights at 8 p.m. to fight Monday Night Football. And then they canceled.
Give me a break. They should have shopped it to the cable networks. At least they would have given it more than a season, and it would almost certainly would have blossomed. Instead, it is a footnote in television lore, noted as one of those shows that had a "dedicated following" but couldn't overcome its own Nielsen ratings.
In fact, it was its own network that it couldn't overcome.
This, too, is thankfully available on DVD.
