'Bred Crumbs
09.07.02
In the dank, dark, musty corridors of cable network headquarters, budgets are getting squeezed, and the new formula response seems to be, ditch the fantasy and sci-fi. Even if you're the Sci Fi Channel, which, only a year after proudly trumpeting a two-season renewal, is unceremoniously dumping Farscape at the end of this season, the show's producers revealed yesterday, getting the news right in the midst of filming the fourth-season finale. (That now-last episode, unfortunately, is probably a cliffhanger, given the channel's previous fourth- and fifth-season "commitment" to the show.)
There's no clear explanation for the decision; the network hasn't even announced it. I'm answering the call for action, but holding out no hope. I've been down the cancellation road twice with Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I'm not going to invest much energy in this again. Networks make their entirely profit-bound decisions based not on any interest in quality or on the feelings of their shows' actual fans but on perceptions of what will succeed that are so bizarre actual humans can't begin to get their heads around them.
I will say it again and defend it staunchly: Farscape is the best show on television, smarter and more original than anything I know of. As such, it had the odds stacked against it; its survival for four seasons (which gave it the time to become the wonder it is) is a minor miracle. If a series is any stranger, moves any faster, or follows logic any better than the leaden heap that is The Dead Zone, it is doomed. Even supposed sci-fi fans don't seem to want truly original work; the Trek machine plods on, and Stargate SG-1 has spent most of its first season on Sci Fi sitting around conference tables, and has been rewarded with fairly high cable ratings that may have helped dig Farscape's premature grave.
But there was lots of help in that department. Sci Fi's jerky programming tactics pretty much defied anyone to find the show and figure out what was going on, and the show got little help from the media; aside from TV Guide, everyone else, even the usually wiser Entertainment Weekly, completely missed the boat. And maybe the network trolls are right: as long as people are watching filth like American Idol in ravenous, drooling packs, why bother investing money and energy into anything good?
It sucks*, a lot, but I can't see it as a crisis, not in the larger, economically depressed, environmentally endangered, terrorist-and-war-machine-threatened world. When Sci Fi deigns to show them next year, I will revel in Farscape's last 11 episodes, and after that I'll watch one less hour of television a week. Which can't be a bad thing.
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* Actually, the news fit perfectly into a craptacular morning – in the middle of the night, Robbie woke up screaming in pain from a sudden intense leg cramp and never got back to sleep afterward; and many of the past few hours he's had to spend trying to figure out why his new router (to run two home machines off one DSL modem) has quit working.
09.05.02
Line of the [Insert Inconsequential Time Span Here], from a recent Diesel Sweeties:
"Steve thinks Batman could menstruate if he tried hard enough."
09.04.02
A couple of links worth proliferating from bigger-deal weblogs:
– Anything I might say about this country's challenges and should-be strengths are much more humorously and thoughtfully expressed in Brad DeLong's tale of how his children complain about the difficulties of democracy in Sid Meier's Civ. Skip the comments, which devolve instantly into a twisted defense of gun ownership. (Link from Scott Rosenberg's Salon 'blog)
– Molly Ivins asks, if Dick Cheney thinks Saddam is so evil, why did he help him rebuild the sources of his wealth? (Link from Metafilter)
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Just a week after Ohio finally showed up, the Louisiana quarter springs out of a Pepsi machine and into My 25 Cents' Worth.
09.03.02
If mankind is to withstand the ongoing rise of intelligence machines, the robot babies must be made an example of, as The Wave proved in a risky experiment. (The good part starts with the heading "What Can Be Done?")
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When critics don't know what they're talking about: a Detroit reviewer claimed that the live telecast last week's MTV Video Music Awards show was delayed 60 seconds and "captured on film before it was transmitted to viewers" – which even a moment's thought about film development should tell anyone is impossible. What really caused the show's unique look was 24p high-definition videography like that used for a movie George Lucas released this year, as a more diligent writer confirmed for the New York Daily News. (Links, once again, from TV Tattle)
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