Top TV Shows: Cancelled Too Soon Pt 2

To see my Top TV Shows: Cancelled Too Soon Pt 1 containing my number 6 through 10 countdown, then check my archives from May 2009.

5. Invader Zim - Premiered in 2001. Length - 2 seasons / 46 episodes (including pilot)

Well, where do I begin? This to me has got to be the best show to ever come from Nickelodeon. Not only is it extremely funny, it's also astonishingly smart and well thought out. The story centers around an alien that is planning to infiltrate humans and then ultimately conquer earth. But, he's a total screw up. In fact, he's so irritating to his own race that the assignment to take over earth was given to him by the other aliens just to get rid of him. Zim doesn't know that the invasion army is not really coming... he's been sent to earth to get out of everyone's way. To help Zim with "the assignment" the Irken Empire's leaders give him the assistance of a robot, Gir. But this robot has problems... namely he's stupid. There's absolute nothing Gir won't do or say. Everytime he opens his little robot mouth, taken notice - he is pure comedic genius.

This shows was semi-saved by the fans in 2006, but ultimately still was looked down upon by Nickelodeon as too dark or too adult for children. I think if this show would've been sold to Adult Swim, then I wouldn't even be typing about it right now. This show could still be on the air. Recently the DVDs went out of print, so a simple box set of Zim is now worth about $150 - and limited editions with Gir figure go for about $250. Networks take notice... people still love this show.

4. Tru Calling - Premiered in 2003. Length - 1.5 seasons / 26 episodes

It feels just like only yesterday... it was Fall of 2003 and I (like everyone else) was feeling depressed about the ending of Buffy the previous Spring. Then this show came along, starring Eliza Dushku. We all knew it wasn't Buffy (or even Faith), but somehow it did get us through the week. I guess it was kind of like people using the nicotine patches instead of smoking. And week after week, the show slowly started to grow on me, filling the void - but also establishing it's own likable qualities. Then... they pulled the rug out from under me and cancelled it - damn them!

This was the show that centered around Tru Davies (Dushku) as a girl that could connect with recently deceased people. Once summoned, she could go back in time and attempt to correct the past, which in return prevented the person's death. Sometimes it took multiple attempts to help, sometimes it took multiple different people's deaths to find the perfect solution. Her normal life always became an issue with the time traveling also, so multiple time splitting story-lines were common. Somehow this show always found a way to throw a curve ball, bending the rules of Tru's abilities. And not to mention, there are others out there that could possibly do the same thing... but for less heroic purposes.

I often feel like this was Eliza's red-headed-step-child show. Even though people liked her and people liked the show, no one really ever cared about it until after it was gone. The show was cancelled after season 1, but then (way too late) the fans stepped in to help - mostly by buying lots of DVDs from online merchants like Amazon. This encouraged Fox to bring back the show as a midseason replacement - ELEVEN months later! It was like a miracle. Everyone had forgotten about it and "poof" it reappeared out of thin air. We were all so amazed... so amazed in fact that we forgot to watch it... again. The show ran six more episodes then it was decimated. Not only was it definitely not coming back, the network executives bumped the finale several times, then released the last six episodes on DVD as the "Final Season" which oddly enough ends with a huge cliff hanger. Whomp, whomp. If that show doesn't remind you of a neglected little orphan then you've never seen Oliver Twist.

3. Veronica Mars - Premiered in 2004. Length - 3 seasons / 64 episodes

Kristen Bell played the young high school student Veronica Mars... even though she was like 25 at the time. But once I suspended my disbelief long enough to enjoy the show, it delivered a whopping three seasons of intelligently designed twisting plots and sarcastically witty one-liners.

Dubbed a teen noir series by the marketing strategists, Veronica Mars aimed oddly way above the teen demographic. I kept saying to myself, "why is Veronica Mars making cultural references to _______? No one under the age of thirty has any idea what that is." But maybe that was the show's charm, the characters all knew exactly what to say and when. The show made their teens intellectual and suave, unlike the perception usually bestowed upon young txt-savy slackers.

But back to the premise, what is a "teen noir" anyway. Well the simple of it is, think Buffy meets Murder She Wrote... uhhh, okay. If that splice cooks your noodle then maybe this will help. Think detective genre meets cynical teen dramady. Each week a mystery would present itself and Veronica (well-schooled in detective work from years of living with her private eye dad) would deductively reason-out the culprit or find the lost whatever - all while sarcastically punning the mere idea of it all. Along with this episode by episode formula, there is an underlying season-long mystery unravelling as well.

In my opinion, the first season played out sort of like the first season of Twin Peaks... minus the David Lynch trippiness. There is a young girl that is murdered before the show even takes off, but the flashbacks continue throughout the season giving more and more back story. You continually feel as though you are going two directions in time simultaneously. The complexity the stories, but the simplicity of the characters' like-ability gave the show a nice balance. The only problem was that the scenery and setup felt too young for adults. In stark contrast, the show's long-running highbrow humor and sophisticated plots felt too old for some of the young viewers. It was a perfect show with an imperfect target audience. The result was... early cancellation.

2. Roswell - Premiered in 1999. Length - 3 seasons / 61 episodes

Not that show... the oh so very dialog-heavy drama with the Dido song and that famous star from Grey's Anatomy plays his sister. Yes, guilty. Many people began to think this was Dawson's Creek moved from New England into the deserts of New Mexico... and in some ways, rightly so. You can dub this the least Sci-Fi related show about aliens ever. With an Executive Producer / Director like Jonathan Frakes (AKA William T. Riker from Star Trek: TNG), you would expect a show about aliens to be overwhelmingly laced with lasers, space ships, and strange creatures... but you'd be wrong. This show only gave you glimpses of the alien side of the show, which further frustrated the viewers when the those glimpses were quickly pulled away and teased about in the dialog. I kept holding out to see more and more, then I eventually finished the three seasons. Along the way I indirectly fell in love with the cast and plot. Upon a second viewing, I realized the actual genius of the show - the story, the characters, and the human (or alien I guess) interactions that were the driving force behind Roswell.

The show is like Smallville in many ways, you forget that the main character(s) is from another planet - completely alien and NOT human. Why? Because he doesn't look alien and his actions and emotions are very human in appearance. In this show, the human characters were surprisingly just as interesting as their alien counterparts. Not because they were all the same, but because they saw the same problems from a different perspectives.

Actors such as Jason Behr (The Grudge), Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, Grey's Anatomy), and Colin Hanks (Orange County) were among the now-famous people who were on the show. The main character Liz, played by Shiri Appleby, seemed to be going in and out of focus throughout the series until it seemed they had changed their minds about her being the main actress of the show. Emilie de Ravin (from the show Lost), as the character Tess, took over more and more of the spotlight until poor Liz (Appleby) had become an emotional whipping-boy for many depressing episodes.

I hate to think about it but this show actually was better at two seasons instead of three. The WB cancelled Roswell (along with Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as part of their budget cutting for fall 2001. Even though the show was successful, The WB was stacked with many popular shows that had escalating contract price-tags attached. Luckily for fans of the show, UPN picked up the dead series and revived it with a one year - "make or break" opportunity. The show broke.

The third season seems a little last minute in design. I don't want to bash the show, so I'll just say it was The WB's fault in my eyes. By their canceling, the show was left too up in the air for the continued chemistry from the previous seasons. Maybe a fourth or fifth season was needed to really hone that original feel of the show, who knows. We take what we can get and a third season is better than no season.

1. Firefly - Premiered in 2002. Length - less than 1 season / 15 episodes and 1 follow-up movie.

If you are unfamiliar with this show, then quit reading. Go to your local superstore buy Firefly on DVD, a hammer, and a bag of ice. Grab the hammer and repeatedly hit yourself in the head*, then apply ice after regaining consciousness, then watch Firefly beginning to end. If need be, repeat as often as possible... minus the hammer of course.

* comment made in jest, don't actually hit yourself... or even buy a hammer for that matter... same goes for the ice as well, I guess. On second thought, just buy Firefly and use the leftover "hammer and ice money" to buy Serenity also.

This show is so good that it defies the laws of nature. Why was it cancelled? FOX did everything in it's power to make this show struggle (intentionally or unintentionally). Did they begin the show with the first episode so that the audience would understand the back story? No. Did they give it a good time slot? No and they changed time slots only a few weeks later. Did they even show all of the fifteen episodes. No, they cancelled the show after only three months and pushed the unaired episodes off to never-never land for most of us to see only on DVD way later.

Is this Joss Whedon's best show? Maybe. It's a space western, and as bad as that sounds - it works perfectly. No, it's not Buffy or Angel - but, it does have that trademark Whedon touch that only he can provide. I personally love the show, but I do not place it above his other work. Saying that outloud, it's hard to believe, but I would have to strongly defend that position in most genre loving crowds. This show is so loved that it spawned a movie - Serenity. Serenity was equally loved by the fans, which might have even prevented social upheaval. The diehard fans of Firefly (Brown Coats we're called) were so upset by FOX's treatment of Firefly that they organized and advertised and demonstrated and whatevered to the point that this show has historic status in modern pop culture.

No show was ever so loved by it's viewers, yet so blatantly neglected by it's network. I don't hate FOX, but I bet someone inside FOX sure hated themselves for not being able to sustain this cash cow. We could be in the seventh season of that show right now and that would seem more reasonable than the reality we have right now. This show cancelled only after three months? Seems like we had entered an alternate dimension. Our reality had spun out of control, the equal of visiting Bizarro world and not being able to shake off what you know to be right.

Right now, this show lives on like Whedon's other shows in comic book form. Currently there have been two mini series comics and probably more on the way. I imagine that there will be Firefly fans attending and organizing conventions even twenty years from now and probably many years after that. If there was ever a testament to devotion in viewers, Firefly would be the hands down most-favored to deserve an award. To sum up this entire discussion about the show, it's history and it's wonderful fans and it's tragic struggle to live on in the hearts of it's viewers... There's no better way to explain than to quote the song lyrics from the opening sequence:

"Take my love, take my land

Take me where I cannot stand

I don't care, I'm still free

You can't take the sky from me

Take me out to the black

Tell 'em I ain't comin' back

Burn the land and boil the sea

You can't take the sky from me

There's no place I can be

Since I found serenity

But you can't take the sky from me"