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lol sports shows
Feb. 10th, 2011 08:27 pmThis little trip down memory lane aired with the series finale of Friday Night Lights last night:
Sometimes it seems like all good television out there falls into one of two categories: "cancelled too early" or "ran out of steam". I feel like I am constantly tagging "but don't watch past season _" onto a recommendation, or mentally deciding where my personal canon has to cut off. And of course all that is because in American television, it is not about "good" or "bad" so much as it's about "successful" or "unsuccessful". (Look at the Emmys!) If a good show is unsuccessful, it gets cancelled. If a good show is successful, it runs on as long as it can reasonably be profited from. I always think about the X-Files here, and that old story about Chris Carter wanting to be done after s7 I think but maybe it was s8, and how Fox basically said this franchise will continue with our without you. But also things like Firefly, which is perfect as is but sometimes I wonder if I/we would still love it as well if it had gone on for six seasons. The thing is that we are TV fans: and sort of by definition we always want more, more, more until it hits that point of no return for us. We like our stories long and drawn out and character-driven, and we hold onto fairy tales about shows that sucked for a season or two but then magically found their footing again (actually FNL could kind of fall into this category) and shows that were dropped by one ruthless network and snatched up by another, more nuturing one, because we are bad at letting go.
I include myself wholeheartedly in that so I guess I feel weird about how... I don't know, nonchalant I am about Friday Night Lights ending forever. Maybe I just haven't wrapped my head around it yet, maybe in a couple of months I will sit down and think about how this precious gem of a show has been a part of my life for four years now and how well it has toyed with my emotions: how good it is at making me feel for characters and be miserable at the thought of no more of it but honestly I don't think so. I'm glad FNL got to end on its own terms because so few shows do get that, and so many times it seemed like this one might not get to. And it's easy to say we would watch five more seasons of it but who knows if we really would, if seasons nine and ten wouldn't get tedious and overbearing. I'm glad it got to tell a story (two stories, really), and then decide it was done. I am grateful to have received what FNL has given me. I don't need more.
I also want to say thank you because this is a show I genuinely would not have watched if not for my livejournal friends: my sister and I used to make fun of the over dramatic Jason/Lyla/Tim promos as we sat through Heroes and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip together (irony at its best). I never would have given it a chance if I hadn't been told that I should. I think it was like that for most of us. Sometimes I wonder who those original pioneers were, the people who didn't initiall scoff at the whole football thing and sat down and watched the pilot the first time it aired and then cared enough to tell the rest of us how things were.
( anyway i don't know that i actually have that much to say about the actual episode but here are a couple of idle thoughts )
( can't decide whether this cut tag should read 'the best kdrama ever' or 'the worst kdrama ever', either way I am referring to heading to the ground )
Sometimes it seems like all good television out there falls into one of two categories: "cancelled too early" or "ran out of steam". I feel like I am constantly tagging "but don't watch past season _" onto a recommendation, or mentally deciding where my personal canon has to cut off. And of course all that is because in American television, it is not about "good" or "bad" so much as it's about "successful" or "unsuccessful". (Look at the Emmys!) If a good show is unsuccessful, it gets cancelled. If a good show is successful, it runs on as long as it can reasonably be profited from. I always think about the X-Files here, and that old story about Chris Carter wanting to be done after s7 I think but maybe it was s8, and how Fox basically said this franchise will continue with our without you. But also things like Firefly, which is perfect as is but sometimes I wonder if I/we would still love it as well if it had gone on for six seasons. The thing is that we are TV fans: and sort of by definition we always want more, more, more until it hits that point of no return for us. We like our stories long and drawn out and character-driven, and we hold onto fairy tales about shows that sucked for a season or two but then magically found their footing again (actually FNL could kind of fall into this category) and shows that were dropped by one ruthless network and snatched up by another, more nuturing one, because we are bad at letting go.
I include myself wholeheartedly in that so I guess I feel weird about how... I don't know, nonchalant I am about Friday Night Lights ending forever. Maybe I just haven't wrapped my head around it yet, maybe in a couple of months I will sit down and think about how this precious gem of a show has been a part of my life for four years now and how well it has toyed with my emotions: how good it is at making me feel for characters and be miserable at the thought of no more of it but honestly I don't think so. I'm glad FNL got to end on its own terms because so few shows do get that, and so many times it seemed like this one might not get to. And it's easy to say we would watch five more seasons of it but who knows if we really would, if seasons nine and ten wouldn't get tedious and overbearing. I'm glad it got to tell a story (two stories, really), and then decide it was done. I am grateful to have received what FNL has given me. I don't need more.
I also want to say thank you because this is a show I genuinely would not have watched if not for my livejournal friends: my sister and I used to make fun of the over dramatic Jason/Lyla/Tim promos as we sat through Heroes and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip together (irony at its best). I never would have given it a chance if I hadn't been told that I should. I think it was like that for most of us. Sometimes I wonder who those original pioneers were, the people who didn't initiall scoff at the whole football thing and sat down and watched the pilot the first time it aired and then cared enough to tell the rest of us how things were.
( anyway i don't know that i actually have that much to say about the actual episode but here are a couple of idle thoughts )
( can't decide whether this cut tag should read 'the best kdrama ever' or 'the worst kdrama ever', either way I am referring to heading to the ground )
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