Speaking of Heroes... I just visited the Heroes web site. In addition to the comics and whatnot, they've also got a bunch of web-only mini-episodes and all kinds of other junk. Methinks they should focus less on the junk and more on the actual show.

Meanwhile, new episodes from the 4th season starting Feb. 2. Also, the new season of Chuck is starting on the same day and will be broadcast in 3D. Lovely. To get the magic 3D glasses (both for the two or whatever 3D Superbowl commercials and the special edition of Chuck), head to your neighborhood supermarket or whatnot.

(3D. I suppose it's cheaper than good writers.)

It was a generalization and somewhat sarcastic, but I've been seeing shorter season lengths over the past couple of years for a number of shows. 23 episodes used to be a typical season. Pushing Daisies wasn't scheduled for 20+ episodes even before it was cancelled. Life on Mars isn't scheduled for that many that I can tell and I believe the same was true for Prison Break.

Over the past 3 years it really feels like the networks have been giving us 10-14 episode miniseries that initially have the promise of being full-blown series. It's generally been a result of cancellations and as you've noted, they don't always wrap successfully. But I'm also not digging the schedule shuffles nor the oddball seasonality of some programs. Running a short season of one show then doing a mid-season replacement with a different one, etc.

I guess it might appear this way to you, but I'll just say that I watch a hell of a lot of TV shows (I just counted 15 major network shows in all), and I don't really get that "feel" from any of the uncancelled ones. Pushing Daisies didn't get a full season order initially because the network wasn't even sure at that time if the show would survive or not. Most shows do not get a full season order initially unless it's doing phenomenally well, but on average they all get as long a season as they like, which is usually up to 22-24 episodes.

Again, you might be seeing different things from the shows you watch (I'm not a Prison Break fan), but I get the opposite impression. I guess I'll go through my list of shows and see if any of them have a shorter run this year. I certainly haven't seen any kind of "trend" like you mention, particularly since it's hard to make such a claim when we just had the strike. Before that, I didn't see any shortening of seasons, and we haven't had a complete TV season since then.

Looking long term, I can see the trend Bruno is talking about. Star Trek The Next Generation for example was 26 episodes per season for it's late 80s to mid 90s run. Dallas (78-91) had seasons ranging from 22 (last season) to 31 episodes. Even Babylon 5, an unknown and risky show got 22 episodes for every season except the final (21).

What really annoys me is this trend to break up seasons into two pieces. Battlestar Galactica for example is not only airing in two halves (seasons 4.0 and 4.5), but is generally sold that way as well in both iTunes and on DVD.

ST:TNG and B5 were both first-run syndication, and are more-or-less irrelevant to the argument. Dallas was one of the most popular TV shows of all time. It's not surprising that they tried to milk it. (In comparison, NBC ordered 30 episodes of The Office last season, but it got shortened due to the writers' strike.)

In general, though, shows used to tend to run 24-26 episodes per full season, and now tend to run 22-24 episodes per season. Of course, you don't recall all the failed shows of the past, which also didn't run full seasons. Just randomly picking 1979, Delta House (15 episodes), Supertrain (9 episodes), Out of the Blue (8 or 9 episodes), Working Stiffs (9 episodes, only 4 shown).

And I agree about the split seasons thing. It's obviously so that the cable channels can run their new episodes in times when network shows are in reruns, but they did it as awkwardly as possible.

I forgot all about that one.

Yep, I explored some of that, and came away feeling I missed some of the back story. The info gained, chasing thru the WWW, just wasn't worth the time spent.

I also hated that the graphic novels were formatted for the printed page and not the screen. The proper flow just isn't there when you have to zoom and scroll around.

I agree, though thinking back, I think I may have gotten more enjoyment out of the comics than the show its self. I found the "web-connected" woman more interesting than the majority of the characters on TV.


Completely off the Heroes topic: did anyone see this week's BSG?

*possible spoilers if you haven't seen up to last week's episode*

BSG:

Speaking of BSG, the webisodes are very important. You should really watch them before the first episode of the season.

The last two episodes of Heroes have (IMO) *firmly* cemented it as likely the worst scripted prime-time show on this season. They've completely negated anything positive they've ever done in any previous episode.

So. Bad.

This is hilarious, because I haven't minded some of the things they've tried to do. I don't think they're doing them well, but I haven't minded some of it. I've kept watching because of Bryan Fuller. I know I said I'd stopped, but I want to give him a chance to turn it around. I gather he hasn't had much to do with the current direction, though.

But there are certainly still huge issues with the show. For example: how exactly did Matt get his new power? Just because he was destined to? It can't be just because he was put in a trance by that guy. So now people can generate powers just because its destiny?

*edit*
I just wanted to expand on what I've liked recently. Bitt mentioned one of the bigger themes of the X-Men, the idea of society feeling threatened by a group of people and that being a metaphor for many of the problems in our society. My argument was that while that's a great theme to explore, Heroes wasn't doing that because society didn't even know about these people. Now they're almost there, even if it's just some people in the government.

And I guess I also like that finally we're going to see some of these people team up. Thank goodness! No more of this "lets go our own ways even though it makes absolutely no sense to do so." The characters are acting more and more like normal people would react.

I totally dislike the X-Men outcasts of society angle. It's been done to death. My biggest complaints are that the writing in general has made the show almost unwatchable. The dialog is suffering in a big way. The effects have gone down hill, the acting is getting worse and the whole thing is just completely preposterous. The characters have become hyper-artificial to the point where they're simply parodies.

They've gone down the soap-opera slope they've been previously been skirting.

Where someone gets a particular power is somewhat irrelevant when the whole story line and characters have been turned into a joke. Characters have been completely undeveloped such that their attitudes, personalities, actions (what makes them that character) have become totally malleable and interchangeable.

The franchise has no direction left and it's painfully obvious. If they're trying to emulate everything that made the X-Men movies bad, they've achieved what they were after. As far as making compelling TV, I'm tempted to start a petition to get the show cancelled. It doesn't have any legs left to stand on and it's painfully obvious no one working on the show cares at all about what promise they had in season 1.

The story unfolds rigidly with awkward actions of convenience forming the only workable path - like a really crappy video game. That probably explains how Parkman got his new power. It was just needed to advance the latest plot. Never mind that he could have used his old power umpteen times to change the direction of every conflict scene he's been in.

Sorry, Bruno. (warning, spoilers, but they're marked)

Oh well. Just another example of network killing good TV and leaving some bad behind.

I think Life on Mars would work much better as a cable show rather than network. That would allow them to include more 70's grime in the form of language and nudity.

I'm glad they're going to wrap it up though. They've already diverged from the UK original in a number of episodes, so it's going to be interesting to compare the two once everything's done.

I notice no one has said anything about Dollhouse. There's probably a good reason for this. In that it is, so far, extraordinarily bad.

The whole premise is derivative, which we knew to start with, but there doesn't seem to be anything else to it yet. Yeah, there's the "maybe she remembers something" part, but it's not like that's not been done to death, too.

Then there are the actual episodes. So far only three, the first of which was bad, but in a first-episode kind of way, the second of which (Middleman!!) was better, but mediocre. And then there's this most recent episode, which was skin-crawlingly awful. I don't remember the last time I fast-forwarded through parts of an episode of TV.

If Dollhouse didn't say "Joss Whedon" on it, I would definitely not be watching any more. Even so, I'm not going to give it much longer.

Penny Arcade linked an interview with one of the actresses who said that it gets awesome at exactly episode six. I haven't watched any of it, and I don't know if that's true or what.

I knew Dollhouse would be bad when I saw who was in it and who created it.

The 1st 5 episodes of Dollhouse are more standalone at the request of Fox. See the Q&A with Eliza: http://www.avclub.com/articles/eliza-dushku,24418/

Wait wait wait wait... seriously?

Yes. He hates Joss because he has no taste in TV shows. Remember, he liked the US Life on Mars better than the original.

Ah. Well, that sorta makes sense. In that the execs at Fox are idiots who saw how well tinkering with the start of Firefly went.

Open note to network execs: if your first five episodes suck, it doesn't make much difference how great the latter ones are, as everyone will have stopped watching by that point.

You're right, Bitt. Dollhouse has been pretty bad. Eliza Dushku just isn't a draw for me. When I first head about the premise, my first thought was "she's going to be in a serious that tests her range as an actress?" That had me worried. I mean, I liked her on Buffy/Angel (particularly on later episodes of Angel), but I'm not sure she can pull something like this off. So far for me the results are just okay.

And I'm very surprised that with Dushku and Acker on the show, the part of the nerdy scientist guy wasn't given to Tom Lenk. It looks almost like they tried to get someone who looked like Andrew, but they didn't want to overload the cast with former Whedon people.

Anyway, I haven't been impressed. I'll keep watching, because I'm pathologically incapable of dropping a show I'm watching if it isn't called Jericho Hopefully eps 6 and beyond will be good.

But regardless of the quality, what the hell is with Fox? I can't believe Joss trusted them again, and then they went and delayed his show till mid-season, then moved it to Friday night. I guess he shouldn't take it personally, since Fox seemed to move all of their shows around this year, but still, I hope he never does anything for those ungrateful bastards again.

My guess is that he has a development deal with them.

I feel that Whedon is overrated, especially by geeks. I consider myself somewhat geeky as well, but for the life of me I just couldn't see what people found positive about Firefly. I thought it might be good after first seeing the commercials and previews, but when it debuted I was really disappointed.

Buffy and Angel I simply found to be crap. To be fair, I pretty much skipped Angel entirely given how much I disliked Buffy.

If I'm going for campy and surreal, I might as well also enjoy the cast and find the show funny and light. For that reason I actually quite like Reaper.

I'm still planning to finish out the two seasons of the original UK Life on Mars, but so far after 3 episodes, the US version just polishes up and improves on everything the original put in place. The reason it's being canned isn't because it's a bad show or compares poorly with the UK version. It's likely because it's too similar to the UK version for a US audience. Remember, I do like both versions.

I know we've discussed this before, but did you watch past the first episode? The first one was crap. Fox decided that it didn't like the original pilot (which was amazing when it ran later in the season) and had Whedon write a new one in something like two days.


There is no other way to say this than: you're quite simply wrong.

I always forget that you have such bad taste in TV. I should really just stop paying attention when you talk about it.

I always pride myself on having not liked Buffy. Strange.

I've been meaning to give the Firefly DVDs a shot actually, but just haven't gotten around to it. Only based on the comments I've seen here of course. How it was improved and about how good people thought Serenity was specifically. Didn't want to check out the movie without trying out the series again with the new (old) pilot.

Don't forget too that I'm in a different country, so I may not find appealing what most of the US seems to adore: Jerry Springer, Nanny 911, Deal or No Deal, Chuck, Entertainment Tonight/Access or any of its clones, Dancing with the Stars, Ghost Whisperer, etc.

There's probably a cultural divide that keeps me from appreciating this high art.

This is what I wrote back in December about LOM:


So I sort of expected it.

What I didn't expect was for Fox to have such a spotty schedule for airing Fringe (thanks to American Idol). Nor for ABC to work such an odd schedule for Scrubs either.