Thursday, May 25, 2017

TV Shows That Died Off in 2016

As part of my TV show catch-up-athon, here are four shows I mentioned earlier that have all died in 2016. Join me now as we relive some fond memories. Beware, thar be spoilers!




Heroes Reborn: I believe this was always designed to be a one-season event, though they were keeping the door open for more seasons. They were not renewed for Season 2, and as far as I can tell, there are no reboots on the horizon, other than in the form of comic books.

I remember enjoying most of what I watched, though I had to read a few synopses to remember what happened. Most of it has come back, but obviously, the plot doesn't naturally stick long in my memory.

After the Cheerleader had exposed the powers of heroes, the world has become a new place. Much like in the X-Men stories, regular peeps fear and mistrust the "Evos." Some Evos do evil things, and others struggle to live good lives while hiding their powers. Regular peeps pass laws to force Evo registration and even develop a way to locate and identify them....

Yes ... that's my complaint #1. It is the X-Men movies reborn. That set of story lines failed to deliver anything new.

However, we did get a computer character who appealed to gamers like me. We got fun time-travel stories, even though they did use the usual annoying "Star Trek" time mechanics (you know ... the kind of time mechanics that relies heavily on audience time flow ... maybe I'll blog about this later). We got an evil lady who thought she had the one and only solution to the upcoming solar flare disaster, sending a small group of people thousands of years in the future to a time after the flare destroys everything. At the same time, she works to hinder the heroes who have the real power to stop the whole thing.

In the end, Noah Bennet gives himself as the conduit that helps the twins save the entire world.

Yeah ... there were some cool parts in there.

One last complaint: what was the deal with the Cheerleader? It was as if there were some legal order in place that didn't allow for the use of her image in any way, shape, or form. We almost got to see the dead body, featuring a blond wig. We get to see Noah see his daughter's face, but we never see her face even once. And how much did her death came from her decision not to do the show? It was particularly annoying, as she was a main pivotal character throughout the four seasons of the original show.

Yet, I stuck with the show till the end. It helped that the story was sufficiently contained in its 13 episodes. It had a good set of story arcs. I didn't miss it when it was over, and I enjoyed it while it lasted.




The Muppets.: I could have told you after one episode what would eventually kill off this show. It suffered from something I'll call "audience confusion." It was a whole bunch of cute puppets, so was it for kids? But it also had all those adult jokes, beer, and sex. So was it for adults? Not exactly sure what it was, people just tuned out.

At first, I was disappointed. Those first couple of episodes showed the same type of humor and mayhem, but at the same time, the "Office" style of mockumentary gave it a strange adult feel that didn't seem to fit. At least it was nothing like what I remembered growing up with these guys.

I quit watching after a couple of episodes. But those things accumulated on my DVR until I decided to try and watch some more, turning off my earlier preconceptions, and then I found I was able to enjoy it. (Though I never did get over the idea of Kermit or Miss Piggy talking about sex.)

I must admit, that one dirty joke in an early episode was pretty funny. Kermit says, "Zoot! Stop drawing dirty pictures on the get-well card!" And Zoot says, "Uh, I guess I can turn that into a saxophone."

Yeah -- it was stuff like that that got the Million Moms to boycott the show even though there's much worse stuff on TV.

Watching more episodes, I found myself being pulled in. Some of the lesser-known characters were developed very well as the season progressed. All the sub-story plot lines were interesting. Everyone acted with consistency. The show actually had good writing.

The story ends as that cute little shrimp Pepe sneaks on the plane to try to help Kermit and Piggy get back together ... a cliffhanger of sorts.

Then it ended, and I was okay with it. It was fun while it lasted.

It was enough to see that Gloria Estefan penguin a few times. Mehk!





Person of Interest: This show started out pretty strong. It stayed interesting the whole time, but toward the end, I thought it was getting to be too silly. At its lowest point, the writers had our heroes trapping a version of the bad computer virus within a physical Faraday cage, since we all know how one of those works, right?

But I was willing to overlook those silly science things. It was all bunk, but there were still good stories. The show relied heavily on the "Weird of the Week" formula, but toward the end, the writers found creative ways to use the weekly weirdoes in pushing the overall story arc forward.

With bad science aside, the show did (for me) capture the reality we face now or in the near future where computers (and humans) are watching our every move with constant surveillance. It even touches on the all-too-real threat of computer AI's taking control of our lives and making immoral decisions in the name of achieving better efficiencies.

Though ... main complaint #1 ... if the baddie computer virus was so all-powerful, it would really have no problem finding our heroes and killing them within minutes, and that's even despite the counter-virus that the Machine had Root plant. The bad guys really couldn't see Root in her many "disguises" that looked remarkably alike? Samaritan really had no way of figuring out the identity of that cop that Reese was playing?

I did enjoy watching the fight against Samaritan coming to a wire toward the very end. Though, I didn't appreciate the artificial setup that caused Reese to give up his life. I loved the epic feel they tried to accomplish, but it was all ruined with me yelling on the inside all the different tactics he could have used to protect that briefcase long enough and still survive.

But ... fine, Reese, be that way and do the stupid thing so you can die that noble death!

It was a good attempt at an ending, but not so good in execution.

In the end, I did not regret watching the whole show.





The X-Files (2016): Technically this show isn't dead. In fact, this reboot was considered to be an extension of the original series -- its tenth season. And I just learned that FOX plans to bring it back near the end of this year with season eleven (no details are available).

Will I continue watching? Most likely, but I was mainly disappointed with season ten.

The pacing was just terrible. The six episodes didn't really fit together, and the last episode was the worst with events escalating so quickly it left no time to be processed.

The whole idea that the government staged EVERYTHING in the first nine seasons is super sucky, and really does a terrible job at explaining what all happened in the original series.

The other three shows I mentioned above I actually liked. This show, not so much.

There were a couple of good moments, but mostly I felt like Kathy Bates in that Stephen King movie a lot of us enjoyed. Cockadoodie! You can't keep changing the story on us, Mr. Carter! We saw the Smoking Man die!

Yet I will most likely continue watching, and give Carter another chance to redeem himself.

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