kimmy and cancellations

Really a housecleaning post, I suppose:

First of all, the problem with doing a "streaming shows I've watched lately" post after a few months is that you're bound to forget one, and I forgot a big one:

Season two of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!

I have mixed feelings here actually.

For the most part, there was a lot to love. With the exception of a couple episodes, the jokes are always funny, and several of the plots -- Kimmy dealing both with the trauma of her life in the cult and with her feelings about her mother, Tina Fey as her therapist, basically anything to do with Carol Kane -- worked really well. There was a lot of speculation about whether this season would be different since it was the first one they knew would be on Netflix -- the first one had been made for NBC before NBC decided at the last minute not to air it.

But man. Tina Fey, once again, consistently embarrasses herself in the face of criticism: announcing prior to the season that she's not going to read the internet anymore, then having the last word by devoting an early episode to internet commenters and portraying them as people who literally vanish from existence if they run out of things to complain about. This is dumb enough without further context, but even more wince-inducing given that Fey's politics have long been ... well, pretty Liz Lemonish, in that she seems very much like someone who likes the idea of being perceived as a liberal but is not particularly committed to actual liberal ideals, especially when they take effort. The show's commitment to Asian stereotypes for the sake of lazy comedy, and weird origin story for Jackie, are perfectly valid targets for criticism, and if you don't want to engage with that, then be a fucking adult and don't engage with it -- don't slam your bedroom door and then hang a sign outside it that says everyone who disagrees with you is a poopy doo doo head.

Second, I feel the need to react briefly to the news of the many cancellations that were announced yesterday. As many have noted, it's become unusual to cancel this many shows -- the "death" of cancellation had already become the topic of TV columns, though largely in reference to cable networks, which don't have to answer to affiliates and in some cases don't have to worry about advertising dollars.

These cancellations, though, come from the broadcast nets, and to be fair, when you look at which shows are being cancelled, it doesn't exactly seem like an indiscriminate massacre. You have a mix of shows that had already been given a second chance to get their ratings up and had failed to do so, Fox shows that lived out their seasons but would have been canceled long before now on any other network (Fox is more likely to let a show go a full season and then fail to renew it rather than drop it after four episodes the way the alphabet networks do, which winds up contributing to their reputation for "abandoning" shows), and a cancellation that isn't even a cancellation, just the announcement that a pilot isn't being picked up.

That latter bit -- ABC announced it isn't picking up the latest version of an attempt to spin off Adrianne Palicki's Bobbi Morse from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I can't stand the SHIELD show but would give a Bobbi Morse show, or any Adrianne Palicki show a shot, so this is a shame ... but not a cancellation.

An actual cancellation, though, is Agent Carter. On the other hand, this had sort of always been treated as a series of miniseries anyway, and Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper have already taken roles in other shows, so I don't think anyone had been assuming there was going to be a third miniseries.

Castle was canceled because as much as we all love Firefly, Nathan Fillion was a dink and got his female co-lead kicked off her own show because they weren't getting along, which gave the network no reason to renew it. Not a show I watched, but I have to role my eyes at Fillion anyway.

cf: Sleepy Hollow, the cancellation of which was previously announced, which also saw the departure of the female co-lead, whose presence is built right into the premise -- even moreso than in The X-Files or Moonlighting. Doing Sleepy Hollow without Abby is like doing Mad About You without Paul or Jamie, so naturally the network cancelled it.

I've posted about Sleepy Hollow this season -- it was one of our favorite shows in first season, felt a bit uneven in second season, and immediately lost focus (and half of the cast) in third season. We gave up only a few episodes in -- it just wasn't the same show anymore.

Back to ABC, though, which also cancelled ... Galavant and The Muppets.

Sigh.

This is what I mean about second chances, though. Galavant had such low ratings in its first season that it's a surprise it ever got a second season, and ABC has changed bosses since that renewal. The Muppets is an important franchise, but premiered to critical shrugs, went on hiatus, changed showrunners, improved considerably ... but saw little change in the ratings. The idea is probably that a low-rated show does more harm than good to the brand, I suppose, but I wish they would stick with it and just try to make it better.

Honestly, I still think the best way to do a Muppets TV show is to just do it like the original Muppet Show -- a variety show, even though that's anachronistic now. Go ahead and include jokes about it being anachronistic. Anything else has always just felt a little forced.

Galavant is going to sting. Like I said, yes, it's a surprise it got a second season, but it was such a good second season, and as I've said before, Tim Omundson has been doing Emmy-level work on this show in both seasons -- and the show did an excellent job transforming him from scene-stealing villain to deuteragonist to capitalize on that. I hope his next job makes the maximum use of his talents, but the problem with these little gems of shows is that so often they fit people into niches that let them shine in ways that other shows just don't, and instead he'll wind up playing somebody's dorky husband or something.

ABC also cancelled Nashville, which has had ongoing showrunner problems and became ever soapier after first season -- something they were apparently going to rectify by bringing on the thirtysomething creators, of all people, as showrunners in the event of a renewal. On the one hand I am saddened that we won't get to see that, because what a very strange match that would be. On the other hand, this frees the thirtysomething guys up for another project.

Speaking of freeing people up, CBS cancelled the awfully titled CSI: Cyber, so perhaps Patricia Arquette can do something better and James van der Beek can rustle together a reunion of everyone's favorite show ... I'm talking, of course, of Don't Trust the Bitch in Apt. 23.

Fox cancelled ALL of their first-season comedy shows: some stupid fucking Seth MacFarlane thing which who the fuck cares about because fuck Seth MacFarlane, Cooper Dooper's Guide to Something, Grandfathered, and The Grinder.

Grandfathered was cute, but never essential for me. Every episode always had a few too many lazy jokes, and it felt like pieces were always being moved around while the show found itself. Still, I think it could have found itself in time.

The Grinder, though. This was something I had only moderate interest in at first, based primarily on the cast -- Rob Lowe's newly discovered comedic chops thanks to Parks, the return of Fred Savage, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, the underused and underrated Natalie Morales, William Devane, this is a fucking great cast long before you get to the insanity and delight of Tim Olyphant playing himself in the middle of the season. It quickly became one of the funniest, smartest, meta-est shows on TV -- though Natalie Morales remained underused, and any episode that really leaned on her did so by making her a love interest prop, which is my only real complaint about the show -- and sometimes you'd stop mid-laugh and go, are they really making that joke? Not in a Two and a Half Men, oh that's so dirty, kind of way -- more the Arrested Development third season, oh that's so fourth-wall-breaking, kind of way.

The Grinder rests :(