Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Why Do All the Best Shows Get Canceled?

No, this isn't about Firefly or Life on Mars. But feel free to rant away about that all you want. This is about The Riches.

FX is one of those networks that usually does pretty well with shows. Nothing truly bad ever comes out of FX. And The Riches was awesome. A family of con artists that ultimately ends up trying to pass themselves off as rich people. Almost like the other side of the story that White Collar tells, except messier & with more family drama & plenty of dark humor. Eddie Izzard really showed what he was capable of acting-wise, Minnie Driver is fantastic, & so is every single actor that appears. Especially the kids.

I think the problem was the infamous writer's strike. Not that they weren't right to strike - there are even pictures of Eddie & Minni picketing with them - it's just that TV kind of came to a standstill. The second season was cut in half & I wouldn't be surprised if there were shows people were interested in that they completely forgot about when the strike interrupted everything.

I'm not really sure what FX was thinking, though. It had serious potential, while their real moneymaker, Nip/Tuck, went downhill. Yeah, I said it. I was hooked on that early on & ironically forgot & stopped caring about it.

As for The Riches, it ended on a ridiculous cliffhanger. A few people involved had said we'll get a movie, & we damn well better. Suck it, FX.

In the meantime, though, we have the DVDs, which inspired this mini-rant. My roommate needed something to watch last week & I suggested this. We've been watching 2-3 episodes nightly ever since.

3 comments:

The Mistress of the Dark said...

I wanted to watch that when it was on but never had the chance. I could add Better Of Ted as one of the shows that got canned before its time and the Unusuals last spring.

Malcolm said...

Although I've never seen "The Riches", I heard good things about it. I'll have to look for it on DVD.

You may be on to something about the writers strike being a reason why the show was canceled. I believe that's what caused one of my fave shows (Pushing Daisies) to bite the dust.

Janelle said...

I always wanted to watch Pushing Daisies.

I think that's part of the problem, too - a lot of us mean to check these shows out, don't get the chance, then they get canned. Boo.