As I sat down to watch Jericho yesterday I almost did so reluctantly. CBS had officially canceled the show last week, so this is probably the last episode. The feeling was that I didn’t really want the show to end. There was too much story to tell and this whole second season just felt like rushed storytelling as it was. Gone was the character development, the small town values and much of the quaintness the show had built up during the first season. So watching a finale for a show that still had so much gas left in it just felt wrong.The finale only compounded these problems I mentioned. I could tell during the first 5 minutes of the show that this was an episode on borrowed time, rushing through scenes and glossing over stories that would have probably taken a whole episode to unveil during the first season. All told I would probably say the finale felt like 5 episodes crammed into one. Much of the suspense and drama was stripped out and replaced with breakneck, quick cut scenes that developed way too fast.

While there are other options for Jericho, like possibly finding another network for the show, odds are it’s probably done. I think this 7 episode run kinda irrepairably damaged the show if it were to find another network. While I do think there is enough story threads to go forward with a proper third season, it would just feel weird going back to the smaller storytelling of season one after 7 frantic season two episodes. I know there has been mention of organizing a second effort to revive the show by sending don’t tread on me flags to CBS. The first push to save the show was like catching lightning in a bottle. A second go around to save the same show feels like a lost cause. If the show was picked up by another network I’m sure I’d watch.

Other Articles on Jericho’s demise
‘Jericho’: Who — or what — is to blame?
Jericho Movie Possible?

I was just reading this article about how the Toronto Maple Leafs are to blame for the programming cuts on the CBC. While it is pretty unfair to pin downsizing and cutbacks on a sports team, it is pretty much true and just shows how sad the business model of the CBC is. The CBC has long been hitched up to the gravy train that is the Toronto Maple Leafs and now they’re paying the price for this over reliance. Since I’m a fan of jPod I find this news a bit upsetting, but not really at the Maple Leafs. This was just piss poor scheduling by the CBC. First the show was on Tuesdays up against American Idol for the first 3 weeks in some markets. It did well the first week, which also happened to be probably the weakest episode, so many people stopped tuning in. It was then moved to Friday, which was pretty much the death knell for the show. I, like most people I know who would probably fall into the target demographic for the show, enjoy going out on Friday nights. Putting the show on then just shows they don’t care about it.

The part that gets me is how stupid CBC is with their scheduling. Why not put the show on Thursday where they are showing documentaries during primetime? If I were programming there I would move the documentary shows to Tuesday or Wednesday when American Idol is on. Everyone knows AI is a television blackhole. Putting intellectual programming against it makes sense given most people who watch documentaries are probably not going to be inclined to watch American Idol.
The more I’ve watched jPod, the more I’ve really liked the show. Since I never read the book the whole story seems really wacky and fresh. There are all sorts of scenarios that I’ve never seen presented on TV or in movies, like Ethan’s mom growing weed as a hobby, or Steven getting kidnapped and sent to China to work in a factory making knockoff Nikes. The show does have a certain charm to it and it’s really unfortunate that it isn’t being renewed. The ironic part to this whole thing was that CBC actually made a show I was interested in watching. I rarely, if ever, watch the CBC. Since jPod is gone, I’m gone as a viewer too.

I think if the CBC actually used their heads when doing their programming they probably wouldn’t need to rely on the Toronto Maple Leafs to make them money. While I hate the Leafs as much as the next person, I have a tough time laying this problem at their feet. Besides, you’re never going to see me root for the Leafs to make the playoffs any year, no matter how many shows they get cancelled.

The second season of the show that wouldn’t die, Jericho is airing tonight at 10pm. After initially being canceled after last season, which caused a flurry of fan protest mostly centred around nuts it makes its triumphant return.

All I can say is sit your ass down on the couch and watch this show. Don’t torrent it, don’t Tivo it, don’t watch it online. Watch it in the flesh when it airs at 10pm on February 12th. The issue the show had last year was that not enough people were actually watching the show when it aired. I was just as guilty as the next person given it aired on Wednesdays and I was prone to just torrenting it to watch later. Obviously the show had a pretty big following given the amount of uproar that surrounded the cancellation. I’m hoping the first couple of episodes will put to rest any doubt in the networks mind that the show should return for season 3 (or 2.5 as the case may be).

Here is the preview of season 2 that CBS has put out.

I am so pumped about this. It’s been 291 days since the season 3 finale, so you can definitely say I’m jonsin’ for some LOST goodness. Recently you can definitely tell ABC has been putting on the full court press to get people watching LOST. It’s a pretty good opportunity for them to win back some lapsed viewers and bring new ones aboard. They currently have a LOST recap available online which covers the events of the first 3 seasons in 8 minutes and 15 seconds.

Last night they had a rerun of the season finale, where they had a ticker at the bottom of the screen that would give insight into the events that were going on and how they relate to events that had happened in the previous 3 season. Since LOST tends to be such a complex show it is really hard to get into if you’ve missed the show up until this point. So it seems like ABC is giving it all they can to maximize viewers with LOST since the writers strike has really left network TV with a dearth of fresh AAA programming.

If you are caught up with the show, check out my LOST mobisodes post, which I have updated with all 13 Missing Pieces segments. They are well worth checking out, especially the last one, as it seems like a pretty reasonably big revelation.

In anticipation of the upcoming 4th season of LOST I started doing some digging into the some of the stuff that has been happening online to promote the upcoming season. I find myself I kinda try and ignore LOST as best as I can while it’s not on the air, mainly so it doesn’t entirely drive me to distraction. Recently what ABC has been doing is showing a series of mobisodes, which are short clips available to Verizon customers on their cell phones. The series is called Missing Pieces and essentially works to fill in conversations and plot gaps that have come up during the course of the show. These clips span from season 1 to season 3, so there are characters that have died or left the show making an appearance. Since these were produced recently they ran into some issues with regards to the character changes that have occurred during the run of the show. Sun actually sports a wig in her scenes to cover up the fact her hair has grown a fair bit in the show, which is kind of amusing. I think they do a real good job of reacquainting viewers with characters they haven’t seen in close to 8 months. Here are the mobisodes so far. They don’t really feature any spoilers assuming you’ve seen up to the end of season 3, but they do feature a couple of interesting revelations that weren’t known before about past events.

Edit Jan 30/08:
I’ve replaced all the videos since they have been pulled from YouTube

Mobisode 1 – The Watch

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 2 – Hurley and Frogurt

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 3 – King of the Castle

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 4 – The Deal

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 5 – Operation Sleeper

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 6 – Room 23

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 7 – Arzt & Crafts

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 8 – Buried Secrets

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 9 – Tropical Depression

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 10 – Jack meet Ethan

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 11 – Jin Has a Temper-Tantrum on the Golf Course

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 12 – The Envelope

Link: sevenload.com

Mobisode 13 – So It Begins

The official LOST site actually has a bunch of interesting content to promote the upcoming 4th season, so if you’re a LOST fanatic it’s well worth checking out.

CBC launched a new series yesterday based on Douglas Coupland’s novel from a few years ago, jPod. I’ve long been a fan of Coupland’s books, though unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to read jPod yet. I read a preview of the show on Canoe yesterday which basically gave the show the thumbs up, though implored people to keep watching past the first episode. The first episode is a bit plodding as it attempts to introduce the quirky cast of characters. The show centres around a bunch of misfits working for a video game company in Vancouver, and specifically Ethan Jarlewski and his pot growing mom and wannabe philanderer father, played by former Growing Pains star Alan Thicke. The cast of characters are pretty much exactly what you would expect from a Coupland novel, everyone is somewhat maladjusted, but they come off as lovable all the same.

So far I like the show, though as the Canoe preview mentioned, the first episode was a bit awkward and clumsy. I’m willing to check out episode 2 and hopefully the show will move onward and upward. I can’t say I’m an avid watcher of CBC programming, but I can see this show doing well for them. The show sticks pretty well to the geek humour palette, though I kinda wish the show would stick with real websites or games that they’re referencing. In the first episode 2 of the characters ended up bonding over a game of Defendoid, which was a made up game for the show. Having an Atari when I was growing up I kinda wish they referenced an actual game that existed instead of conjuring up a fictional game that was pretty much a slight spin on Defender. But that’s just me splitting hairs.

I took the opportunity to watch NBC’s relaunch of the American Gladiators series last night. Stu was pretty excited about it at work yesterday, so I decided to give it a shot. What a steaming pile of monkey crap that show is. I would have figured if they were going to bring the show back they would at least have put a spin on things, come up with some fresh events or something. Instead all they have done is recast the show with new Gladiators and made Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali (Muhammed Ali’s daughter) the boring hosts of the show. Let me tell you brother, Hulk Hogan is no Mean Gene Okerlund when it comes to interviews.

I think the most amusing thing about the show is the fact one of the Gladiators practically is Ben Stiller’s character from Dodgeball, White Goodman. Before the rings event Wolf even said that he was going to eat his opponent. I was waiting for him to do the cobra dance to top it all off.

I know Canada has always been the lesser sibling for television offerings when compared to the US. But this is like Apple is rubbing our noses in it. For the launch of their of the new television offerings available on iTunes Canada they managed to get 4 networks to sign on. The US store currently has 60 different networks supplying content to them. Now even if these networks were the top 4 in Canada this list would probably still be suspect, but sadly it isn’t even that good. We have the top broadcaster, CTV, our publicly funded broadcaster CBC, Comedy Central(which isn’t even Canadian, we have our own station called Comedy Network) and the NHL, which has it’s own network, but isn’t really even really a broadcaster. Global is notable in their absence from the service.

So of these 4 networks, we are offered Canadian fare like Corner Gas, Robson Arms, Dragon’s Den, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Stanley Cup Classics and No Opportunity Wasted. WTF? Here’s a look at what has been the top rated shows in the last week for Canada and the US.

From what I can tell, there are exactly 0 of these shows available for download in Canada. The US store launched with LOST, Desperate Housewives and The Office. The best US fare we get is South Park, The Hills and The Sarah Silverman Program. The US store is obviously a lot more established, but that is just pathetic. The pricing of the shows is on par with the US, but for the sake of saying, didn’t I already pay for Little Mosque on the Prairie with my tax dollars? I know it’s just a start for the service, but the fact that the US store is so entrenched and established led me to believe that maybe Canada wouldn’t be starting from scratch with the launch of their service. I clearly was mistaken.

One of the benefits of the fact writers strike is that my favourite formerly cancelled show from last season, Jericho, will be returning to TV February 12th. Given the writers strike I had hoped for a January start to the season since there will be an over abundance of re-runs next month. The show will have an abbreviated 7 episode season, which is being used by CBS to gauge the popularity of the show before it would be hopefully renewed for a proper full 3rd season. Now I found something a little interesting while poking around the official website today with regards to Jericho and the writers strike. I had visited the site last week and seen a rather poorly formatted blog posts relating to the writers strike. Well this posts is nowhere to be found now, with the most recent blog entry is now an old post releating to the Season 1 DVD release from early October. Remote Access did a post about this particular blog item with the photo below, originally from this missing blog post, so I do have proof that it actually existed.

This quote is from the introduction to the blog page.

“JERICHO is back in production! For the first time ever, the producers, writers and cast will have free reign on our site. They’ll be posting daily from set. Dig in for the next chapter in the Jericho revolution.”

I can’t say for sure, but this looks to me like CBS might have reeled in some of that liberty granted to the cast. I guess showing cast members from one of their shows supporting the writers strike on the official CBS website was a bit much for the higher-ups. So much for free reign.

If you’re a fan of Heroes I’m sure you’ve noticed the recent drop off in the show. The fervor that surrounded the show has definitely died down and the casual fans of the show have started complaining that the show is going down hill. This all sounds vaguely familiar since I’m a longtime viewer, and by extension, sufferer of the show LOST. When Heroes debuted people argued about which of these 2 shows were better and how Heroes had long term staying power when compared to LOST. Now I just find it funny that Heroes has run into the exact same pratfalls that LOST did during its second season. The plot has become too plodding for many of the casual viewers and they have started bailing on the show in droves, much the way they did with LOST.

Why is this happening?
The problem serial dramas run into when entering their second season is the same musicians run into when they look to follow up a hit debut album with their sophomore offering. You have as long as you want to craft and rework that debut album, but essentially less then 2 years to create a genius follow-up album that meets the tide of rising expectation. In television it’s even worse. You have maybe 3-6 months after the conclusion of your first season before you have to start it all again in the fall. With serial dramas they take longer to create an episode (according to Damon Lindelof it can take 2 weeks to create a single episode.) Using that math for a 24 episode season, that implies that it would take 48 weeks of a 52 week year to complete shooting a single season of LOST. Now I don’t know how long it takes to make an episode of Heroes, but I would assume it would be in the same ballpark given the special effects and stunts that would be required for the show. That doesn’t leave a lot of downtime for producers and writers to work hands on craft the scripts. How can producers be expected to craft genius programming when essentially they are flying by the seat of their pants by the time Season 2 rolls around?

But why the slow evolving plotlines?
The problem that serial dramas encounter is that most viewers are fans episodic programming, like CSI, Law & Order and the like. These shows work on a formula that is very palatable to the general viewer, they have a beginning, middle and conclusion that wraps everything up nicely by the end of the hour. At the end of the episode the characters can essentially be hung up back in the closet until they are needed for next weeks adventure. The shows do have plot threads that are ongoing throughout the show, but essentially they give the viewer the resolution they are looking for. Serial dramas just don’t work that way. They have broad story arcs that can take a couple of weeks, months or even multiple seasons to see a resolution. The plot of these shows is ongoing, so every episode doesn’t always come to a nice tidy resolution. Characters on a serial drama are essentially like chess pieces. They need to be carefully moved and placed into a position to achieve a checkmate. This doesn’t often happen over the course of a single episode, but when all the pieces are in place and the action and resolution does happen, it’s often very rewarding for the viewer who has stuck with the show during these dull patches.

Patience is a virtue
When it comes to serial drama, it is definitely true that patience is a virtue. In this day and age where everything is instant gratification, serial dramas do definitely buck this trend. To this point there have probably been 2 or 3 different patches of episodes on LOST that are similar to what is happening on Heroes right now. And all of those times paid off handsomely when they finally did get to their plot resolution, to the point I would say it’s some of the best television I’ve ever seen. I’ve experienced this same sensation in other mediums as well. If you’ve ever seen the movie “The Prestige” you might know what I’m talking about. If I had judged that movie by the first 2/3 of it I would have deemed it an absolute stinker. Yet the last 1/3 made the movie into one of the best films I’ve seen in the last couple of years. One of my favourite books is Irvine Welsh’s Filth, and it was the same way. The book was plodding for the most part and I didn’t quite know where it was going until the last few pages. Those last few pages turned the book from a mediocre read to one of the best books I’ve ever read.

So really all I can say about those worried about the quality of Heroes right now, hang in there, it’ll be worth it.