More networks should throw pilots on Hulu early to generate buzz. I think it did wonders for Modern Family.
Lone Star
- Thread starter Landed
- Start date
I never watched the show. The marketing campaign didn't hold my interest.
"Who do you love? Your fake wife or your fake girlfriend?" "Both."
Uh huh... So, the guy screws over companies and women...and yet is just a guy in love looking for his place in the world. Seriously?
I'm fine with anti-heroes who really are out to get everybody (like that short-lived show Profit) or who have come to convince themselves that wrong is right (ala the Shield), but the misunderstood supposedly-sympathetic jackass doesn't hold a lot of interest for me.
That being said...for all I know, this could have been one of the best shows on television. I'm just not surprised the marketing campaign bombed.
"Who do you love? Your fake wife or your fake girlfriend?" "Both."
Uh huh... So, the guy screws over companies and women...and yet is just a guy in love looking for his place in the world. Seriously?
I'm fine with anti-heroes who really are out to get everybody (like that short-lived show Profit) or who have come to convince themselves that wrong is right (ala the Shield), but the misunderstood supposedly-sympathetic jackass doesn't hold a lot of interest for me.
That being said...for all I know, this could have been one of the best shows on television. I'm just not surprised the marketing campaign bombed.
Reruns of House on Friday nights get better ratings than Lone Star did, they gave it a second week (which frankly they shouldn't have) and it didn't gain viewers it lost another 20%.
We all can blame Fox for a lot of things, this isn't one of them.
Hmm, well the Masked Scheduler is right that anti-heroes belong on cable, but that's far from the whole story. Dexter Morgan is a far more reprehensible person than the guy in Lone Star, yet it took me about ten minutes to fall in love with Dexter, and ten minutes to kick Lone Star to the curb. I wouldn't dismiss Lone Star for being on network TV, but if it had been on the cable, my reaction would have been the same. Why?
Simple: a story needs a compelling what's-at-stake, the lead character has to have an internal dramatic tension that grabs the audience immediately, and you need to push those elements out there FAST or the audience is gone.
With Dexter, you have a guy who appears to be a vigilante killer, yet apparently is not motivated by justice but rather bloodlust. The character contains his own internal tension, which is apparently from the very first moments: he's funny, charming, arch and honest with himself, yet scary to the point of being demonic and barely on the edge of self-control. Then he snaps back to normal, but the tension has been set: you'll keep watching on the assumption that sooner or later, he's going to slip off that edge of self-control.
With the Lone Star guy, we get no sense of any internal tension, at least not fast enough to keep my finger off the zapper, and nothing appears to be at stake, that I can care about.
Same here. The critics are why I watched ten minutes to begin with. It's the show that failed.
Simple: a story needs a compelling what's-at-stake, the lead character has to have an internal dramatic tension that grabs the audience immediately, and you need to push those elements out there FAST or the audience is gone.
With Dexter, you have a guy who appears to be a vigilante killer, yet apparently is not motivated by justice but rather bloodlust. The character contains his own internal tension, which is apparently from the very first moments: he's funny, charming, arch and honest with himself, yet scary to the point of being demonic and barely on the edge of self-control. Then he snaps back to normal, but the tension has been set: you'll keep watching on the assumption that sooner or later, he's going to slip off that edge of self-control.
With the Lone Star guy, we get no sense of any internal tension, at least not fast enough to keep my finger off the zapper, and nothing appears to be at stake, that I can care about.
I don't care that he's screwing them over. I don't care about him. So why would I care if he has two wives or fifty? The actor is good-looking and for all I know might be another Michael J. Hall, but I certainly saw nothing in how the character was written to convince me to stick around for another ten minutes, much less the whole hour.
Same here. The critics are why I watched ten minutes to begin with. It's the show that failed.
No. This isn't "Fox striking again." I admit that Fox seems to sometimes be a bit jumpy with the gun when it comes to canceling shows or mis-handling them (Firefly is a very nice example of this with a long list of reasonable excuses.)
However in Lone Star's case:
It was heavily advertised.
It was critically acclaimed.
However:
It dropped half of the viewership it had from it's lead-in the premiere week. (House got a little over 10 million viewers, Lone Star got around 4 million.)
The second week it again failed to retain viewership from a strong lead-in and even managed to drop viewership from the week before (second week House, again, got around 10 million viewers. Lone Star got a little over 3 million.)
It wasn't holding an audience, it couldn't even attract an audience.
Lowering the cancellation hammer on it seemed obvious. About the only "excuse" one could give the show would be the competition (Dancing with the Stars) on another network but, still, speaks to its failure as it wasn't a strong enough show to pull people away.
Lone Star failed on its own, not from anything Fox did as it did with Firefly (not showing the pilot, airing episodes out of order, often pre-empting for sports. Friday Night "death" timeslot.) It had strong lead-in, it was promoted. It just didn't deliver.
I learned long ago after a few of these "critics liked it, try it, you'll like it" to no longer give a shit what they say. I would contend you, or anyone, who only watched for that reason and not based on a preview you saw that compelled you to watch got tricked.
The only tv critics I read are Alan Sepinwall and Maureen Ryan, both of whom I tend to agree with more than I disagree. Both praised the show, but on this particular case I disagreed with them. I do not see how that could be construed to mean I was "tricked."
I never let critics do my thinking for me. They are writing opinions, that's all. They sit and watch everything, so I don't have to.
Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. But if there's a reviewer that I agree with more often than not, I'll give their recommendation a try.
Eh. Sometimes the critics are actually right. It's something to go on, and spending ten minutes on checking a show out really isn't that much of a committment.
EXACTLY.
It's a frickin' opinion. It's not like they are MAKING you watch something.
