Work It Cancelled
- Thread starter Starbreaker
- Start date
After two episodes.
Ouch.
Ouch.
It's funny because I swear this past episode they advertised it as "the sitcom everyone is talking about!"
Not inaccurate... but they were talking how shitty it was.
All the promos and press and it's canned already?
What happened to the old days when shitty sitcoms got a couple of horrible seasons before being dropped?
Oh, wait! This IS better.
At least with a couple seasons, there was a chance for improvement.
This way, one shitty sitcom gets canned after 2 episodes, only to be replaced by another shitty sitcom. They don't seem to learn anything.
Thank God! I was actually starting to watch that drivel. Not sure why, I generally abominate anything with a laugh track. I guess it was fascinating due to the sheer grotesquerie of it all...
Anyway, Benjamin Koldyke has solid comic talent. He can consider this experience his trial under fire. If he can make me laugh despite being immersed in a show this bad, he should take off like a rocket if ever given some decent material to work with.
Anyway, Benjamin Koldyke has solid comic talent. He can consider this experience his trial under fire. If he can make me laugh despite being immersed in a show this bad, he should take off like a rocket if ever given some decent material to work with.
After two episodes.
Ouch.
Sounds about right to me...
Well, maybe not strictly inaccurate but certainly dishonest for the very reasons you point out. Just odd that in one week they talk about as a "highly talked about sitcom" and just a few days later they can it faster than a fresh batch for corn niblets.
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Amaris
Guest
All the promos and press and it's canned already?
What happened to the old days when shitty sitcoms got a couple of horrible seasons before being dropped?
Oh, wait! This IS better.
At least with a couple seasons, there was a chance for improvement.
This way, one shitty sitcom gets canned after 2 episodes, only to be replaced by another shitty sitcom. They don't seem to learn anything.
That's my problem with it. Instead of giving it, say, 13 episodes to pass or fail, they can it if it doesn't hit the jackpot immediately. Now, I have no love for the show, but the way they're doing this, there's no time to analyze where they went wrong and how to fix it next time. They behave like they've got gobs of money to throw at this, and they really don't.
The show started off with a modest number of viewers (5 or 6 million) and lost 20% of them between weeks. Not to mention the negative press it has been getting probably meant finding advertisers were hard. The show was probably simply not worth keeping around.
All the promos and press and it's canned already?
What happened to the old days when shitty sitcoms got a couple of horrible seasons before being dropped?
Oh, wait! This IS better.
At least with a couple seasons, there was a chance for improvement.
This way, one shitty sitcom gets canned after 2 episodes, only to be replaced by another shitty sitcom. They don't seem to learn anything.
That's my problem with it. Instead of giving it, say, 13 episodes to pass or fail, they can it if it doesn't hit the jackpot immediately. Now, I have no love for the show, but the way they're doing this, there's no time to analyze where they went wrong and how to fix it next time. They behave like they've got gobs of money to throw at this, and they really don't.
Of course, back in the day, there were 3 network channels airing new programming.
Now there's how many dozen? Competition like that makes them a lot more nervous.
I mean, M*A*S*H, did pretty bad the first couple seasons it was on. Look what happened there. sad thing is, today, it wouldn't have had that chance.
Seinfeld and Cheers also started in much less competitive TV markets. Fewer people had cable back then and there were a lot fewer cable stations and original cable programming.
Seinfeld also deserves a lot of its credit due to head of NBC at the time Brandon Tartikoff who was willing to "believe" in the show and even spend money from other projects on the series to keep it. (The original four episodes of the series came from a budget that would have gone to a movie of the week.)
Cheers was mostly the same thing, people believed in the project.
Cheers and Seinfeld also saw steady, if small, numbers suggesting they could build an audience.
The networks may be quick to cancel a show these days but here we have a case where a show was getting some very negative press, it hemorrhaged 20% of it's viewership in one week and the bad press likely wasn't making the show attractive to advertisers.
And if the network thinks they can have more viewers and more advertising by showing a rerun of another series it's just good business to air that instead of a show not holding or building an audience.
Lots of bad things can be said on how networks treat shows. This isn't one of those cases.
A show like Work It is not going to improve. It's a formula and either people accept it or reject it.
I can think of a handful of network shows that did improve over time, but not fast enough to avoid the axe - Invasion, Jericho, ENT - but lately, I haven't been noticing so much of that type.
Grimm is improving incrementally, but I'm not hopeful for any big change. Pan Am has settled into an okay level. Terra Nova is mired in mediocrity. All of those may be on the chopping block and I don't think we'd lose out on some amazing future brilliance if they all vanished by next season.
If the networks can't do better than that level of show, they are doomed to lose more and more of their audience to cable, so what choice do they have but to keep cancelling mediocre shows and try to come up with something that can compete?
I can think of a handful of network shows that did improve over time, but not fast enough to avoid the axe - Invasion, Jericho, ENT - but lately, I haven't been noticing so much of that type.
Grimm is improving incrementally, but I'm not hopeful for any big change. Pan Am has settled into an okay level. Terra Nova is mired in mediocrity. All of those may be on the chopping block and I don't think we'd lose out on some amazing future brilliance if they all vanished by next season.
If the networks can't do better than that level of show, they are doomed to lose more and more of their audience to cable, so what choice do they have but to keep cancelling mediocre shows and try to come up with something that can compete?
ABC really played this one wrong. Will and Grace was a positive depiction of gays and was funny as hell, most people in the gay community loved and supported it. The support was very vocal. If Work It had had two male trans who started openly wearing female clothing much ( not all ) of the same humor could have been used. And the LGBT's in America certainly would have given it more of a chance
The people I know in the trans community stayed away from this thing like the plague, I know there's not that many of us, but a extra hundred thousand rabid fans couldn't hurt. One of my girlfriends did watch the first epi, and she said that while a few pieces of comedy were passable (to use a term), most of it was serious bigotry for laughs. One of the two crossdressing men was hispanic, and his statement that he would be great at selling drugs because he was a Puerto Rican just personal burned me.
Glad it's gone.
(Please excuse me for venting)
The people I know in the trans community stayed away from this thing like the plague, I know there's not that many of us, but a extra hundred thousand rabid fans couldn't hurt. One of my girlfriends did watch the first epi, and she said that while a few pieces of comedy were passable (to use a term), most of it was serious bigotry for laughs. One of the two crossdressing men was hispanic, and his statement that he would be great at selling drugs because he was a Puerto Rican just personal burned me.
Glad it's gone.
(Please excuse me for venting)
I always found it odd W&G was so lauded for its depiction of gay people. (Granted, I never watched it.) It always seemed to be Jack was just a big, TV-generated, flaming stereotype of everything your average TV-watched expected of a gay person.
Debra Messing though, mmmm.
