May 19, 2005 - Crushed in TV Land

I love a good story.

Unfortunately, aside from incessantly reading books, it's hard to get my fix. There are only meager offerings of the kind on TV these days - and most of it is crap.

So when for once a good show like Carnivale comes along with a riveting story to tell, its cancellation by the producing network just seems senseless and unfair. Never mind that it won 5 Emmys last year and had developed a cult following amongst its watchers (yes, I'm one of them...).

One of the reasons HBO cited for folding up Carnivale's tent was that "the drama did not increase its audience in its second season". With a plot so intricate, so convoluted, that literally every frame, every scene counts, it's honestly beyond me how they could expect people to jump in during the second season and still pick up on the overall story line.

Most infuriating though is how they left the end of the last season so wide open (will Hawkins die? Will Crowe live? What about Sophie?) and can still claim that "we feel the two seasons we had on the air told the story very well". Sure it did - but it didn't *finish* it.

I think it's probably only the second time I've felt this let down by a story - the shining award of First Place of course goes to Mr. Stephen King, who decided to torture us with his "The Plant" story, but never finished it.

In yet another stroke of brilliance by a TV network, CBS has decided to cancel "60 Minutes Wednesday" (thank you, Mr. Bush) - in favor of such no doubt spellbinding crap like "Mandy Patinkin and Thomas Gibson as FBI profilers pursuing the country's most twisted criminal minds" and - wait! it gets better - "Jennifer Love Hewitt as a woman who speaks to the dead".

::Shudder::

If it weren't for "Survivor" and "Deadwood", I think I'd cancel my DirecWay subscription and sustain myself on movies from Netflix and the library ...