Ranking TV Shows That Got Canceled | Hacker News Reader

Ranking TV Shows That Got Canceled

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272 pointsRaSoJo204 comments

You can't use future events (# ratings on IMDb 10 years later) to determine what someone "should" have done.

IMDb ratings in general follow a four point scale (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPointScale) and are also skewed toward the internet-savvy demographic. It's a good example of a homogeneous population and the problems that can cause for data analysis.

Do you mean "homogeneous"? If not, can you explain why a heterogeneous population is problematic?

Yes, fixed. (that's the problem with commenting on HN at 1 AM)

Nitpick: homogeneous, not homogenous. This error is so common that some dictionaries have deemed it acceptable, but homogeneous is preferred. I still fight the good fight.

...this is clearly the last time I will comment on HN at 1 AM.

Said like a true addict!

Yes, this hindsight data is confirming the already well-known: 1. firefly was a fan favourite, and 2. cult classics tend to be science-fiction or mysteries. It doesn't illustrate how the decision-making was flawed at the time, and therefore does little to inform decision-making in the future.

Much more interesting (and true to the title used here) would be finding the regressions between subsequent cult-classic status and data points that either were, or might've been, or would be (had it been produced today) available at the time.

(I'd expect that Netflix is correlating vastly more data points about audience behaviour than we know about. Short- and long-term responses to plot elements & twists, pacing strategies, classifications of dialogue and modes of storytelling, presence of archetypes &c &c, should all be on their agenda.)

There goes half of the Internet's content...

It is worth pointing out that the title used here is nothing like the title used on the original article, which makes no claims about what anyone should have done.

Yeah, the title is misleading. The article is trying to quantify the properties of a cancelled cult-classic and derive a ranking. It doesn't make claims about whether it was right or wrong.

Such an article would also have to look at the costs to make each show, which it does not. (I expect Firefly to be more expensive than Veronica Mars due to things like special effects, and Joey expensive due to Matt LeBlanc.)

And it would have to consider monetization models for each, where shows with ads have to concern themselves more about advertiser friendly demographics vs. premium pay shows have to find a demographic that is willing to pay directly for TV.

Oh, but Joey was awful. No chemistry. Firefly had a period table's worth of chemistry.

We updated the submission title from “Fox really shouldn't have canceled Firefly”.

Also, viewer preferences are irrelevant when it comes to whether a show should have been canceled or not. That would presume that television networks are in business to produce quality content rather than to make money.

Advertiser preferences are far more relevant. One could argue that Advertisers usually want to advertise in shows that people like to watch, but there are nuances to that and IMDB ratings aren't broken down by demo, so we can't even know in hindsight.

The reality is that Fox's decision was likely based on being able to charge more for ads on some new show, which makes it correct both at the time and in hindsight.

I think that advertisers would want a show that has a dedicated audience that returns again and again to watch as it would be a much more valuable property than something that just has a million eyeballs where no one's really paying attention. The list of shows they had really surprised me in that I enjoyed two-thirds of them myself.

Not to mention that Firefly's cancellation has posthumously added to its notoriety. Nearly every Firefly mention is in relation to its cancellation. Would it be as popular if it hadn't been cancelled?

I really like Firefly, but the cancellation meant they didn't have the opportunity to fuck it up. Every other Whedon series has had poor seasons.

I suspect that any boost gained by early cancellation would also have been gained by more episodes, and time for word of mouth to popularize it... unless Fox pulled more slow death dickery.

I can't really speak to Buffy and Angel, but with regards to Firefly and Dollhouse... The indication is that Whedon wouldn't so much fuck it up, but requirements by Fox would force him to fuck it up. Compare "Train Job" to the original first episode of Firefly. Compare early episodes of Dollhouse to later ones, particularly the encore episode.

Dollhouse could have been really good.

The idea of using the Big Red Reset Button as a continuous plot element, and telling the arc story through seepage across resets was a brilliant way of giving the finger to almost every other series.

And it turned into a young adults' barbie show.

Dollhouse was a misfire IMHO. I watched both seasons on Netflix and it never really found a groove. I was really annoyed that they more or less sidestepped the obvious ethical and moral issues and instead ended the show with outright supervilliany. It was just so dumb by the end that I felt kind of embarrassed to keep watching.

That's what happens when the network forces you to cram 5 years worth of story into 1 year. :/

That feels a bit like a cop-out to me. Part of the job of a television creative is effectively working inside of your network.

Although it's better today, with Netflix and the free reign a lot of producers get, I think there is an art of show business maneuvering that shaped so much TV and kind of added to it's character. The classic "medium with a limitation" theory.

While I think Firefly had one or two more good seasons in it, I do support your argument. There are so many examples of shows having a strong start and then screwing up in a later season, making the whole series terrible. I think Heroes was the worst example of this: brilliant first season, complete garbage after. Glee is another example. I would have hated to see Firefly do this.

Heros fell apart during the writers strike.

Personally I think shows should get three seasons by default, and should need a _really_ compelling reason to go beyond that.

Actually, I think this is consistent. 13-26 or so episodes is a pretty good length. Beyond that, ideas get stale, characters get repetitive, plots get either formulaic, or too convoluted to ever resolve, and a show generally starts to tilt downward.

I wish there were more shows that just were OK with planning an ending. I like stories with endings. Just know your limits, don't try to make a show that can go on for a million seasons, end it when its still good, and then use the goodwill garnered from making a masterpiece to build the next creative thing.

I'm not sure why this model seems to be more successful in, say, Anime as opposed to western TV. Budget, maybe?

> I'm not sure why this model seems to be more successful in, say, Anime as opposed to western TV. Budget, maybe?

It's mostly a US thing. The UK is fine with making shows that have short seasons and that only last two or three seasons.

Actually, I think the UK is the exception in this regard. Most other countries that shoot their own local TV shows have 6-9 month seasons. Brazil, India, China, Turkey.. etc.

Furthermore I'm not convinced UK's shorter season format is a good thing. I actually think it's a symptom of much smaller budgets.

Yes! You made me realise that I was applying my own limited view of tv shows (what I see on English TV) and appying that to the whole world.

I think they're starting to get it. Breaking Bad fully executed its ending. Game of Thrones announced their end years in advance. TV producers are finally starting to come on board with the idea of stopping a show even though it's popular.

The alternative is to mint an evergreen series like Law & Order. Someone finds a dead body in NYC; investigation, trial, and silly social commentary ensue. Then vary the parameters a bit and you get SVU, Criminal Intent, et al. Characters are interchangeable, guest spots abound, social commentary changes with the politics of the day.

Walking Dead -- eh, it's getting a little old. I thought they were going to explore some primitive economics, and maybe they will, but the cliffhanger gag last season reminded me too much of "Who Shot JR?" Not sure I care. And the spinoff went too heavy on the social commentary, couldn't even finish Season Two.

Mr. Robot is more promising, but I haven't seen one yet that comes close to the satisfaction I got from the clear arc of the story in Breaking Bad. Sons of Anarchy tried, but fell short somehow.

Walking Dead, I just wish they could find another model for a season.

"Oh, we're walking or driving through the woods" "Cool, we found a place that looks cool and has cool people" "Oh, the cool people were actually horrible for some reason" "Time to blow it up I guess."

Wish that were true with battlestar Galactica, very disappointed in its last season

And then there's Caprica, in which we discover that Battlestar Galactica's awesomeness was apparently a complete and total accident:-(

>Budget, maybe?

Budget and the revenue from a hit.

Making a hit is such a crap shoot that depends on a lot of things including what basically boils down t luck, i.e. it grabs the limelight for whatever reason. So when something does become a hit, there's a lot of pressure to just keep things going.

- The network likes that they have a predictable money-making show.

- A lot of fans will continue watching out of habit/duty.

- Many actors and others associated with a hit show may think (often for good reason) that they'll likely never see as good a payday again.

It's also worth noting that shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones still had relatively niche audiences compared to a hit on a major network. Probably makes it easier to plan for a fixed length.

You do see some of the same effect in, say, genre fiction though. There are a lot of interminable series because they have a built-in readership.

The consistent, long-term revenue for a series comes via syndication, which typically becomes feasible for a 30-minute sitcom around 100 episodes (can vary by format, however).

The article doesn't go out on that limb and try to say what anyone should have done.

Firefly had decent ratings when it first aired, so a lot of people were really confused that they canceled it. Those people apparently failed to understand television as a business, as in addition to those decent ratings, it was also expensive to produce, far more expensive than was justified by the decent viewership it was getting (there's a lot of shows now spending millions of dollars per episode on big name stars, but they have a lot more viewers than Firefly was getting...).

Internet ranking for cult shows/movies is problematic, these shows have an extremely loyal fan base which ties the origins of the word fan to it's root fanatic quite often.

While these are great shows, the ranking don't necessarily mean much, it just means that there were more fans willing to give the show a good rating, and more likely than not on probably more than a few accounts.

It's hard to compare IMDB ratings properly when shows like America's Got Talent or the Voice only have 5000-7000 votes with a pretty shitty score while clearly being considerably more popular with the mass audience. Shows like GoT are an outlier with over 1M votes cast, while even highly acclaimed TV sci fi shows like Star Trek TNG have only about 60K votes.

Firefly is the "best tv show that got canceled ever" just like Kim Jong Un is Time's internet person of the year, mostly anonymous internet voting and highly loyal and fanatic fan base can easily skew statistics.

I love Firefly I would loved to have seen it live to be 5-6 seasons old, but every time I see people talk about it like it was the "greatest mistake" in modern television programming I can't really take them seriously.

It might not have been the greatest mistake in modern television programming, but the size and enthusiasm of the fan base at least says something about how profitable it might be (or not) if it returned on, say, Netflix.

Potential producers might also want to consider factors such as the average age and income of a Firefly fan (since it was aired 13 years ago and remain popular among Silicon Valley geeks) and whether it would be feasible to bring some of the original cast back together and still have an interesting story (Star Wars VII did).

This idea almost makes me want to cancel my Netflix subscription and tell them "I won't buy Netflix unless you do this"

Then again I already love what Netflix provides.

" it might be if it returned on, say, Netflix."

My Netflix has Firefly. In Finland. Our selection in Netflix in generally very limited, though. Or do you mean Netflix would make new seasons?

New seasons. Which might or might not be a good idea, depending on some of the factors I mentioned.

They did it with Serenity and it didn't work out that well, barely covered the production budget.

Nathan is way too old these days, it would be fun to see but I don't think it could ever live to the expectations of the fan base.

This is one of the problems with cult pop culture items, a lot of the following is based on the fact that the fanbase produced just as much content as there was originally if not more, and what the imagine is "perfect" but also very individual and the illusion of perfection would shatter when some one tries to make into something tangible.

Firefly is probably the best example of "never meet your heroes", it was an epic show, but part of it's epicness is what we've all imagined it could be if it only had X more episodes or years to go.

Actually, it's really looking like if was the worst decision made so far in television. I think Fox know it too, because they made a movie to try to wrap it up.

And you see, this is why Netflis will eat Fox's lunch. Netflix are willing to create at least 3 seasons if series and don't care if their shows are more niche. It means there's a reason to subscribe to Netflix!

Ish. Netflix are spending a lot now but the residual back end income on a Netflix show is much lower for the producers, so it might tail off once investors get bored.

>because they made a movie to try to wrap it up

Which did rather poorly at the box office (~$25M) even though it was generally pretty well-regarded.

>why Netflis will eat Fox's lunch

Very different business models which drive very different approaches to programming.

Fox needed to find a way to monetize these fans. Getting standard network advertising rates for fanatical followers is leaving way too much money on the table.

This was 2003 no TiVo even, and Fox doesn't really do traditional syndication.

Scifi is expensive to make a scifi show has to outperform the competition to survive simply because of production costs.

This is why Shows like Buffy or X-Files worked because they didn't really need anything to set up the world, no need for expensive sets or special effects (buffy had some but you could always just do a filler episode with not much going on to balance the seasonal budget) a high school/small town setting and rural new jersey with a few wind breakers and 2 rental cars isn't going to break anyone's bank.

And also when Fox did try to monetize fans, the fans didn't coughed up the cash, Serenity made 25M at the US box office just to put it into perspective, xXx State of the Union and freaking DOOM made more money than Serenity.

To be fair, Serenity was a much weaker movie, as a stand-alone thing. It failed to expand beyond the core fan base much. A relative of mine went to see it 6 times during the opening weekend to goose the numbers, but only because he was a fan of the show.

Yeah I also had the odd acquaintance that did the same, ironically 99.9% of my other friends who claim to be "fans" and that Firefly is the "best thing ever" never bothered.

I don't think most of them even waited for it to come out on DVD but most likely pirated it and maybe bought it once it hit the bargain bin.

Various excuses have been used from "I don't want to see an episode in the theater" to "I don't want to give Fox money" but it doesn't really matter, people didn't came out to see it, and even the DVD sales unlike Firefly were pretty weak.

Anecdotally your friend that went to see it 6 times is also likely the reason why Firefly gets more votes cast on IMDB than The X-Files or Seinfeld.

"Various excuses have been used from "I don't want to see an episode in the theater" to "I don't want to give Fox money"

I heard similar from some of my friends. I kept trying to explain to them that Fox wouldn't make any money from the movie, which was released by Universal. (Fox had long since passed on continuing the show/property in any form. Fans should have been supporting Universal for picking up what it believed Fox didn't handle well, and for attempting to give the series a new lease on life. In fact, Uni had intended to make a trilogy.)

TiVo was introduced in 1999 and was definitely around in 2003. I had a DirecTV version then (if I recall correctly, it was made by Sony.)

Looks like you are correct, for some reason I felt it was introduced in the mid 2000's.

I'm actually surprised that they managed to produce a cost effective and functional DVR in 1999.

How was the quality? the earliest DVR's I can remember are the Samsung DirectTV ones from the mid 2000's.

But then again it seems that the 90's and early 2000's are a blur to me, I was surprised to "discover" today that The Mask of Zoro came out in 2005 the same year as Serenity I had surely pegged it to be considerably older.

I'm actually surprised that they managed to produce a cost effective and functional DVR in 1999.

Even in 1999 I was thinking, "why didn't someone do this sooner?" It was a VCR with a hard drive instead of tape. Not to trivialize Tivo'S accomplishment, there's a lot more to it than that, but the know-how was there as well as the hardware. Granted, hard drives back then were pretty tiny, but so were the shows in standard def. As for "cost-effective", well, the MSRP wasn't cheap, that's for sure, and there was a monthly fee (one of the earliest examples I know of "stuff that doesn't need a subscription to work that requires a subscription").

Quality? As good as what came down that coax wire, IIRC. In other words, compared to today's high-def stuff, it sucked. But that wasn't Tivo'S fault.

It would have been hard to do a TiVo or ReplayTV much before those companies did it. You don't have to go much further back in time before sufficiently large hard disks would probably have been too pricey. In addition, I don't think consumer computer-based tuner boards came about all that much earlier. And, like the early TiVos, you'd have had to support plugging it into a phone line to get the subscription service.

The bottom line is that I could imagine an expensive, low capacity DVR a couple years before they actually appeared but I'm not sure there would have been a viable commercial market for such.

It wasn't a VCR with a hard drive, VCR's for the most part used an analogue format unless you had some of the few digital ones that were super expensive and used for productions.

In 1999 making a cost effective DVR couldn't have been that easy, the hardware was pretty puny and storage was expensive.

A ~16 GB hard drive alone in 1999 would cost 250-350$ [0]

A TV tuner card capable of MPEG-2 encoding on chip would cost around 300-400$, at least that was the price in around 2000-2001 when I got a hercules DVR card. The software ones required an Intel MMX CPU to do encoding and those were both cutting edge and expensive, so the fact that TiVO managed to release a viable consumer product at a reasonable price was pretty f-ning amazing.

[0] http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte | http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm | http://edition.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/30/harddrives.... | http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1...

I think people don't realize that in 1999 Pentium II just came out and intel was still producing non-embedded versions of the 486.

IIRC there was also an optional pay-once lifetime subscription available.

There was. And I'm actually still using mine, having paid a transfer fee, on the TiVo I'm still using. It wasn't cheap though. I think I paid $300-400 dollars and that was quite a few years ago.

I'd be on the verge of agreeing with you about Firefly not being that big a mistake. IMDB is skewed. I mean, I love Firefly, but I'm in high school and I'm a nerd, so I'm in the fan demographic like twice over.

Except.

Then I thought about all the other people I know who loved Firefly. And that's everyone. My friends love it, although that's to be expected. Most of the adults I know love it. My mother, who can barely use a computer, and is about as far from being a nerd as is possible, loves it.

It's not statisically significant. It's biased. But the fact that I can walk up to most of the adults I know, ask them about Firefly, and have them say that they saw it in reruns or on Netflix, and loved it, and they wish it hadn't been canceled, tell me that there may be an audience for the show beyond just us nerds.

I don't think that Firefly is a show for nerds, I don't do 90% of the stuff that are considered "nerdy". I'm not into comics, I'm not into anime, I enjoy good scifi and fantasy because they are good not because of the genre.

Firefly is one of my favorite shows, but I can also see it's many flaws, and I honestly don't know if a 5-6 season Firefly would've been even as remotely good as the "Firefly" that fans imagine.

Firefly was very entertaining as a show and it set up a universe that allowed people's imagination to run wild with fan theories and fanfiction, but it doesn't mean that the show would ended up being half as good as the short preview we had.

The airing of the show was abysmal the episodes aired out of order and created a mess it was mishandled on every step but I can nearly guarantee you that if it would've went on the end result would've been considerably worse than the would be show the fans imagine in their heads.

Firefly is your highschool crush that you never had a chance of dating, it been put onto such a high pedestal that I could never live up to it's expectations, and when the fan base did get another chance with Serenity it flopped.

Serenity wasn't a bad movie, it was pretty well in line with the show in terms of quality of writing and performance, and the budget was considerably better but after years of imagination people just didn't came to watch it.

They got a movie that made 25M domestically (The DVD sales of Firefly made more), and about 14-15M world wide, it barely covered it's budget it made like 300K over the production costs which means that it most likely ended up losing money.

If Serenity would've been a huge success Fox would've greenlit additional movies (it's been 11 years since it came out so don't cry about spoilers) or even a renewal or spin off of the TV show even tho several characters died in the film.

But the fans pissed all over it, so I would have to say it's a good show but we all have a major selection bias because of our cultural bias, your mom might like the show but I can guarantee you her tastes are probably closer to yours that you might think since at least some part of your own cultural bias came from your parents.

And again I absolutly love Firefly, and I chuckle at the Firefly references and jokes in Castle (another show that was dragged way past it's lifespan) I do find the whole western/space opera theme extremely cool (one of the few animes I not only love but can actually bring myself to watch is CowBoy BeBop), but I'm not sold that it would've been a perfect show and a hit if it would've been let to run a full season or more.

Absolutely a good point. Firefly did fail for a reason. I merely don't think that reason was that the potential audience was small. The problem is more likely that, as you mentioned, the launch was disasterous, and as a result, by the time most people got wind of series it was already dead.

Well the potential audience is small, that's true for most TV shows out of the bat which is why competition is so hard.

Any show that can't be turned on at a random moment for some entertainment will be at a disadvantage which is why various talk shows/entertainment shows are usually the most popular ones. And as far as serials go then vanilla shows tend to work best, this is why NCIS is one of the most popular shows even tho it's pretty darn dumb (I still like it somewhat, tho it used to be better, I can't deal with skinny Tim).

Scifi and Fantasy shows have not to only perform well but to outperform their competition by a mile because they are so expensive to make (a sitcom or a run of the mil cop drama costs nothing), same goes for historical/periodic shows which is why Rome got canceled (it actually was more expensive than GoT with the exclusion of maybe the last season of Got) and since the licensing was shared between BBC and HBO neither saw enough revenue to continue pouring so much money into it.

But yeah Fox butchered Firefly this is was one of the ads for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1iWbgQUpRo they sold it as a kick ass action show and the people who tuned in were dissapointed, it had action but it was more of a goofy space comedy than a serious thriller.

Anecdotes are anecdotes. I've never seen Firefly or spoken to a person to has told me they have.

I think it might mean something. But ultimately, yes, it was an anecdote. I never pretended otherwise.

I'm a little surprised Dollhouse didn't rank higher. It's really a wonderful, extended meditation on the nature of identity, wrapped up in a sci-fi, transhumanist, pre-apocalyptic shell, with a liberal dash of feminism. Fran Kranz, Olivia Williams, and (last, but not least) Enver Gjokaj are standouts among the excellent cast.

I do, however, recommend watching the first pilot from the DVD set rather than the actual pilot episode that aired. It takes a couple episodes to get going, but once it does, it's truly amazing.

iirc, the "Save Dollhouse from Cancellation" campaign started before the first episode even aired. It still got cancelled.

I hated Dollhouse, despite being a nearly obsessive Whedon fan. I loved Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, and also loved Dushku and Acker in their roles on earlier Whedon shows. I kinda forced myself to watch it based on my love of all of Whedon's other shows, and the hope that, like Buffy, it would find its stride in the 2nd season. But, no, it was just bad. I didn't make it through the second season.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I obsessed over Buffy (which I consider a guilty pleasure as I wasn't the target demographic of teenage-at-the-time girls), and enjoyed Angel to a lesser degree. Firefly absolutely blew me away, and was a starting point for several of its actors who have become successful in the years since. I've followed those actors into the shows they went on to do, with the exception of Nathan Fillion in Castle, which I found too cheesy for my taste.

But Dollhouse...the cast was great, the story was intriguing even if a little derivative, but somehow the show fell flat for me. I found myself struggling to watch it and gave up about 10 episodes in. I still have the first season DVD on my Amazon wish list but it's been on there since December 2010 and I still haven't brought myself to buy it, despite its price dropping below $10 several times in the past.

Maybe one day I'll pick it up and try again, but there's so much good TV out today and so little spare time to watch, I may never get around to it.

My ex-wife and I watched Buffy when it premiered in 1997, and she was pregnant with our first child. We loved it!

Time flies: My daughter got into it and did several weeks of marathon watching with her friend when she was 17 in 2014. It didn't hold up for me when I watched a bit of one episode again, and I was definitely not in the demographic for the show by a stretch at that point ;)

At least for me, there's a certain "you can't go home again" element to TV series--especially ones running over a number of seasons. You typically watch and enjoy them at the pace that they aired and in the context of the culture at the time and where you are at the time.

This is changing with the splintering of mainstream culture, on-demand binge-watching etc. But it certainly applies to originally broadcast series. There's also just so much new content these days. It's really hard for me to imagine devoting 100 hours or whatever to either rewatching or watching for the first time some 1990s vintage TV show.

With many shows like Buffy it also change so much over time. The early episodes are not far off "monster of the week", but then you get a lot of things towards the end with e.g. Buffy's death, and resurrection (and the subsequent "d'oh" moment on realising that they should have considered maybe, just maybe she was actually happier dead) that are a lot more complex and intelligent.

It's easy with long running series to remember the characters and events they way they were towards the end of the series, and get a bit of a shock when going back and watching the beginning..

Although I wrote elsewhere that I have limited patience for shows taking too much time to find their "voice," it's certainly fair that some shows do start out tentatively and only grow into memorable series after a season or so. For example, I'd argue that both Star Trek TNG and DS9--especially the former--were much stronger later in their runs.

Of course, there are probably even more series that start out fairly strong but limp on well past their sell by date or just lose the plot so to speak.

To add a slightly different perspective, my wife and I watched Buffy for the first time this year and we absolutely loved it. I actually felt that it held up surprisingly well. Angel on the other hand... I forced myself through 2.5 seasons before giving up, could not get into it at all.

I've watched Buffy, Angel, and Firefly several times all the way through (Firefly the most often, by far). Certainly, some of the magic of Buffy is gone when watching it as a middle aged man (I was an adult when watching it the first time, but just barely), but it's still enjoyable.

It was definitely a show that got better in the later seasons, but it was always funny and fun pop horror/fantasy, and the cast was excellent (except Michelle Trachtenberg's Dawn, who was just annoying). I think maybe Whedon's greatest talent back then was picking a good cast with great chemistry, which may be why Dollhouse failed so miserably, for me. So much of that cast was just wooden and utterly forgettable (I almost said "unlikable", but I can't remember anyone from the show other than Amy Acker and Eliza Dushku, so I can't even say I disliked the cast). Now that he's working with huge names, and the cast is already mostly set in stone, I'm not inclined to go see his films. I watched the first Avengers and remember it being funny, but not really anything else about it. The second was a snore.

Anyway, Angel was maybe more adult-friendly; at least it was intended to be, since no one could pretend David Boreanaz was young enough to be messing around with high school girls anymore. Though Buffy was always funnier.

But, Firefly is the best of them all. Surprisingly so, since all other Whedon shows are widely regarded as being best after they've had a season or so to find their rhythm. It seems reasonable to assume Firefly would have actually gotten better; the film hints at that potential. Though Serenity was rushed, it was still excellent, and would have made a top-notch series of episodes for the show if it'd been presented in that form.

For the record, as a fairly hardcore lifelong science fiction fan with limited tolerance for cutesy teenage-esque plots or soap opera drama (I found Buffy difficult), I have to say that the Dollhouse finale was 100% worth getting to for me. Yes, it started out bad in many ways-- some of it may have been on purpose, but there were just so many issues with poorly edited scripts and bad acting. After it warmed up, though, aside from a few minor hiccups, I thought it got better and better. I don't remember exactly when it really picked up, but 10 episodes in is probably not far enough.

From late in the first season through the ending (and oh wow, especially the ending), it seemed to me that the sci-fi themes got much, much stronger, more complex, and more interesting. I have a particular interest in the ideas around 'consciousness transfer' or whatever you want to call it, and in my book the show explores multiple facets of that better than just about any I've seen. I highly recommend getting around to it. I actually plan on watching the whole thing again, something I almost never do with any show.

I'd pretty much echo this. I didn't get into Dollhouse when it first aired. But someone or something I read got me to dive back into it around Season 2 or so. I recall watching at least the back-end of the series and thinking that it was really quite good science fiction. I should maybe rewatch it one of these days.

Dollhouse was premised on the idea that Eliza Dushku could convincingly play a different character every week. I do not think it worked very well.

I can imagine if they rebooted the show, Tatiana Maslany could pull it off without a hitch. It's basically what she's doing in Orphan Black, but she's playing those multiple characters two or three at a time in one episode.

I'd say that's more of a feature than a bug. I was far more interested in Echo than any of the implanted personalities.

A fair amount of the time, Dollhouse seemed to me like it had been rushed into production without the time to think of better per-episode plots (as opposed to the longer story-arc). Which always made me a little sad, because the underlying theme is awesome.

On the other hand, I agree that the cast was incredible. Even when some of the "little" plots were weak, they made the show very much worth watching to me.

Definitely. Season 1 was mostly "let's see whose ass Echo is going to kick this week." Unfortunately, I'd say about half of the first season was basically wasted on throwaway episodes. Season 2 felt rushed in general, because it was rushed. Had the show gotten the 5 or 6 years it actually needed to develop itself, it would have been far better.

Dollhouse was a good idea, worth one season. Another season would have struggled with variations on the theme. This is a problem with high-concept drama; don't wear out the concept. That's also true of Firefly, although it might have gone two or three seasons before being brought to some kind of conclusion.

Fox tried so many crazy things. Brisco County Jr., Dark Angel, Alien Nation. They'd stand by shows that did ok, like x files or fringe, and constantly try random new stuff.

Yeah, i'm bummed with the rest of the internet that Firefly got canceled. Some browncoats still have some hate for Fox. But really without fox churning through random ideas, it never would have been made.

> Some browncoats still have some hate for Fox. But really without fox churning through random ideas, it never would have been made.

Much of the hate for fox is not about trying new things or cancelling a failing show, it's that the way they aired the show gave it no chance: Fox changed the episode sequence (airing it in essentially random order destroying any chance of following the underlying plot), promoted it as an action-comedy series, and often interrupting or dropping it in favour of sports.

There's a reason the show's "cult status" started mere months after it was cancelled.

The browncoat hate for Fox isn't just that the show was cancelled but that it was aired somewhat out of order in inconsistent timeslots and then cancelled it.

Fox has set up numerous shows for failure, including Arrested Development, which was aired against Monday Night Football and wasn't aired during sweeps week. How does a show succeed, no matter how good, when it's never given a chance to develop an audience?

You're being overly generous to Fox. It's not enough to "try" crazy shows. They're dead in the water if they're set up for failure this way by extremely short term thinking.

> Fox has set up numerous shows for failure

Seems like a dubious claim to me, since it's not in their interest. My guess is that since the most coveted timeslots are a finite resource, they need to make hard calls about placing stable earners in them vs. new shows, for example, or bank on audiences finding those new shows anyway, via directed marketing effots. "Giving a show a chance to develop an audience" is technically achieved by airing it at all, and it's not the only thing they need to get done in a day.

You can criticize individual decisions they make, but only if you take that full picture of everything they need to accomodate into account. There can be good reasons why a network doesn't place your favorite show in your preferred timeslot.

Nobody's claiming that Fox made the decisions out of spite. Just that those decisions happened to greatly contribute to Firefly's failure.

> "Giving a show a chance to develop an audience" is technically achieved by airing it at all

Nah. You might get away with that now with DVRs and streaming and Twitter word-of-mouth, but not in 2002.

Without commenting on Firefly specifically, one hears a lot of comments in the vein of: "They needed to just give this show another season so that it could find its voice/find an audience/develop its storyline/etc." Personally as a viewer, especially these days, you have very little time to grab me given how many options there are--and how relatively little time I spend watching TV. I'm not going to give your show 3 seasons, even if the network is willing, to hope it turns into something interesting.

Consumer's life is fast and boring, so he cannot wait to entertain himself. I think it is called positive feedback.

This is exactly right. The X-Files had a shitty Friday night time slot when it first aired, and grew out of it to a prime slot on Sundays.

Somebody should compile a list of all the stupid decisions networks have made, because they all seem to make a lot.

Mork & Mindy (RIP Robin Williams) became the #3 show in America in its first season. Come season 2, the network (ABC) fired the entire supporting cast and changed its timeslot to go up against Archie Bunker. Even back then, most people had enough sense to know to not mess with something that worked, but you wouldn't know it from the network executives. The show was never able to recover.

ALF was moved from Monday to Saturday and the ratings crashed. The show ended on the cliffhanger where ALF is caught by the military. Everybody assumed the show would be renewed, but it was cancelled. NBC exec Brandon Tartikoff later regretted cancellation feeling the show should have gone another season or two.

> Fox has set up numerous shows for failure, including Arrested Development, which was aired against Monday Night Football and wasn't aired during sweeps week. How does a show succeed, no matter how good, when it's never given a chance to develop an audience?

This is revisionist history. Fox pushed AD hard during season 1 and discovered that it was the ultimate cult show, with a small but devoted audience and no reach chance to expand it's base. Fox pushed it into the dead zones of the schedule because they knew the audience would follow it anywhere. Internally, AD had huge champions which is why it got far more episodes than it would have rationally deserved if you just looked at ratings.

There's no real way Fox could have turned it into a viable hit if only it had treated it better. Like later critically adored darlings like Community of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, there was a natural ceiling to its viewership that was never going to fit into the business model of an early 21st century network channel.

Well, Fringe should have been cancelled after the first season as it became a boring mess of plotholes. And Fox is generally terrible with scifi shows - see Terranova, Being Human.

So it's a good thing they cancelled Firefly, otherwise there is a high chance it would not have been remembered fondly now.

Dark Angel? That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I really enjoyed watching that when it came out, and was surprised it was cancelled just as it started to move on from the initial premise.

My memory is that it shifted from being about her-past towards the snake-people. Along with the more visible rise of mutants? I'm hazy on the finer details, with my overriding memory being that it contained both Jessica Alba, and Michael Weatherly (who went on to become Dinozzo in NCIS.)

I think a similar situation happened with 'Chuck'. The last couple seasons of it were produced in such a way that the finales could have worked as series finales since they were never sure it would be extended further.

As a result, it had weird sponsorships like from Subway, which meant scenes of the show were pretty much Subway ads.

But anyway, my point is that nowadays on Netflix and IMDB the show has lots of ratings and they're generally positive.

IMDB has Chuck as 8.2/10 based on 109,543 ratings, which I would think is decent. I think the last time I noticed it, Netflix had it at 4.5 or so out of 5 stars (not sure on overall numbers, however).

That show had a great blend of a bunch of genres: cheesy/action/suspense/romance/sci-fi to name just a few.

But I think in general this kind of situation is mostly a result of our times. 5+ years ago shows were just really beginning to be widely available (at least to people who didn't torrent online and things like that). Back then you really had to intentionally be around when something aired on TV or you needed to care enough to set it to record to DVR (or heck, even VHS further back).

Nowadays it's easy enough to just open up Netflix and continue watching a show sequentially on demand.

The Chuck writers were brilliant in their fan service in that regard.

And it's not only the season finales, they were always on the bubble and never sure if they'd get the back-6 or back-9 of a season. Because of the uncertainty, there are generally 2-3 episodes per season, around either episode 9 or 13, and then including the finales, they would work as series enders.

We've rewatched Chuck a couple times, but always end on the episode where Ellie has her baby and Chuck proposes to Sarah. After that, it's just too much of a roller coaster (for all the reasons you mentioned).

The last couple seasons are still decent, but because of the on again, off again nature of the series that rollercoaster is quite uncomfortable to ride.

The logic behind the rise of niche programs is simple : they didn't fit the advertising based model , which seeks mass appeal, but they are the thing that makes a loyal fan stay subscribed to netflix(or Amazon) even if the rest of netflix isn't great for him - but still nice to watch.

As for the economics - let's say each niche grabs 5% of viewers - you need just 20 shows, which is reasonable.

Only if each show's viewership is completely disjoint from all of the other shows'.

20, of course, is the best case scenario where each and every one of them capture 5% exactly and capture that 5% in such a manner that it is mutually exclusive from all other 19 shows.

Alternately, if the probability of liking the shows are completely uncorrelated, then with 20 shows you'll have 64% of the market watching at least one of your shows.

(and of course there's the worst-case scenario where all 20 shows appeal to the same 5%!)

This is related to an opportunity cost problem that Netflix doesn't have (so much).

The networks have a limited set of time slots so if one show is deemed relatively better than another for a particular slot then it makes sense to consider a swap.

Netflix only really needs the show to make money to keep it going. If a competing show makes more money then that's great. Show both.

Netflix to some extent actually prefers "niche programming". Their mass appeal library and show would sell subscriptions but they'll peak rather quickly as a replacement for cable. Their niche programming is very good at attracting new customers since these customers tend to be more hardcore and they don't have (m)any alternatives.

How much of this will remain as Netflix moves towards original programming I don't know, I think that they are likely to move most of their mass appeal programming to originals and just pick up the odd cult classics/fanclub shows and movies and maybe revive a franchise once in awhile.

I've been pretty disappointed with Netflix offerings lately. I've been finding that Amazon Prime Video has a better selection of shows and movies.

Although I'm still waiting for something that just streams everything in TCM's or the Criterion Collection's back catalog. A lot of old movies, even very notable ones, are hard to find anywhere, legally or otherwise.

FilmStruck (TCM + Criterion) is scheduled for Dec 2016 launch, https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4032-introducing-fil...

Netflix has a few Criterion films, http://streamingcriterions.com/

Hulu has (had? Don't remember) a ton of CC films such that a film's Hulu availability is featured in the actual CC website.

From the link above, CC@Hulu is ending in Nov to make way for the new service.

Thanks. I'd prefer that actually!

One season was enough. I don't know about the rest of you, but I quite like small one-off or short-lived TV runs because they often set out to tell a story and once their story is told, that is it. No tacked on extra seasons.

Agreed. Just tell a good story, take the time it needs, and be done. In my opinion, long-lived series tend to become repetitive and formulaic, escalate beyond measure because somehow there always has to be a new bigger bad (I am looking at you Stargate SG1) or more trumped up storyline. I understand the appeal to keep on going as long as it makes (a lot of) money. But as an appreciator of a good story I just move on to a fresh idea.

I am a really huge fan of Supernatural, but lately it feels like it's kinda getting out of control. On the other hand, I also don't want it cancelled!

I was a huge fan too. I loved it till Season 7, gave up on it after Season 9. What bugs me the most is that the things that happen don't make any remote kind of sense anymore. It had some sort of consistent plot for a while, but it started breaking apart since somewhere around S5 / S6.

I disagree with you on SG-1, though I'd like to bring up Supernatural 'spoiler mentioned as a perfect example of what you're talking about.

SG-1, compared to many other overdone shows, had one redeeming quality - the protagonists (in this case, all humans) actually progressed through the course of the show. In SG-1 humans went from 1980s level of technology in Season 1 to spaceships, teleporters and off-world colonies in Season 10. So new 'bigger bad' always made some kind of sense, and I feel there was a space for a few seasons worth of additional interesting ideas.

That, or they could have simply continued Stargate: Universe.

There is one series I'm really up in arms about it being recently cancelled - Person of Interest. That one was nowhere close to repetitive, it had tons and tons of space for good, intelligent story developments, and it got cancelled behind the crew's back anyway, because whatever. Fuck you, CBS, for cutting out what was probably the only thing in history of television that approached the topic of AI in a smart, realistic way (and also basically broke Snowden's revelations a year before Snowden).

I actually agree with the GP, SG1 was dragged for way too long until they just ran out of time they clearly expected an additional season to finish the show (the final episode was pretty underwhelming).

The loss of RDA which was a major part of the appeal of the show and the constant attempts to replace/clone him for every show in the franchise afterwards was pretty lame.

The constant rotation of the supporting cast also did not really help the show, and the move from a procedural format with a few long term plot lines to a fixed seasonal story arc also didn't really help the show to maintain (it's weekly) audience (most fans would agree that the Showtime seasons were the best).

I did chuckle at the Farscape fan service they did in the later seasons, and there were a few fun moments but overall the show was pretty much dead around season 7.

They should've let SG1 go and spun it to a few other shows, but sadly SyFy (or how ever they spell their name now) wanted to dumb things down and make it flashy and splashy which is why SG: Atlantis looked more like Sharknado than SG1. By the time they tried to bring things back to the roots with SGU they still mocked it up, SyFy promoted SGU as a worthy replacement to Battlestar Galactica and tried to appeal to it's fan base with pretty disastrous results.

I do not disagree with you on humanities' progression in SG1, but I'd think that all these mayor shifts in technological advancement would have been better explored in separate series rather than in one big swooping race to the max.

For example how Star Trek explored early space exploration in Enterprise (sans time traveling shenanigans), another era in the original series, and another one in The new generation and DS9 and Voyager.

I do like the stargate universe, the Atlantis spin-off in particular, and I would like to see more of it. Maybe they can set a new series in, say, 100 years from the ending of SG1. Or maybe it is time to move on to fresh ideas. I liked the universe of The Expanse, for example, and am looking forward how they can move it forward.

(I was less happy about the Dark Matter universe, or rather the story told in it, for example: one small ship with a small crew holding the balance and future of the entire (known) universe in their hands is a bit too much for me.)

Yeah, I agree. Splitting SG-1 off would work for me too. I just grow very fond of the universe (and the style, tbh. SG-1 was actually one of the things that held me together during my biggest periods of depression - I loved the sarcastic style of O'Neill).

I like The Expanse too, I'm waiting for the second season, and seriously considering picking up the books it's based on.

> There is one series I'm really up in arms about it being recently cancelled - Person of Interest. That one was nowhere close to repetitive, it had tons and tons of space for good, intelligent story developments, and it got cancelled behind the crew's back anyway, because whatever.

The fact that CBS let this one drag on forever without anybody watching it and after losing Taraji P. Henson to Empire (which was crippling) so it could have a proper ending IMO is something to praise them for rather than damn them.

I generally avoid those or leave them for watching when I run out of longed-lived shows, simply because I hate it that the moment I get emotionally invested with the protagonists and the new fictional world, the show ends.

Probably also why I enjoy series more than one-off movies.

I'm probably in the minority but I agree. I semi-joke that I have a 5 season rule (which may be more or, commonly, less) for series. Past that point I just get tired of the characters, the look, the milieu. Some shows do a better job of changing things up than others but I just find myself getting bored at that point.

ADDED: And Pushing Daisies, mentioned elsewhere, is IMO a really good example of a cute, appealing show that was also rather twee and probably best appreciated in a short run.

Longmire improves dramatically once you get past the A&E seasons to the first Netflix season. I'm only one episode into the latest season, but it's shaping up to be the best so far.

It's becoming too much about the main characters, there's little detective work, it's too connected (I'm getting lost, especially with story arcs-spanning seasons), and it's too much about the main characters self-destructive tendencies rather than compelling whodunnits.

Luke Cage took my attention away (he's dreamy), but I'm a few episodes into the new Longmire season now. It looks like they're trying to get back to the crime drama premise of the show.

I would've really liked to see a third season of Pushing Daisies to wrap it up. It's true that it probably couldn't have survived many more after that.

I was going to mention this. Is there anything worse than getting in to a show and then comes that shark jumping season? THey are far more obvious with binge watching too.

It seems like in the old days, network series (22-24 shows per season) had a sort of peak around seasons 2-4 where everything was firing on all cylinders, nobody left, the story had enough legs to keep people wanting. If they last much longer they tended to get mediocre. Binge watching has changed it, binge watch X-files, you'll probably have to quit before the end, there is at least a solid weak season (maybe it's 6 or 7) at the time watching week to week it didn't feel that way but day to day it's really obvious.

I don't have the same amount of TV time now, startup, family, etc.. eats a lot but what I like is to find a show that's been on about 3 season, has some popularity and just watch it at my leisure 2 years after everybody else. You can get a good idea if it's worth your time before you spend any on it. (Yes, I know, that makes me old and lame, but it's just TV..)

It's definitely easier to rationalize a sinking series when you've got a whole week to do it for each episode...

The list all of the high points for me: Veronica Mars, Jericho and Freaks and Geeks.

I also appreciate the presence of Stargate: Universe on the list. Everyone hated it, but I really, really, really enjoyed the different take on the Stargate, er, universe.

I liked it too. It was a very different Stargate. More dark, more psychological. Some camera takes stolen from BattleStar: Galactica. But it was interesting, and it get much more interesting (the whole cosmic microwave background thing) just before they cut it down :/.

I loved it too.

And it was just hilarious how much it looked like the "younger, edgier" version from SG1 "200".

One of the best parts of the entire Stargate franchise is the amount of self-referential and self-deprecating humour in it.

One of the writers warned before the SG:U finale that it would be really bad and disappointing. In reality, it was one of the best episodes with one of the best endings of any SG series.

The ending with Eli standing, looking into infinity was simultaneously terrifying and uplifting.

SciFi at its very best.

Who knows? Maybe if Firefly hadn't been cancelled, its audience might have evaporated, or Joss Whedon might have run out of ideas for new episodes (as unlikely as that sounds). We just can't know.

I think Firefly was absolutely terrific and the people at Fox were perfect morons not to see what they were destroying, but none of this is science and we can't possibly know what might have happened in an alternate future. For contrast, there's the "Matrix" sequels to show what can happen when projects aren't terminated when their sell-by date arrives.

> Joss Whedon might have run out of ideas for new episodes

Joss Whedon had planned 7 seasons.

Oh wow, I can't believe that Rome is #2! That's one of my all-time favorite shows and I've only ever known 1 other person who has even heard of it. I really do recommend it to anyone who likes historical drama with spare-no-expense sets, costumes and visual effects.

The closest successor to Firefly, Dark Matter (minus the cowboy thing) only just made it to season 2 but is now renewed for season 3 by reducing production costs and selling older seasons to Netflix.

The new way people are watching TV is on-demand rather than on-air which is dramatically cutting ad-based income for traditional networks. If networks can partner or sell to streaming companies like Netflix it might help long tail shows like Firefly to survive in the future. Another great Syfy show, The Expanse, will hopefully survive that way whereas back in 2003 it would have been axed by now.

Looking over this list (at least for the ones I'm familiar with), most of these shows really require that you see the premier episode (or first several episodes) in order to "get into" it. It is hard for viewers that come in the middle of the season, or the following season.

So unless it was really popular from the beginning, they stand a good chance of not picking up ratings later on. Which also explains why they do so good in streaming format -- you can binge watch them from the very beginning.

Arrested Development especially rewarded loyal, in-order viewing and hurt "random" (seeing any episode out of order while switching channels) because the show focused a lot on jokes or plot devices made episodes before.

I think there's a kind of reverse effect to the one you described as well: several of the shows on that list had a weak performance during the early part of the season when they were cancelled but then picked up later, presumably after the decision had already been made and it was too late to renew for another season. Watching right through on a streaming service or box set, you remember the strong final episodes, but those probably weren't even considered yet by the time the show was canned.

The Buffy vs. Angel vs. Firefly discussion is a good one. Babylon 5, Veronica Mars, and the recent Battlestar Galactica also fit in. Ditto Dollhouse, Heroes, Alias and Lost.

I'd say:

-- It's just a detail, but recall that the first season of Buffy was actually just a half-season in length.

-- The first three seasons of Buffy had a very clear meta-metaphor. :) It posited monsters as being a good representation for what happens in actual high school life.

-- That aspect of the show hit its stride in the Buffy/Angel romance: Girl sleeps with guy and he turns into a monster.

-- Firefly was good, but nothing in it was as brilliant as, say, the best of Buffy.

-- A lot of shows started with a lot of monster-of-the-week/crisis-of-the-week and emphasized the ongoing story more later into the run. But most of the shows cited did at least some standalone stories all the way to the end. (Babylon 5 is one exception).

-- Firefly never got past that part of the show's evolution. This may be one reason it never matched Buffy's brilliance.

-- Not knowing whether or not a show will be renewed is a huge problem. If you're a fan of Buffy or Angel or Babylon 5, you're familiar with the consequences.

-- The writers' strike messed up multiple shows, or at least their audiences. I never went back to watching Battlestar Galactica post-strike.

-- Joss Whedon tried to oversee three shows at once. That didn't go well. Each of Buffy, Angel and Firefly deserved more of his attention.

-- Dollhouse didn't have real characters, the people running the place excepted. It was never going to work.

-- Some shows have a brilliant idea for an overarching story, in which the big story and the individual characters' experiences and arcs mesh beautifully. Then that story comes to a natural end, and the show is never quite as good again. Veronica Mars Season 1 is a great example. Ditto the first 1 1/2 or 2 seasons of Alias. Ditto Babylon 5 after things were wrapped up in Season 4.

-- I'd put Battlestar Galactica into the same group. The best part was the first season, as everybody builds a society on the fly )as it were) that can survive against terrible odds. The plots with the election and the defeat and the aftermath weren't as good. And the pseudo-mystical stuff toward the end was just weird.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote.

Babylon 5 was a pretty unfortunate case. There was a lot to love about it but also so much that you have to overlook that it's really hard to recommend, especially a couple decades later (ack! seriously).

The effects were pretty low budget at the time--even if somewhat revolutionary for low budget graphics (Amiga).

The acting was very uneven.

And, generally, as you suggest the uncertainties around renewals through the series run drove too many decisions with respect to the story arc and made the whole ending arc somewhat anticlimactic. I'm also not sure that shows driven so heavily by central mysteries--as B5 was--work very well outside of their original context. (And perhaps in today's on-demand viewing environment more broadly.)

I think I liked Battlestar Galactica more than you did overall but agree that the final somewhat mystical arc wasn't a strong finish. Lost didn't close well either after a strong start.

I actually think Babylon 5, Seasons 2-4, was outstanding. I'm not sure of what you mean by being very negative about some of the acting -- I see the range as being from competent to brilliant, with almost nothing that was outright bad, a few specific lines perhaps excepted.

There was quite a bit of good stuff in the fifth season as well, actually, mainly the Centauri and telepath arcs.

I also can't think of any effects that are distracting on a rewatch.

I stopped watching Lost early on, perhaps in Season 2. I stopped watching Heroes a few episodes into Season 2; when Kristen Bell of all people seemed to be giving a bad performance, I concluded that the show was probably doomed.

They used total ratings as a proxy for fan popularity.

I sorted by average rating count per day to give a different outlook, as some shows have been available to rate for longer.

Firefly (37 ratings a day) is still up there in second place below Terra Nova (38 a day): http://d.pr/i/1119j

That doesn't take into consideration the rating values, though; just their quantity. It would be interesting to see ratings per day weighted by user rating, but I couldn't find a way to retrieve that raw data.

I am reminded of an interview with Joe Satriani. The interviewer asked if he was worried about recording contracts given that he is not hugely popular. His answer was something along the lines of: I may not be as popular as some, but studios also do not have to spend buckets of money on advertising and marketing when I release an album. My smallish fanbase will buy my albums when they come out regardless.

I suspect Netflix is in a better position (now) to cater to those type of fans than Fox was then.

Too late for firefly, unfortunately.

I think it will be very interesting how the major broadcasters/content producers do with Nielsen Total Audience Measurement going live. Remember all these media execs make the live or die calls off those media ratings and ad sales. For over a decade Nielsen has been discounting online viewership. Yes they were covering DVR, but it felt half assed. A lot of people blamed Jericho getting cut because they questioned nielsens numbers.

Luck is another HBO show that started to show great promise but was cancelled due to the death of some horses, at least according to the show's producers. [1]

How to make it in America too was bright but was cancelled due to more conventional reasons. [2]

[1] HBO Luck

http://www.hbo.com/luck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_(TV_series)

[2] HBO How to Make It in America

http://www.hbo.com/how-to-make-it-in-america

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Make_It_in_America

It surprises me that there are no mentions to Carnivàle...

Totally agree, it was a great show. You can really see in the second season how the they dithered over killing it.

I believe it was originally set to be only 2 seasons, which is fine.

Then they decided to extended it, so they added the Sophie plot.

Then the execs changed their minds and cancelled it anyway without wrapping up the new plot. Doh!

Whilst I was sad Rome only had 2 seasons at least it's fairly self contained and ends well.

Deadwood though has to be my top pick for a bad incomplete ending.

The first two seasons of Deadwood were exceptional with Ian McShane being the primary reason. Season 3 started to lose something by dwelling too long on the evil George Hearst character. I'm not sure the show could have stood up a compelling complete fourth season but I really would have liked some closure instead of yanking the cord like HBO did.

It's in there, sixth equal just after Deadwood on the list of "highest average IMDB rating among canceled shows".

Damn good show it was too. Of all of the great series' that have been cut short, Carnivale was the one that I most wish hadn't been.

If you liked Carnival there is another canceled show called Utopia.

It is the most incredible 2 season conspiracy thriller you shall ever see. I mention it because it has the same Lovecraftian feel that Carnival managed to obtain.

It also has a score like no other.

Listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo

Trivia: Bryan Fuller made the list 3 times with Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, and Dead Like Me.

Dead Like Me was a great show, which was really getting into its stride (plot-wise) when it was cancelled.

Thus far I've resisted the temptation to view the movie they made - largely due to Mandy Patinkin's absence.

I thought Firefly was incredibly average. If I were to list the best SciFi shows of all time I don't think it would even occur to me to put it on the list. I honestly can't even think of the plots of any of the episodes. There was one with a guy in a spacesuit, I think it was red? and there was one with cattle or sheep?

I don't have anything against it. I just don't really find it remarkable at all.

Fans of Firefly, on the other hand, are the absolute worst. I used to have a game and see how many days I could go without reading someone online randomly bringing up how terrible it was that Firefly was cancelled. I rarely made it past Tuesdays.

Amazing how popular this "Western meets Zombies in Space" trope still is.

Zombies?

Reavers, I think he means.

[I'm tired of the trope. Probably my least favorite thing about Firefly]

Seems to me that the natural audience for a show like Firefly is actually children, in the same vein as star trek. It will also appeal to adults, but the basic premise is just going to be more appealing to children. The more adult/scary bits of the show felt bolted on and added little. Ironically a "kids" show like buffy morphed into something far more grown up than Firefly ever was.

Oh, Reavers... the best (only?) way to enjoy Firefly is to pretend that this part of the universe simply does not exist. I guess every show has its low points.

The main quality of Firefly was just plain old, maybe somewhat simplistic, character likability. Just like in SG-1.

In my case, as I only discovered much later, that was also assisted by the heavy Traveller influence in Firefly. Never played it much, but Traveller (in some of it's incarnations) had always been my personal favorite amongst pen&paper RPGs.

>The main quality of Firefly was just plain old, maybe somewhat simplistic, character likability.

Agreed. In fact, I'd argue that if you take away the appealing and interesting cast and characters from Firefly, you're not left with an awful lot. Of course, characters form the backbone of a lot of shows but science fiction can also be driven by plot, the setting, ideas, etc. in a way that can make the characters less central. But in Firefly if you take away the characters you're mostly stuck with an overdone Western in space motif and generally unmemorable plots.

I actually found the Western element of Firefly sufficiently overdone to cause my willing suspension of disbelief filter problems. I think there was one episode involving transporting cattle between planets for example. Probably one of the things that I least liked about the series.

Reavers aren't so much a take on zombies as on cowboy-Western Indians. Some of the tropes overlap, but not every red thing is a rose.

Surely you would have to compare these with shows that were not cancelled? Firefly received a lot, but was it enough/more than others? Presumably something else should have been cancelled in its place?

There is a lot value and money to be made in the long tail. Simply taking a black box approach and measuring what is easy to measure in the short run is not really useful to predict how many people and how deeply people will engage.

Distribution channels for narrow audiences (amazon for books/dvds, netflix/torrents for video) combined with social network dynamics have changed the game. Of course there is also the case that a world event changes the game. One of the most famous failed shows - not in the list - is Startrek. Moonlanding ignited that boom.

Wow. "Pushing daisies" is listed too:) Really fun WTF show.

Any list that doesn't include Airwolf, tragically cancelled after 3 seasons (the 4th with a totally different cast doesn't count), is missing the mark.

The list doesn't include The Adventures of Brisco County Jr either, which is far more of a true cult series than most of what is listed there.

Sledge Hammer! 2 seasons. Ran against Cosby as the sacrificial lamb.

I wonder how much Firefly has benefited from being cancelled so early. I imagine if Heroes got cancelled after about 10-13 episodes, it'd be very well perceived right now. The subsequent writers' strike mess and not being able to handle an evolving story messed that show up quite a bit. So many shows, even really well done ones, taper off at a point due to various production issues (Babylon 5 comes to mind).

The worst cancellation I have ever seen was of Caprica. The last show aired made a veiled criticism of Israel policies toward Palestine. It was pulled the next day! The rest of the season be damned. They stuck reruns of ST:NG into the slot. A year later they allowed the final few episodes to be shown and that was the end of that. Since then I am reluctant to watch anything on SyFy.

One of my favorite bits on Family Guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oMTmtN7lHI

edit TLDW: Rapid-fire listing of 29 shows started and cancelled by Fox in the two years between Family Guy's initial cancellation and revival.

I just want this page to have a mention of The Pirates of Dark Water on it somewhere, so here it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates_of_Dark_Water

You reminded me of Gargoyles which is worth mentioning. Creator Greg Weisman quit over Disney planning to ruin it in Season 3. It was probably a good call because they did ruin Season 3.

Weisman had created a detailed story arc that had a couple more centuries to go. He has continued to answer never ending fan questions and reveal details of the story arc for the following 20 years at "Ask Greg" at Station 8 Gargoyles

http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/

Wasn't the reason that Rome was canceled after two seasons the fact that their entire wood-built set burnt down?

How many more are on this list where it is not differentiated between canceled for ratings vs canceled due to an external event?

I don't know what actually happened but the public reason stated in the wikipedia page cites budget and the termination of the collaboration contract with BBC as the main reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)

If you don't mind getting attached to a brilliant story and characters for a single season, I can't recommend Battleground from Hulu enough. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Well, Lie to Me had unfortunately been deteriorating so unless they would've employed new writers it isn't that bad it got cancelled. Now we hold only good memories of it.

I agree. I was glad Lie to Me got cancelled.

The performance of christina hendricks in Firefly is jaw-dropping !!!

I really wish they'd finished V and Flashforward too. Both could have been signed off in a few episodes and would of added tons of value to the franchises.

I loved Firely, but the analysis is flawed because it didn't account for the older shows having more time to accumulate more ratings.

I thought the same at first, but it's still in second place if you account for that: http://d.pr/i/1119j

Meta-priceonomics: raving about long-tail successful shows is great for your blog's linkability.

Anybody remember what happened to Lone Star? 3 episodes, not 3 seasons, for a critical and cult favorite.

Don't care what the stats say, Brickleberry should be first on that ranking.

How does the number of ratings on IMDB relate to profitability exactly?

Should I watch the pilot or not before watching the official episodes?

Watch the series in the order it's presented in the DVD set. The episodes were aired out of order in a way that makes the plot arcs incomprehensible; the DVD set has them in the intended order.

Can I vote just cancel Fox keep cancel tv shows?

John Doe :(

I was sad Firefly was cancelled back in the day. Now though? I'd rather Adam Baldwin not receive any support.

Sniff, sniff ... in the absence of specification of any cause, I smell political axe-grinding. I am always perplexed by conflation of political views with professional proficiency.

If you censor your entertainment based on the perceived morals of the performers you are going to miss on lots of good stuff. For instance I have no problem enjoying the performance Tom Cruise in Mission Impossibles despite his bat-shit crazy position on Scientology. Roman Polanski is a convicted child rapist and that does not stop me from enjoying his films. Etc etc.

Here's an unpopular opinion. Firefly was a terrible show and was rightfully cancelled. Not sure why it is so revered amongst neckbeards. It's a poor rip off of Cowboy Bebop.

Popular or unpopular, you know why you've taken a hit? Because you offer no rationale whatsoever for your opinion.

Bad acting Over used tropes Unimaginative plots

The entire show was a poorly executed "train job".

You're claiming that the show is a ripoff of an anime, and you don't understand why it has nerdy fans? I don't accept your prior, but it does provide a clear answer to the question with which you have trouble.

The show is a poorly executed weeaboo fanficton gone wrong. Sorry you're all mad.

I'm not mad, I'm confused. Even by your own lights you don't seem to be making much sense. Are you sure you've thought your opinion on this all the way through?

the show sucks

period

I agree with it totally having elements of Cowboy Bebop. Who couldn't see that right? It is interesting how this is the first comment on this HN post to mention that. Though Cowboy Bebop was huge in anime, I think many who watched and loved Firefly have not seen it. My anecdote - My wife enjoyed Firefly but has never seen Cowboy Bebop.

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