Nothing is forever. Except, as James Bond taught us, diamonds.

Apologies for all for the lack of posts recently. You know how it is- stuff, and other stuff sometimes.

TV shows are kind of like children. They start out fresh faced, full of potential and are quick to establish themselves in the world. This is where this analogy will get a little morbid. Like children through the majority of human history- there is a lot of unfortunate infant mortality. Lots of that in children was caused by diseases and such since medicine hasn’t always been so good. An ailment that is currently prevalent in the TV community is NBCitis, most freshman shows are catching it over there and are dying in infancy. Continuing on in the life of a TV show, the few who do make it through the first year are graduated to toddlers, and as such face a challenge. If their parents are good to them and send them to the best schools- give them good time slots, pay for music lessons- give them lots of promos, then they will be more likely to  and thrive. Unfortunately, some kids do not get these advantages, and some of them are really gifted so that is too bad. Putting a halt to the use of this analogy, it is important to acknowledge the power of time slots have. For any show on broadcast television, and most cable, the length that a show will remain on the air depends on the amount of viewers it gets and how many of those are in the target demographic; people ages 18 to 49. This is highly influenced by when the show is on. Obviously, primetime is the best slot because you can catch people after the news, and those who have not gone to sleep yet because they want a modicum of enjoyment after working hard all day long. If a show is at the end of a block of programming (shows in a row) then it is less likely to get viewers, unless it is behind a show with a lot of viewers who carry over to the next show. The worst time for a show to have is the friday night death slot. The reason for this is because on fridays all the people who advertisers want to target are not watching TV. They are off having lives and doing things that young people do (partying and such). Shows in the F.N.D.S. have short lives. Many shows are sent here to die, for example: Fringe, Chuck, Happy Endings, Friday Night Lights (just an unfortunate show name and premise in terms of getting advertising all around).

Using a not-so-clever  way to move on… we will move on. A show who makes it through the first two years and finds a good fan base finds a problem. At this point the show is now in middle school and it is now easily corrupted. The third season is really one of the most pivotal. It is at this point that the show determines it’s fate. It is at this point that they are confronted with the rubicon for shows. at the end of the third season honestly most showrunners and writers have mostly run out of ideas. There are a few shows that continue to make new interesting shows for a long time- Futurama comes to mind. But at this point, most shows have had approximately 66 episodes (3 seasons of 22 episodes on average- 3 x 22 = 66). That is a lot of story lines for a group of people to come up with taking in to account most episodes have at least two stories running simultaneously. If a show wants to continue to break the barriers that it started doing, it will have to work really hard. This is why How I Met Your Mother went downhill after the fourth season. The got too big. They stopped being original and just settled into complacency with having a methodical approach to their episodes week to week. Rater than staying true to the premise of the show, they trudged on more concerned with gaining and retaining viewers. The settled into a routine, or a rut-tine if you will. This does not mean that the show was at all different, but it means that they stopped changing things to make it more interesting. The got the wheel and once they got it, they stopped working to improve it. But the reason why the show was interesting is because you could see the process that it took to make to create the wheel. The crafting was what was interesting to see, not the rolling of the wheel. Yes, it is pretty cool that the wheel works and it is satisfying for a while, but it is ultimately boring. Innovations are what are fascinating. Why do you think that people went to the moon? Because we had to beat the russians. Wait… no… I mean because they wanted to do something new, that would challenge them. The wanted to explore, and learn. They were not satisfied with just walking on earth, they needed more.

All of this is a long convoluted way to say that Community should not get another season. This show is a prime example of what happens when a show is aging towards becoming too old for its own good. They  have run out of innovations. They have reached their prime, and now they have to decide if they want to continue working at a dead end job where they will make steady money doing something boring, or will they live like they have one life to live. End this portion of their life with dignity and grace. Not that I don’t like it as a show, but it has reached the end of its life in terms of what has been exciting about it. If it continues on it will soon join the likes of shows with long lives that have become procedural and mundane- HIMYM, Bones, All of the CSIs, Grey’s Anatomy, Smallville, and many others. Even though they have had or have long lives, I would rater have shorter more robust lives.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villan.

This makes me dubious for season 4 of Arrested Development… so heads up for that. I will also be sure to make a concentrated effort to post more consistently from now on out.

Now watch some watermelons explode

Never laugh at live dragons.