The Big Top comes tumbling down?

By: David Michael Wharton
Date: Monday, April 04, 2005

They've spent several years reminding us that, "It's not TV. It's HBO." Well, that may be the case, but TV or no, it still all comes down to the ratings in the end. After an amazing second season that erased any memory of complaints that the first season was too slow, CARNIVALE may have folded its tents permanently. According to Variety, HBO insiders are saying that the supernatural period drama is "unlikely to return," and show creator Daniel Knauf is already developing a new project for Showtime.

So, while CARNIVALE isn't quite kaput just yet, the cards predict trouble ahead. The good news is, at least Knauf and company managed to give us an incredible finale to cap an incredible season, and offered some manner of closure regarding the epic struggle between Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin. The bad news is, that closure opened up a thoroughly unexpected door that could have led to an even more intriguing third season. Since we're left with a helluva cliffhanger, it'll be a real shame if we don't see where the tale would have led in light of "the Omega."

And so, while all us CARNIVALE fans break out our worry beads, let's try to forget the disappointments of today by remembering the televisual kicks to the crotch that have come before. Sure, sometimes the loss of a beloved show is tempered by later good news--FIREFLY dies but spawns SERENITY in the process; FARSCAPE leaves us in the lurch but makes everything all right by wrapping things up with an outstanding miniseries--but all too often we're left with nothing by fond memories and unanswered questions. Here are a few that still sting.

Spoiler warning - Most of these shows have been off the air for years, but if you haven't seen them yet, you might wanna skip down to the next section.

AMERICAN GOTHIC (1995-1996)
"All guilt is relative. Loyalty counts. And never let your conscience be your guide." - Sheriff Lucas Buck
POINT LEASANT could have learned a thing or two from the inhabitants of Trinity, North Carolina. Both POINT and GOTHIC concerned small towns rife with secrets and supernatural undercurrents. Both centered on the fight for the conflicted offspring of a malevolent entity (Devil-daughter Christina in the former case, young Caleb Buck in the latter). Both saw the townsfolk manipulated by a dark-souled puppeteer named Lucas with grand plans of his own. But as much fun as Grant Show's Morden-esque Lucas Boyd was, he couldn't hold a candle to Sheriff Lucas Buck in the evil department. After all, Boyd just served the Devil, whereas Buck may have actually been the devil (and if not, he could have given the Devil lessons). In between minding Trinity's many buried skeletons (both literal and metaphorical), Buck did his best to bring son Caleb over to the Dark Side and away from the guiding light of his deceased but still quite talkative sister, Merlyn. In Buck, Cole gave us one of television's most memorable villains, a virtuoso display of nastiness not topped until Brother Justin launched his ministry on CARNIVALE. Sadly, we'll never know whether the Buck legacy of evil was carried on to the next generation or snuffed out by Caleb, not even if we were lucky enough to catch the four unaired episodes when they finally turned up in rotation on the Sci-Fi Channel. Ten years on, I still quote this show, still remember its characters with fondness...I doubt I'll be able to say the same of POINT in 2015. But hopefully, I'll have an AMERICAN GOTHIC DVD collection on my shelf before then.

SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND (1995-1996
"Courage, honor, dedication, sacrifice -- these are just the words they used to get you here. Now the only word that means a damn to you is *life* -- yours, your buddy's. The one certainty in war is that in an hour, maybe two, you'll either still be alive or you'll be dead." - Lt. Col. Tyrus Cassius McQueen

Ninety-five was a good year for great genre shows...just not a good year for great genre shows that lasted longer than a season. After providing X-FILES with some of the best episodes of its run, Glen Morgan and James Wong went AWOL to create this futuristic action-drama about the exploits of the 58th Marine Corps Squadron--the Wild Cards--in the star-spanning war against the alien "Chigs." The squadron included such memorable personalities as Lt. Nathan West, whose search for his missing colonist fiancé consumed him for most of the season; Lt. Shane Vansen (lovely genre vet Kristen Cloke, aka Mrs. Glen Morgan), haunted by the murder of her family at the hands of renegade A.I.s; and of course stone-cold, vat-grown hardass Lt. McQueen, the role that introduced many of us to the mad skillz of Mr. James Morrisson (late of POINT PLEASANT, even though they hardly ever used him...so maybe they really did deserve that cancellation). Ron Moore's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA has earned high marks this season for focusing on the human drama first, not just the shiny toys of its science fiction trappings. SPACE had a bit of that going for it. Though there were space battles aplenty (not to mention enough surging testosterone to grow hair on your speakers), SPACE played like a World War II drama dropped into a 21st century backdrop, with a stark militaristic tone that truly stood out against the innumerable TREK spin-offs and wannabes. Along the way, SPACE hit such high points as "Who Monitors the Birds?" an often dialogue-free episode that alternated between Lt. Cooper Hawkes making his way across the battle-torn world on which he is stranded and his own flashbacks to his youth in a creepily Fascistic government training facility. Also notable was "The Angriest Angel", where McQueen went mano a mano with a seemingly unbeatable enemy fighter ace. And it all culminated with a gut-punch of a finale that left most of the Wild Cards either confirmed dead or missing, fading out after a somber, heart-wrenching coda between two of the survivors. There are rumors of a SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND set coming out later this year, so if you missed it the first time, be sure to check it out.

CRUSADE (1999)
"Just so we're clear: once we go, this is my command. I'll do whatever's necessary. If that means turning the entire galaxy upside down and shaking its pockets to see what falls out, that's what I'll do. I'm not subtle, I'm not pretty, and I'll piss off a helluva lot of people along the way, but I'll get the job done." - Capt. Matthew Gideon
BABYLON 5 was an underdog right from the start. For five years, fans ended each season half-convinced that it would be the last. Each new renewal brought a sigh of relief from those of us hoping against hope that J. Michael Straczynski would actually manage to see his five-year arc all the way through. Things looked especially grim after season four, with JMS and crew speeding along various plotlines to wrap things up in the event of a cancellation. Then TNT swooped in to the rescue, granting us not only a fifth season but also several stand-alone movies and, eventually, this spin-off. But one show's salvation proved to be another show's damnation. The tale of Straczynski's struggle of the wills with various elements within TNT could fill an entire book (or several thousand Usenet postings), but the long and short of it is CRUSADE wound up cancelled just when it was getting interesting. Straczynski was always great at evoking the "sense of wonder" good SF does so well, and CRUSADE afforded him plenty of opportunities to do so work the wonderment. The crew of the Excalibur explored ancient worlds and tracked the footprints of long-dead civilizations, all in the search for a cure to the Drakh plague that threatened to exterminate all life on Earth. The show gave us a new batch of wonderful, layered characters worthy of the B5 mythology: Captain Gideon (Gary Cole rears his head once again), haunted by a past tragedy and guided by a mysterious "Apocalypse Box"; his right-hand man, Lt. Matheson (Daniel Dae Kim of LOST, 24, ANGEL, etc.), a telepath in a time of great change for his kind; and, of course, Galen the Technomage, outwardly aloof yet burning with a deep inner pain. Some B5 fans complained that the series sheared too greatly from its forerunner series, with the only returning regular being Tracy Scoggins' Captain Lochley. The sad part is, the show was not only headed in an altogether unexpected direction, but ties aplenty to BABYLON 5 were just down the road (unproduced scripts revealed that TNT's cancellation robbed us of plotlines involving the ties between the Technomages and the Shadows, the truth behind the destruction of Captain Gideon's old ship, and even the return of Mr. Bester). Like JMS kept telling us at the time, the story we thought we were seeing wasn't really the story we were seeing. Too bad we never got the chance to see just how true that was.

TWIN PEAKS (1990-1991)
"How's Annie?" - Special Agent Dale Cooper (in a manner of speaking)
If I live to be 100, I don't think I'll ever forgive David Lynch for the last episode of TWIN PEAKS. It was a show unlike anything that had come before, and it changed the landscape for everything that came after it. We may never know if Lynch and Mark Frost and the rest of them actually had a Grand Plan up their sleeves with regards to Killer Bob or the Black Lodge or the owls that were not what they seemed, but even when this show didn't make any sense, it was never boring. Sure, some say it jumped the shark with the revelation of Laura Palmer's murderer and the uneven second season, but rarely has a last episode been so effective at stopping my heart in my chest. It's been years since I watched the last episode of TWIN PEAKS, but I can still see every detail of that final scene crystal clear in my mind: the mad grin spreading across Agent Cooper's face as he smacked his head into the bathroom mirror; the chill that went down my spine as the camera dollied over to reveal the reflection that wasn't his own; and, of course..."How's Annie?" I don't know about Annie, but I've never hated a closing credits sequence more than I did then.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (2003-2005)
I know, I know, it's not actually cancelled yet. I'm just trying to prepare myself.

The Week Rerun

What Would Constable Frasier Say? - The Great DUE SOUTH Cast Comeback of 2005 continues unabated. Not content with becoming a semi-regular on this season's SHIELD, now David Marciano has turned up on the other end of the legal spectrum as a litigious fraudster on ABC's sharp new Wednesday-night private-eye dramedy, EYES. Work that neck brace, Vecchio!

You Have a Solid Resume, But You're Too Well-Adjusted - I'm not sure what the hiring policies are at CTU, but they seem to have staffed themselves with the most petulant, self-absorbed people on the planet this season. Chloe was bad enough last year, but now we've got Edgar trying to out-whine her and the both of them engaging in pissing contests over who outranks who. And Edgar: dude, I realize your mom just offed herself to avoid lingering radiation sickness. It's tragic. But if you can't push your personal traumas aside until your job is done, how about you don't take a job where the fate of millions rests on your ability to do your job? To say nothing of the lady haggling for a pay raise in the middle of the busiest 24 day yet. Sure, if my employer mistakenly tortured me, I'd want a promotion too, but I'd like to think I could delay the tantrum until after we were sure the world wasn't about to explode.

Because It's Dull, You Twit; It'll Hurt More - Sure, ALIAS has been uneven this season, and I'm still annoyed that they've pushed all the ongoing Rambaldi stuff to the back burner (assuming it's even still on the over), but JJ Abrams' brood still manage to bring a smile to my face now and then. For instance, by forcing Marshall to dig out a dead bad guy's eyeballs using a plastic Spork. A lazier writer would have used a spoon, but a spork is far funnier, and that deserves recognition.

So, what brought you the televisual joy this week? Which past cancellation still stings to this day? Drop me a line at tvwasteland@cinescape.com and let me know.

Keep your head and hands inside the television, folks...

MONDAY, APRIL 4

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER (6:30 PM CST, Comedy Central) This dude might be playing The Flash. Just something to think about.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (7 PM CST, Cinemax) Finally managed to do what 24 could never accomplish: find the perfect role for Elisha Cuthbert.

24 (8 PM CST, Fox) After resolving this business with the fake Air Force pilot and the stealth fighter, Jack must prevent the assassination of Russell Crowe, rescue the President's cat from an abnormally tall tree, and fight off a rabid pack of genetically enhanced hyenas.

BEHIND THE CAMERA: THE UNAUTHORIZED STORY OF "MORK & MINDY" (8 PM CST, NBC) The unbelievable true story of how Mork came down from Ork and snorted roughly seven metric tons of cocaine.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5

ADVENTURES OF ERROL FLYNN (7 PM CST, TCM) A candid look at the man who somehow made tights look manly, even without a rolled-up gym sock.

SCRUBS (8 PM CST, NBC) "My Lips Are Sealed." Word is, Kevin Smith is talking to star Zach Braff to play Fletch whenever he gets around to shooting FLETCH WON. I don't think that's as inspired as Jason Lee, but it could work.

VERONICA MARS (8 PM CST, UPN) "Kanes and Abel's." Veronica works to clear Abel Koontz's name while simultaneously investigating who's been harassing the valedictorian. Prime suspect: the salutatorian.

THE OFFICE (8:30 PM CST, NBC) "Health Care." Michael tries to distract everyone from the fact that they're being saddled with a cut-rate health-care plan. They should have been suspicious that all the letterhead said "SemiCare."

BLIND JUSTICE (9 PM CST, ABC) "Marlon's Brando." Scariest porn title ever.

THE SHIELD (9 PM CST, FX) "Doghouse." The coppers are in pursuit of a serial rapist who escaped from the courthouse while awaiting trial.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6

LOST (7 PM CST, ABC) "Do No Harm." Jack's in dire need of an intern or two when he must deal with both Boone's critical injuries and Claire's sudden labor.

BLAZING SADDLES (7 PM CST, ABC Family) I realize that the kids are more jaded these days and all, but should this really be airing on ABC Family?

THE WEST WING (8 PM CST, NBC) "2162 Votes." While the Democratic convention kicks into gear, Bartlett deals with an air leak on the space station. Not personally. He has people for that. Presumably people with welding torches.

ALIAS (8 PM CST, ABC) "Nightingale." Guess whose impending season-capping return is set up tonight? I'll give you a hint. (Spoilers ahoy!)

EYES (9 PM CST, ABC) "Whereabouts." Harlan wonders about the kidnapping of his old college roommate's girlfriend. Last week's premiere was a lot of fun, so hopefully the pilot won't prove to be a fluke.

THURSDAY, APRIL 7

THE O.C. (7 PM CST, Fox) "The Risky Business." Those wacky kids get into trouble of some sort, I imagine. Oh, and there will be lots of intimidatingly attractive people in tight clothes.

TRU CALLING (7 PM CST, Fox) "In the Dark." Tru hears yet another call for help but can't figure out who was asking. Maybe it was POINT PLEASANT.

CASABLANCA (7 PM CST, TCM) It never gets old.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (9 PM CST, TCM) A Howard Hawks-directed, William Faulkner-scripted adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway story. That's good breeding.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8

JOAN OF ARCADIA (7 PM CST, CBS) "Spring Cleaning." Because cleanliness is next to godliness.

PARIS HILTON'S MOST SHOCKING MOMENTS (7 PM CST, VH1) To be followed by SHOWGIRLS, to be followed by the sound of VH1 hitting rock bottom. Again.

MAKING OF 'SAHARA' (8:45 PM CST, Showtime) Includes a special "naked bongo-drumming" featurette starring Matthew McConaughey. (And with that, we celebrate the ten-thousandth "Matthew McConaughey naked bongo-drumming" joke used by the media.)

LAW & ORDER: TRIAL BY JURY (9 PM CST, NBC) "Bang and Blame." A bank employee kills a customer, then serves as his own defense. And he would have gotten away with it, but he gave himself a receipt for the murder.

SATURDAY, APRIL 9

MISS CONGENIALITY (7 PM CST, TNT) Be sure not to watch this original before you don't check out the sequel in theaters.

THE BATMAN (7:30 PM CST, Cartoon Network) "Traction." This animated take on Batman's early years introduces Bane, which means Bruce is in for some bruising.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED (8 PM CST, Cartoon Network) "The Once and Future Thing: Weird Western Tales." Ben Browder voices Bat Lash and Adam Baldwin gives Jonah Hex his pipes in part one of the third season's finale. (Repeat)

SNAKE KING (8 PM CST, Sci-Fi) What's better than a movie about a giant snake? A movie about a five-headed giant snake.

VAN HELSING (8 PM CST, Starz) Listen carefully, Mr. Jackman: just keep smiling. Back away. And get yourself into X3 as quickly as possible so we can all forget this disaster.

SUNDAY, APRIL 10

MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE (6:30 PM CST, Fox) "Butterflies." That guy who was Bulldog from FRASIER guest stars and offers Malcolm relationship advice.

THE SIMPSONS (7 PM CST, Fox) "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star." Liam Neeson voices a priest (of the Jedi?).

CHARMED (7 PM CST, WB) "The Seven Year Witch." Piper gets pricked by a poisonous thorn, then meets Doctor Doom in Limbo. Okay, the guy who plays Doctor Doom.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (7:30 PM CST, Fox) "Spring Breakout." I was only kidding about the cancellation thing. Really, Fox. Only kidding.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (8 PM CST, ABC) "Children Will Listen." But not if you ship them off to military school.

DEADWOOD (8 PM CST, HBO) "Something Very Expensive." I'm still recovering from Al's medical procedure last week...I'm not prepared to discuss this week.

ROBOT CHICKEN (10:30 PM CST, Cartoon Network) "Vegetable F." If you watch it, you will laugh.

This concludes our broadcast.