Too Much of a Good Thing
WGN has canceled Manhattan after it's second season. I can't say I'm not surprised. This show had much potential and received quite a bit of critical acclaim, but never really seemed to draw much of an audience. I watched the first season, but started to fall away once the second season began.
This show in my view is a victim of saturation. There are a bunch of really good shows on the air today (or at least ones I want to watch), so many that it is difficult to find the time to watch all of them. Because there are so many shows I want to see, I find that I've had to prune things that I previously would have at least kept on my Tivo.
If I ever get below 90% full on my Tivo I think I will throw a party.
Right now, I have half of the last season of Defiance on my Tivo – even though I enjoy that show, I haven't found the time to finish it, and it too has been canceled after this season. Dominion on SyFy was also canceled but this one I had already removed from my Tivo since I knew I was not going to catch up.
When do you give up and remove recorded shows that you just won't get to watch?
I've started getting rid of things when I know they've been canceled. I don't have much faith that shows finish gracefully unless the cancellation is announced well in advance, so I expect that watching the last few episodes will only piss me off because they won't answer the open questions.
So what have I deleted lately?
Manhattan
Heroes Reborn
Minority Report
Dominion
I've still got Limitless, though I'm leaning towards deletion even though it's not canceled as far as I know – it just doesn't hold my interest enough and it makes me miss Psych. I finally did finish Helix over the Christmas Holidays though, but this show kept my interest – I just had so many shows to watch it got backed up.
And the shows I've tried recently and gave up on after a horrible pilot or BAD second episode are definitely worth another post. I suppose in a time with less saturation, some of these would have gotten another chance, but there are just too many shows I want to watch that I don't have time for everything.
To think that not too long ago we all had to watch TV when the shows were on and time shifting was only a pipe dream.
Morning Ramble 2.5.
I find Limitless to be hilarious. They play with the show concept a bit in the various episodes — it’s not always a straightforward police procedural.
Minority Report took itself too seriously, so I stopped caring about it. Original Heroes I liked season 1 and it lost me by the 3rd episode of Season 2, so I have no interest in seeing Heroes Reborn.
I don’t mind Limitless too much, but it reminds me a lot about the humor of Psych and I preferred that show much more since it was less police procedural and more comedy. The show that really bothered me though was the Ferris Bueller episode which I saw as less of an homage and more of an attempt at trying to leverage the popularity of the movie to help a mediocre show. Perhaps if they did something like that in the second or third season, but 7 episodes in really makes me think they are reaching for an audience. Maybe I should give it a couple more episodes, but it’s on the bubble for me.
As for Heroes Reborn – I too liked the 1st season of the original and felt they lost it after that…too bad the reborn heroes was more of the 2nd season and less of the 1st.