Not long ago, I expressed worry about Chuck’s future now that the will-they/won’t-they romance has been resolved. With one episode down and five to go, I think the writers are on the right path.

So far, at least, the show seems quite content to let Chuck and Sarah just be happy while being spies. And rightly so! It seems odd to me that no show that I can recall aside from the American version of The Office has had the long-term romance solidify and continue telling stories. Emotional connections are perhaps harder to establish with fictional characters when a romance isn’t one of the balls in the air, but conversely, storytelling is not merely the act of introducing sadness to people’s lives.

This isn’t to say that they need to be a perfect couple forever from here on out, but at the very least they have avoided for the time being the trap of the quick and implausible relationship collapse. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this season plays out¹.

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1. Oh, also, the season’s winding down, the ratings are still unremarkable, and the show continues to be one of the best shows on right now. In conclusion… Start Watching Chuck, Dammit! [↩]

Monday’s new episode of Chuck, which originally served as the 13-episode finale before NBC extended the episode order for the season, ended in a rather climactic moment that will forever change the way the show works. I’m not talking about the fact that Chuck finally killed someone. I think that was well played and an inevitable step for Chuck, something that logically had to be the way Chuck’s arc from Intersect 2.0 to full-fledged agent. What I’m talking about was Chuck and Sarah’s happy ending in Paris.

There are a few ways this plays out but here’s the most likely: the show will continue to introduce arbitrary conflicts for their relationship, despite having concretely established their long-simmering love, which results in them defaulting to their on-again/off-again status.

The major conflict they put up for Chuck and Sarah’s love the last few episodes was that Chuck was now a killer and not the man she fell in love with which, admittedly, is a somewhat reasonable conflict¹ but that’s over with now. I’m not saying a different and compelling reason for them to fall out of love couldn’t be concocted by the writers, but I think any long-term relationship drama at this point would be laziness on the part of the writers.

It’s easy for the show to return to its status quo, because that’s what the writers have been doing for years; it’s much harder to take their relationship as a given and move on. I hope this is the path the show follows for the six episode run it has coming up and for the next season if it gets renewed². Will that happen? Probably not, but a man can dream can’t he?

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1. Though not nearly as much as the show would have you believe, seeing as Sarah was supposedly falling for Shaw as her love for Chuck wavered and Shaw is a ruthless killer when he needs to be; he even shot himself! [↩]
2. fingers crossed [↩]

NBC has been having a bad streak these last few years. I like some of their content but they’ve had real trouble building up a solid night of television to compete with the former glory that is Must See TV on Thursday Night. But their current Thursday night comedy line-up is the strongest night of comedy on television, and on a good night — which is most nights, actually — could probably stand up to its ancestor, the original Thursday night of comedies.

Tonight’s NBC comedies were so good, I thought I’d write about them. I love all these shows so much, and yet that rarely gets an outlet here. Let’s change that.

30 Rock was the weakest half-hour of NBC’s two hour comedy block. That’s less a knock on 30 Rock than it is praising the other shows. In fact, this was also one of the best episodes of 30 Rock this year, which also means it’s one of the best of the last two years.

The addition of Elizabeth Banks went over much better than the addition of Julianne Moore. The fact that she didn’t have to do a bad Boston accent helped with that, but Banks seems a better fit to the show, with a stronger history in comedy. I hope she’s back for a few more episodes before the inevitably send her packing.

Jenna’s subplot is slightly more entertaining than usual, but only slightly. It’s surprisingly hard to lampoon an absurd celebrity self-centered actor without it getting dull and repetitive fairly quickly.

Liz’s search for someone to pick her up from oral surgery was a fun way of exploring Valentine’s Day, though they went a little too on the nose with the multiple explicit comparisons to the search for a Valentine’s Day date.

But I’m willing to ignore any and all issues I have with that particular plot because of the closing scene with all of Liz’s ex-boyfriends as Jamaican nurses. I think I could watch that forever.

Good cap to the night, and a sign that maybe the writer’s have found their groove again.

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Some nice things in this episode:

• Despite their overuse of the card, Liz’s complete obliviousness to existence of front clasp bras was pretty great.
• ‘My stepson is my cyber-husband’
• What was up with that weird pause over the Julia Roberts line? Was that a jab at side-swipe comedy?
• http://jdlutz.com/karen/proof/
• ‘Prime Minister Wen wants a weak Yuan, do we?’
• ‘We’ll be right back after this ad aimed at the elderly.’
• ‘It’s one of those kids from Glee isn’t it?!’
• ‘One time, I ran over an old lady in Arizona and just kept driving!’
• ‘She was on Maxim’s ‘I’d Rape That’ 100′
• ‘Otherwise known as Jane Sadwoman.’
• ‘Don Cheadle on a bed of rice!’

Tonight’s NBC comedies were so good, I thought I’d write about them. I love all these shows so much, and yet that rarely gets an outlet here. Let’s change that.

As I just said in my post about tonight’s episode of Parks and Recreation, The Office lives through the eccentricities of their characters. They keep the characters well-grounded but everyone’s a little… more than you’d expect in real life.

Tonight’s episode was more grounded than usual in that its main plot was about a real world eventuality of acquisitions like the one the office experienced recently. Specifically, the redundancy that is the co-manager position. Basically, one of them needs to go back to Sales. Luckily for whoever that is, Sabre has no cap on commissions. Jim and Michael are both famously good salesmen either of whom could make more money in Sales so we end up with a fun situation where they’re both fighting to be demoted.

It’s great though how quickly Michael falls out of love with the idea of doing the actual work of becoming a salesman again. It took less than a day without an assistant and a big desk and the snacks for Michael to stop caring about the boost in his paycheque.

That storyline is fun, but most of the comedy actually comes from the more extreme absurdities of the office’s staff. And really, that mostly comes down to Erin and Andy, both of whom are so strange that you a) can’t wait to see them as a couple and b) can’t help but think they’re more real than any of the other people on the show. That said, as bizarre as those two are, I can’t help but root for them.

The Office is past its prime, but thanks to the time the writers invested into the characters early on it’s still one of the best comedies on television right now.

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Some nice things in this episode:

• The Olympics cold-open was great.
• Words to live by: ‘I have this thing about men cutting or threatening to cut my throat. Don’t try to cut my throat.’
• Erin and Andy’s traffic jam riff was an example of one of those great moments the show does that are so much like something you would do but seem so bizarre when someone else does it.
• Dwight and Ryan’s evil cabal is great. As are the Lord of the Rings references.
• I was almost certain that Dwight hadn’t actually seen Saw until he mentioned legs getting cut off.
• Erin’s smile of pride over Andy’s crotch getting thoroughly sniffed by those massive dogs.
• Erin doesn’t know Peanuts? Again, so weird it has to be real.
• ‘I can’t even go near a cigarette now without thinking of a penis. And vice versa.’
• Oscar’s reading an old issue of The Atlantic, I think the December issue.
• Apparently, The Office has an unspoken rule of not casting known faces for guest spots until this Kathy Bates guest spot, but I think it works since she’s playing a larger than life character.
• ‘It’s not because of the smell, I’m just expecting a nosebleed.’
• I feel like Pam’s reaction to Andy saying his office-mates are his closest friends, is a little much. It’s not like she’s got a bustling social life outside of the office.

Tonight’s NBC comedies were so good, I thought I’d write about them. I love all these shows so much, and yet that rarely gets an outlet here. Let’s change that.

Parks and Recreation has been so much better this year on every level that it’s not surprising it’s not a rating winner, but if this season gets any word of mouth at all, those ratings should start shooting up.

Since this episode was all about Valentine’s Day, it makes sense that it was all about romances.

Ann and Mark’s relationship was a bit of a shock at first but it’s grown on me, primarily because it’s never been the main story of any episode. And it makes it a lot easier to like Mark, who was a bit of a cad and a bunch of a douche last season. It doesn’t seem like this relationship is destined to be long-lived, though. Ann’s comments during her talking head scene sharply demonstrated that a really normal relationship can also mean a really uninteresting relationship. Nonetheless, this little relationship has done quite a bit of heavy lifting by making Mark more likable and by bringing Ann closer to the office environment.

Leslie and Justin’s relationship had a great path and the way it ended, while keeping Justin totally likable, was kind of scary for its intelligence. From the first time we saw Justin he’d been a storyteller, and making that the key thing that makes Leslie realize they’re not right for each other is one of those story touches that less capable shows would screw up.

Tom’s awkward attempts to woo his ex-wife are sweet and very fitting a person as bizarre as Tom Haverford. They didn’t end well, but they continued the work of making Tom empathetic after a season of him mostly being the weirdo. What makes this show interesting is that they’re putting the work in to make all their characters relatable and realistic. Not that The Office is a grab-bag of slapstick tomfoolery but its main comic sources are drawn a bit broader than real life; Parks and Recreation hopes to mine the world of humour and pathos that exists on the other edge of the line, skirting realism in a way that you would think would make the comedy harder to come by, but this show makes it look easy.

One of the most impressive developments of this season is the stealth romance of April and Andy. The undefined age difference aside, their flirtations — and Andy’s obliviousness to it all — are one of the more romantic story lines they’ve weaved into this season while still remaining wildly funny. And of course, it’s led to whole new avenues for April. She’s still basically that deadpan sardonic ironic apathetic chick, but the glimmer in her eye when she dotes on Andy is opening her up to the world beyond the ’15 layers of irony’ her boyfriend (and his boyfriend) revel in.

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Some nice things in this episode:

• ‘It makes The Notebook look like Saw 5.’
• ‘I’m gonna call him poo-pa.’
• Leslie: ‘Think of it this way: these songs are exactly like the songs you usually except instead of modern rock, they’re old jazzy standards from the 40′s.’
  Andy: ‘OK, yeah, you got a point.’
• ‘I never had a chance to get a girl a cliched Valentine’s Day gift before so… I got you all of them.’
• Mark in a tuxedo and red bow tie. Adorbs.
• A timely joke: ‘Stay away from John Mayer.’
• ‘I’m gonna throw up real quick and then we can leave!’
• The people on the show seem to be acknowledging the camera a little more in the recent episodes, I like it so far I just hope they don’t over-do it.
• ‘Uhh… I mean, that sucked, didn’t it?’
• Guitarist: ‘Maybe if you sang it like Louis Armstrong.’
  Andy: ‘Maybe yeah, I mean here’s the thing though… who is that?’
• ‘If I’m not mistaken, that was the old lady version of flashing.’
• Andy is too quotable.

Tonight’s NBC comedies were so good, I thought I’d write about them. I love all these shows so much, and yet that rarely gets an outlet here. Let’s change that.

Community explored the politics of the drunk dial tonight. Britta’s slick veneer of disinterest in Jeff was shattered by the power of alcohol. As easy as it would be for the show to use a moment like this to ruin Jeff’s existing relationship, with his hot former statistics professor¹, while advancing the Will-They-Won’t-They narrative, maybe even getting another kiss out of the potential couple, Community doesn’t hit those sorts of lobs.

Community has shown itself to be a shrewd observer of the classic tropes of television. Even when it follows these tropes, it subverts them as it did expertly in this episode. With some sharp writing, it managed to strengthen Jeff’s current relationship and deepen Jeff and Britta’s friendship while keeping the door open for a genuine romance further down the road. Also, they got Britta into this dress.

Chevy Chase in a pantsuit was nice too I guess.

So far this year, Community’s been remarkably consistent for a new series. I can’t think of a demonstrably weak episode and none of the characters feel like the unwanted step-children of the writers. Earlier this week Dan Harmon, creator of Community, tweeted:

I’d start phoning it in if it weren’t for the fear that nobody would know the difference.

To which I say, if he were phoning it in we’d know. Oh, how we’d know.

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Some nice things in this episode:

• Annie clapping along with Senor Chang’s Spanish chicken dance.
• Abed’s inability to recall television minutiae while hungover.
• Britta in that dress. I mean, wow.
• ‘Wassup’
• BCI
• ‘I’m Abed, I never watch TV.’
• Cupid Being. Not only blind, but dizzy and belligerent.
• ‘He’s a young The Asian Guy from Lost’
• ‘One Papa John’s commercial, and he thinks he’s Christian Bale.’
• The Breakfast Club montage homage would have gone completely over my head if I hadn’t watch this video earlier this week.
• Troy’s got mad Booty Quake skills.

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1. It has to be said that the women on this show are, quite possibly, too hot. [↩]

I have a problem with follow through, it seems. A while back, I wrote a post claiming that Heroes wasn’t as bad this year. And I’ve been silent on the subject since, even though anyone watching the show knows that whatever faint silhouette of potential improvements the show dangled earlier this year have disappeared, which might make you think I still think Heroes is improving. That’s a mistake.

Heroes is without a doubt the worst show I watch right now. I say that as a regular watcher of Smallville, a show that should have been thrown off the air a few years ago. This season started with some promise, but it quickly evapourated; characters returned to their most annoying of ways, plots twisted and turned aimlessly and lifelessly, and the desperation of the writers fouled every frame of the season.

NBC has yet to renew Heroes for the new year, and I hope it doesn’t. Some people are talking about giving the writers one more season to wrap up the show, but not only do I have no faith in the writers to actually accomplish that goal, I also think there’s really nothing left for the characters to do, they’ve spent four seasons repeating the same arcs over and over.

The general ineptitude of the writers makes me think they stumbled upon winning characters four years ago and don’t know how to make those characters grow and so they try to duplicate the characteristics that first made them popular with horrible results.

Heroes is a sickening festering wound on television, one that it beyond repair or recovery and it must be excised before it can do more damage.

Michael Ian Black, a really funny dude, wrote up his thoughts about the whole Conan situation. It’s a great read, despite what I think are exaggerations regarding the fervor of “Team Coco,” though I wanted to expand on something he brought up and maybe pivot it a bit.

His early point that Conan is being treated like a working-class folk hero is questionable at best — Conan’s audience has always skewed young, and I doubt that’s changed during the recent surge of support — but his discussion of the origins of his supporters is interesting.

I think the deeper reason people are so inflamed by this petty war is that Conan in his own way has come to represent the aggrieved, the injured, the wrongly terminated. I think there is a sense in this country that giant corporations are ruining everything, even late night talk shows. Something so insignificant takes on greater importance because I think on some level, “The Tonight Show” actually has become a very flawed stand-in for all the jobs lost to corporate greed, arrogance, and stupidity. We see Conan as a victim because we feel as though, like us, he wasn’t given a fair shot. If a guy like that, a guy who has everything, can be downsized and demoted, what hope do the rest of us have?

One way of thinking about it is through the corporate world but, to my eyes, the return of Leno’s Tonight Show has much more relevance when analogized to the current political climate.

The world is shitty right now. Especially for the young, presumably liberal, audience of Conan O’Brien. We elected a vibrant young politician to the presidency a little over a year ago with the idea that he would fight for the progressive liberal goals he said he would. Instead he’s fallen prey to the idiotic desire to crawl to the political centre despite a strong electoral mandate to push the things he said he would push. What’s worse, each time his opposition fumbles he creates new compromises, weakens his position, claims that he needs to be more accommodating to the immovable objects he’s tasked with moving.

And here comes Conan. He’s a young vibrant comedian who’s given a chance to run The Tonight Show, to remake it in his image. And he did that. When he first started, he appeared semi-neutered but as he grew more comfortable with the show, he loosened and began to adjust his new surroundings to who he was and not the other way around.

What’s more, when the news came that he was being cast aside, he didn’t compromise, he became more like himself. And, yes, people loved him for it. Because that’s why they were excited about him being there in the first place.

I don’t know about any of you, but Conan going down swinging felt like a win to me. Maybe it’s a shallow one, but it doesn’t seem like we’re going to get any real ones any time soon.

I’ve been meaning to write a bit about Reaper, a show in the same vein as Chuck, ever since its season finale. One thing I noticed was the fairly significant similarities in their progression. Reaper ended its second season with what could be considered an evening of the playing field between Sam, the slacker Reaper looking for a way out of his contract with the Devil, and his pseudo-girlfriend Andi, who had shrinked from Sam this season after learning he was a son of the Devil: she had lost her soul to the Devil as well. Additionally, the season ended with a cryptic message from former demon, and current angel, Steve that everything that’s happening is happening for a reason, and the blueprints aren’t downstairs; the world was expanded, and Sam’s significance had increased.

Similarly, with Chuck the season ended with Chuck obtaining a newer more powerful Intersect which gave him physical capabilities as well; twisting this slightly to make the point, he was now on a level playing field with his pseudo-girlfriend Sarah, who until now had been the kickass super-agent of the relationship. And in the process of obtaining this new Intersect the scope of the story was expanded: the enemy of the last two years had been but one part of a larger machine. The parallels are striking.

That isn’t to say the shows were similar. In fact, the contrast between the two shows was much greater in their second seasons than their first, but the similarities in their arcs are  nonetheless notable.

Chuck and Reaper have followed similar paths on the production side of things as well. They were both affected, and truncated, by the Writer’s Strike and as a result both were “bubble shows” that made it back for a second season by the skin of their teeth. Of course, here their paths diverge slightly. Reaper was given a short season renewal. I’d initially read that it was a 9 episode season, but ultimately 13 aired; Chuck was given a full 22 episode pick up.

So Chuck returned in the fall and spent months developing its identity and fanbase to the point that when it was placed once again on the bubble (albeit as a likely renewal) the fans sprang into action. Reaper, with its shorter season, began airing as a mid-season replacement and didn’t have as much time to grow a fanbase. So, despite continual assertions of inevitable cancellation by TV rating analysts, the fanbase barely materialized and the show was killed, while Chuck’s wildly successful fan-driven campaign resulted in saving the show from the increasingly fickle chopping block.

But following the trend of cancelled shows being picked up by other networks, seen this year with Medium and (potentially) My Name is Earl, the execs behind Reaper were rumoured to be looking for a deal that would have allowed for a third season on a new network. Jenny Wade, who starred on this season of Reaper as a demon and Ben’s Anya-esque girlfriend, posted on twitter of an unofficial deal in the works, a deal that fell through rather quickly. Since then, I’ve been following her and she recently posted a video discussing Reaper. In it she, among other things, defends Tyler Labine and Bret Harrison, the stars of Reaper, from fans who said they gave up on the show. This is the first I’d heard of it, but I decided to hypothesize completely uninformed of the context of the comments.

Tyler Labine was cast in a new pilot which was subsequently greenlit for a season order. I can see how that can be construed as “abandoning” a show, but it’s simply the reality of the industry; in addition, his contract for Reaper almost certainly overrode any other deals and the pilot he filmed was merely “backup.” Bret Harrison is another story; he hasn’t quickly moved onto other roles or anything of that sort so the anger of the fans seems even more unjustified to me. What I think it boils down to, though, is Reaper’s unintended doppleganger: Chuck.

One of the more noted aspects of the Chuck renewal campaign was how vociferously some of the stars of the show encouraged the campaign: namely, Bret Harrison’s Chuck counterpart Zachary Levi. While at a convention in London, he took a group of Chuck fans to a nearby Subway and, following one of the ideas of the fan campaign, started buying five dollar footlongs. Subsequently, he appeared on CNN, and most likely other channels as well, to discuss the campaign and support the show and the renewal campaign. As far as I know, Bret Harrison did none of these things, so I presume that this is at least one aspect of why the fans seem displeased with Harrison. Which (finally) gets to the point of this post: are those sorts of actions the duty of an actor?

I don’t think so. An actor’s duty is to act. Beyond that, every actor does things differently. Acting, in the end, is just a job. To some people, their job is their life, to others it’s not. We’d all like to believe that all the actors in our favourite shows and movies ansolutely love the roles they’re playing, but that’s not always the case. And really, it’s not their job to love their job.

Maybe Zachary Levi really loves Chuck more than Bret Harrison loves Reaper. Or maybe that’s just who Levi is; maybe he will spend a week evangelizing all of his friends when he finds a great rib joint. I don’t know either of them. What I do know is that the both of them did a great job. They performed their roles well, and brought to life their characters. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit.

(Obviously, I care a little; personable and fan-friendly actors are better than the alternative, but I’m not going to chastise an actor for not being an acolyte for their show.)

And ultimately, Zachary Levi talking about Chuck on CNN did not renew the show. Zachary Levi would not have even been on CNN talking Chuck except for one thing: the fans. The fans created the campaign, the fans pushed the narrative, they renewed the show. Anything Zachary Levi did was ancillary, just as anything Bret Harrison could have done would have been. The only thing Zachary Levi did to renew the show was give a great performance, one that engendered such an enthusiastic fanbase. He did his job. And so did Harrison.

A few weeks ago, when discussing the sad fate of Kings, a high-concept low-ratings drama on NBC, I said that it was “as dead as Dollhouse.” Clearly, I exaggerated Dollhouse’s demise as Fox has picked it up for a second season.

I’m really excited about this — despite it meaning I will have to write detailed recap/reviews of each episode — because the first season was, aside from a few weak moments, really great: entertaining, funny, brave, contemplative, and so many other things.

I’ve had my gripes with Fox in the past; they canned Firefly without giving it a chance, the cancelled Futurama despite it being the funniest animated series they ever produced, and of course the brutal prolonged death they offered Arrested Development was visceral and painful to me. That said, Dollhouse was never a strong performer in the ratings — though it fared better than most of the programs Fox aired on Friday nights — and Fox is giving it another chance. So Kudos to you, Fox: you’ve regained a modicum of fanboy respect.

As I look back on the grand experiment that was my weekly reviews of Dollhouse, I find myself still struggling with the proper format of these reviews. Based on my blog’s tracking stats, I’ve found more people visit the reviews which were more in-depth and detailed, but at the same time that could simply be a side-effect of the sheer volume of words in those reviews. By quoting specific lines and describing most of the scenes to a reasonable level of detail it becomes much more reasonable for someone searching for those things online — something I often do, to gauge if my opinion of certain scenes is reflected by the online audience — to find my site.

But that’s a fairly cold and calculating way to look at writing a review. I don’t want to merely insert enough keywords as to increase my traffic by throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. That said, I have found myself more willing to go back and examine and re-read my more detailed reviews. Looking at the little moments that make a show good is one thing that many other reviewers fail to do, and to write about those details in the hopes of reaching others who, like me, appreciate the little things a show does is a big reason I write about television.

So I’ve decided that if Dollhouse gets renewed for another season, I will write detailed reviews — luxuriating over every shot, every thought, every furtive glance — for every episode of Dollhouse until the series ends. And I mean series the way an American or a Canadian does. If Dollhouse becomes a breakaway hit in its second season and then airs continuously for the next fifty years, I will have a horridly long review for every single episode in the bunch. Of course, the real question is this: is this promise a reason to renew or a reason to not?

I should be writing my weekly Dollhouse review/recap right now, but the current hysteria over Chuck and its possible cancellation is what tends to preoccupy my televisual thoughts nowadays. I should say this immediately: both Chuck and Dollhouse are deserving of renewal. I’m more heavily invested in Chuck because there have been more episodes and more emotional connections made, but they’re both excellent shows. The key difference between the two is that the fan base of Chuck has galvanized and mobilized, while the fans of Dollhouse do little more than bemoan its impending doom in scattershot fora.

I remember two years ago, when Jericho was a show was less than stellar ratings that looked “on the bubble” just as Chuck is now; there were rumblings that it might not be renewed, but nobody was ardently fighting for its renewal. Not until the season ended with a spectacular climax and CBS announced that the show would not be returning for a second season did the fan base explode with fury and begin sending tonnes (literally) of peanuts to CBS to demand a new season of Jericho.

Miraculously, it worked. No write-in campaign that I know of had been successful in reviving a show since Star Trek in the 60′s, but the dedication of the fans astounded the executives and so they made an abrupt about-face and gave Jericho a second season. Of seven freaking episodes.

In the case of Jericho, the network execs were essentially telling the writers to finish off whatever they had planned. They kept up the pretense of a possible third season, even having the writers create two alternate endings, but everyone could see the writing on the wall. Some might argue that this is the best you can get, but I think what’s happened with Chuck is a sign of the future of fandom.

Chuck has never been more than “on the bubble,” and even in this impoverished state, most experts have been quietly optimistic about its possibilities. But we’ve learned not to take “good enough” for granted. Jericho had higher ratings than Chuck, and it still got cancelled. The fans have learned their lesson, and they will fight for the shows they love, even before the fight has begun. Preemptive war is the tactic du jour in our world now. And one has to hope it will result in greater gains than the Jericho campaigns.

The fans of other shows haven’t learned their lesson yet, or they’ve been conditioned for failure. In fact, most of the ardent supporters of Dollhouse in the early days were the ones virtually promising that it would be cancelled.

At this point, Chuck seems likely to be renewed, but its relative success — whether or not it gets a crappy timeslot, or a truncated run, or substantial network support, etc. — will be the litmus test for this new form of fandom. Bringing the fight to the network before the network knows there’s a fight is a potent tactic. If it works, that is.

I really don’t want to be one of those people that becomes a fanatic about every TV show I like on the brink of cancellation, but the news I just read is painful. Supposedly, Chuck — a show that’s done nothing but improve in its two year tenure — and Medium — a show that seems so poorly done that I wonder if there are any genuine fans — are battling it out in the offices of NBC, and only one will be given a new season.

I hate Medium. I hated it before I’d ever seen it, but watching an episode solidified and justified my prejudice. I have no idea why the ratings for that show are even marginally better than Chuck. I would be more upset by Medium getting a renewal and Chuck getting cancelled than both shows getting cancelled. So, NBC: please please please please choose Chuck. Or at the very least, don’t choose Medium. But seriously, choose Chuck.

Just before Kings was cancelled, the fifth episode aired and I found the initial love affair I had with the show dwindling; the characters weren’t as fully developed as I’d have liked, the stories often resolved themselves too easily, and overall the show didn’t seem as good as it once did.

I think that, should I go back and watch the series anew at a later date, I’d find that the quality had not dissipated but rather the realization that the show is “almost brilliant” had simply been delayed.

In robotics there is a term for that eerie feeling we all get when we see a robot that almost duplicates a perfect human being but has very slight flaws and discrepancies. It’s called the Uncanny Valley. These slight discontinuities jar the mind and make us feel at unease. We don’t feel that unease when looking at a robot like C3PO or R2-D2 or WALL-E because they are not human and the differences are notable and numerous. They become a sort of living cartoon, something we accept as a human analog because we can cobble together empathy based on the few anthropomorphic cues available.

I believe that there is similar valley that exists in the world of television. Most television exists before this valley; the characters are entertaining and endearing, but not wholly real. Then there are the special few shows that exist beyond the valley; those shows have such a well-defined universe, such believable characters, that we are enveloped by the show, taking it in as more than mere entertainment. Kings, unfortunately, existed in the abyss betwixt.

Kings was a show that was too good but not good enough. The early comparisons I made to Carnivàle were a sign that the show was attempting to achieve the greatness that lies beyond the valley; where a show will be talked about and analysed for years after. But it didn’t make it there. Maybe Michael Green didn’t have the writing chops to match Daniel Knauf, or maybe the show would have achieved that greatness over the course of the series. Either way, in my mind, Kings sits somewhere in that valley, reaching for more, and not getting the chance it deserves.