"Community" Cancelled & Other TV Stuff

NBC had kept the show on the air despite persistent low ratings because its fan base was intensely, nerdishly loyal -- enough to fill Hall H at Comic-Con (which I guess is a big hall, and thus a big deal).

It also helped that Community was one of those shows that no one watched, but a lot of people wrote about. There are, conversely, shows that a great many people watch, but no one writes about, such as NCIS.

NBC kept the show on the air, sort of, sometimes airing it in the winter or spring, and usually putting it up against the hugest show on TV, The Big Bang Theory, which is also, of course, a comedy. (Why they didn't put it up against, say, CSI, to benefit from some counter-programming placement, I don't know.)

In any event, after five seasons, most of which were abbreviated (only 13 or so shows being ordered instead of a more typical 22), they've finally pulled the plug.

I speculated a while ago that if Arrested Development had been on, now, rather than back in 2003, it never would have gone out of production. Fox would have cancelled it, sure, but Netflix, or Amazon, or even Hulu would have begun producing the show.

Community is that type of show, with a loyal (if small) fan base, so we'll see if my speculation has any merit to it.

In other TV news, Fox will begin airing Gotham, a show set in Batman's Gotham City, but Before Batman. The show will follow young-ish cop Jim Gordon and also a 12 year old Bruce Wayne. (Trailer below the fold.)

The creator, who also created Rome and The Mentalist, sings the praises of his own show:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: My assumption has been that the reason this TV show can be done — rights-wise — is because Batman himself is not in it. That way, it doesn’t overlap with any films. Is that correct?

BRUNO HELLER: Certainly from Warner Bros. and DC’s business point of view, that’s why it can be done. For me, if they said, “Do Batman,” I would have said, “No.” I would have not been interested at all. I don’t think Batman works very well on TV — to have people behind masks. Frankly, all those superhero stories I’ve seen, I always love them until they get into the costume. And then it’s, “Oh, okay, they’ve ascended, they’ve stopped becoming humans.” It’s their apotheosis. They go to heaven and they’re Superman. There have been so many great versions of it. This is a version of something else entirely.

...

I’ve been talking to Geoff Johns at DC for a few years about wanting to do something in the DC canon. I came in to pitch the idea that we’re doing, essentially, and they came to pitch me the same thing. The nut of the idea was: What if young James Gordon was the detective who investigated the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents? And once you make that connection, it opened up a whole world of storytelling that we realized hadn’t really been looked at before, which is the world before Batman — the world of Gotham, young Bruce Wayne, and young James Gordon and the origin stories of the villains.

ABC has renewed Agents of SHIELD despite so-so ratings, but then, the network has reasons besides ratings to keep the show on the dial, as it helps promote all of its parent company's Avengers-related movies.

Incidentally, while Agents of SHIELD began as sub-mediocre show, it got more interesting at season's end, when the HYDRA conspiracy within SHIELD revealed itself, timed, almost to the minute, with the same event happening in the Captain America movie. This is a geek triumph: Comic book continuity applied to comic book tv shows and movies.

Oh, and if you were a fan of "Peggy Carter" in the first Captain America film, and/or found Haley Atwell to be beyond hot, you might be happy to know ABC has now also picked up Agent Carter, about the character's work as a secret agent (alongside Howard Stark) in 1946.

Meanwhile, Marvel is filming not one but four new superhero series for Netfilx: Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and Daredevil.

I think the idea is that they'll also do a mini-series called The Defenders in which these characters team-up, like B-Team Avengers.

By the way I really have no idea who "Jessica Jones" is but spoiler alert she ultimately marries Luke Cage.

Oh, and of course The Flash is coming up on CW. (Video of his origin, which was already shown on the Green Arrow companion series, below.)

I really think this market is oversaturated, or, given the genre, super-saturated. I like superhero stuff, and yet I personally think this is all excessive.

I mean, this is ridiculous. Secondary players (Jim Gordon, Peggy Carter) are now getting their own series.

Fall 2014 will feature three series (3!) centered around people who have merely met superheroes.

Coming soon: Jimmy Olsen, Boy Reporter.

Skip to 1:30 to see Barry Allen get hit by lightning, chemicals, and presumably Particle Acceleration Accident Radiation:

posted by Ace at 03:38 PM

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