My Love is a Curse

Fall is my favourite time of year.  I love watching the leaves change, sipping a cup of hot tea on a cool morning, and finally digging out the majority of my sweater-based wardrobe.  Flannel. There is one thing about fall, however, that I dread, and that's the imminent cancellation of my new favourite shows.   

Each year I form attachments to new characters and get wrapped up in new stories and ideas, eager to learn what happens next.  And while there is the occasional show that sticks, more often than not I log on to Aintitcool one morning to learn that my new favourite just got dumped.  My emotional commitment was for naught - replaced in the lineup with reruns of Friends or Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?.   

While I understand that this is a process all people go through at some point - just about everyone I know has at least one tale of TV woe - I seem to attach myself unfailingly to those shows that get canned.  Each year I'm left wondering what might have been while friends gush about their new favourite shows.  Indeed, my love seems to be a curse, and I've got the track record to prove it. Way back when, there was a fantastic soap opera called Sunset Beach. It was a true guilty pleasure, as all good soaps are. Along with the regular plotlines centered on betrayal, greed and romance, Sunset Beach entered the realms of greatness with a love triangle that revolved around indecisive Gabi, Police Detective Ricardo and his brother, the tortured Father Antonio. Yes, Sunset Beach dipped into Thornbirds territory. But it was good. Then the show was cancelled. Try as it might, Passions (newly cancelled itself) just couldn't fill the void in daytime TV.  

By now many people have heard the story of Firefly.  As a card-carrying member of the Joss Whedon fan club, I was eagerly anticipating the two hour premiere months in advance.  News eventually trickled out that FOX had demanded a new, one-hour pilot, and that the show would be airing on Friday nights - traditionally a television wasteland reserved for the shows networks hope soon to be rid of.  I was convinced, though, that Firefly would make it.  From the opening moments of the premiere, in the instant that Captain Mal Reynolds was hurled through a flickering holographic window in a bar fight, I was hooked.  A quick look at the ratings, however, showed that the rest of America was not.   

Horses, pistols, spaceships and Chinese curse words existed in one gloriously messy universe.  Reviewers didn't know what to make of it.  The space western had never been taken quite so literally.  As the weeks went by, the ratings continued to drop.  I preached Firefly to everyone I knew that fall - friends, family, co-workers - and even left the TV on upstairs under the guise of keeping the goldfish company in the dim hope that one extra TV tuned to FOX would make a difference.  The show was witty and sharp and so utterly original that I had no idea why anyone wouldn't be watching.  After a few short weeks on the air it was cancelled. 

And this, dear reader, is when I became jaded. 

I should have known better than to fall in love with Wonderfalls.  It was different.  It was fun.  It took place in a Niagara Falls gift shop.  The main character was not always likeable, but she was real.  And funny.  It had great writing, great acting, and it was just what I wanted and needed on my weeknights. And oh, was it quotable. My speech was littered with Wonderfalls-isms. If I showed up late to a meeting you no doubt heard me spout, "I'm sorry, someone was telling me the most interesting story about pirates." And as a rationale for not revealing unsettling news: "She would unspool!" It was cancelled within a month to make room for (in what I saw as the ultimate injustice) The Swan, a reality show about plastic surgery makeovers. 

Arrested Development, Futurama, Freaks and Geeks, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, The Inside, Andy Barker P.I., Veronica Mars, Farscape, Smith, Dead Like Me and Clone High have all died untimely deaths due to low ratings or network pressures.  My kiss of death enthusiasm may also have been a contributing factor. 

I've tried in the past few years to hang back for a few weeks when new series begin.  I've been burned too many times before to give a show my all only to have the rug pulled out from under me.  Like a bad relationship that leaves you gun shy, I just don't want to make a commitment when I know it could all come to a sudden premature end.  Plus, my TiVo only has so much space, you know? 

But this is the easy way out - waiting to see which series makes it may seem like a good bet, but your only reward is being labeled a band-wagoner when you begin watching Heroes midseason and missing out completely on the all-too-short-lived but brilliant Drive. 

So this year I'm going back to my old ways, throwing caution to the wind and letting the yearly ritual play out, knowing very well that, while I might find some wonderful new shows to call my own, I don't get to decide what gets to stay.  Like so many things in life, I just have to trust that it will all work out, knowing that even a short-lived relationship is better than none at all.   

But failing that, Battlestar is coming back in January.