Random Thoughts on Television
Even though it’s (almost) summer and original TV programming is mostly gone for the next few months, there’s still a lot of interesting news about some of my favorite shows coming out. Let’s start with the self-serving.
Check out issue #4 of the official Prison Break magazine (the one with Sara and Michael on the cover) for an article on my latest book Prison Break: The Classified FBI Files.
Also, there’s an interview with me about my upcoming book Bones: The Official Episode Guide (for Seasons 1&2) in the final issue of the official Buffy, The Vampire Slayer / Angel magazine. I think it’s fitting that I would appear in the last issue of this magazine as it was Buffy, The Vampire Slayer that got me started as a writer. The first professional gig I ever had was a short story in the Buffy anthology, How I Survived My Summer Vacation Vol. 1 (oddly … there never was a volume 2). The story was about a vampiric theatre group … not to be confused with the soul sucking rich kids from Orion Academy in DRAMA!
Now, onto the non-me related TV news…
I’ll avoid the “nuts” puns to just say, what an interesting time in TV history now that Jericho has been resurrected entirely by the fans. Jericho premiered this past fall as one of the most popular shows of the new season, but its audience dropped off considerably after it went on winter hiatus. (Probably because it came back on against American Idol.) While the ratings grew worse, the quality got much, much better, ending with one of the best cliff-hanging season finales of the year. And then it was cancelled.
The fans rallied by sending several TONS of nuts to CBS to convince them to bring the series back. And they are! For seven episodes and the possibility of more to come. This is not the first times the fans have saved a series. Star Trek immediately comes to mind. And, of course, there’s the Roswell Tobasco sauce mailings that extended that show’s future at the same time I was working on my first book: The Roswell Pop Quiz. It seems like these fan campaigns usually happen for series that I’ve written books for. Hmmm … Maybe I should start taping Jericho episodes when they come back on the air.
This inspired Veronica Mars fans to rally by sending in what few Mars bars were left in the country in order to save the show by The CW’s June 15 deadline. Sadly, before the candy was even shipped, it was announced that the show was definitely not coming back. Personally, I don’t think this was a huge surprise, but still disappointing news. The CW did stick with the show longer than the ratings supported. Far more than any other network would have (though, really, The CW had the least to lose.) They tried to save it in many ways. The audience just never came. But Veronica Mars may not have solved her last case as there’s talk of a movie and (more likely) a comic book series.
As for a show that I don’t watch … In what had the potential to be a brilliant marketing campaign, I received a post card in the mail with a beach scene and the note “Greetings from Imperial Beach, CA” on the front and (what’s supposed to look like) a handwritten message personally addressed to me on back telling me to watch John From Cincinnati on HBO on June 10th. It would have been a perfect marketing campaign … if I hadn’t gotten the post card on June 11th.
In the meantime, I’m going to use the rest of the summer to catch up on my reading … and my re-reading: Three Harry Potter books down and three to go until the final book comes out!!