When You Love Someone, and Nielsen Doesn't Love Them Back

As I'm from Australia, it's difficult for me to judge American audience numbers, but from my perspective Buffy the Vampire Slayer was never a big ratings hit, nor did it garner critical buzz in our media. This was always a point of contention for me among peers as I was constantly defending its consistently innovative writing and ability to transcend its genre. Anyhow, that's one example that immediately sprang to mind!

Gotta go with Jack & Bobby here. The premise (we see the future great president of the USA grow up as a teenager) was intriguing, the siblings cast were good, their crazy mother was played by Christine Lahti (who's a great actress), and the "history documentary" as episode narrative that tied into the actual storyline worked well.

The writers, however, got too melodramatic and departed a lot from what should have been a sibling-centric storyline. Plus, they made Lahti's character into a charicature of a liberal professor - it was too unbelievable. And supporting characters were never all that plausible. I loved the show, and had high hopes for its success, but ultimately, it was doomed.

DJP,

And after we opened our arms to "Prisoner: Cell Block H" yet!

It's always been a mystery to me what translates where and why. I remember visiting family in France, right around the time I started working as Time TV critic, and having my cousins beg me to tell them what was going on in "Buffy Contre Les Vampyrs."

I gotta say one of my favorites that only made it through one season on MTV was Clone High. . .It's a daria-like cartoon where major figures from history have been cloned and are now stereotypical figures growing up in high school. Classic. . .

LOVED Clone High! Especially loved that they had the stones to make the JFK clone a complete jackass.

Cupid

I always loved "The Invisible Man" on SciFi, but no one I've ever mentioned it to has ever heard of it. I also felt the same way about "Farscape," until I got one of my friends hooked on it too.

Currently, I love "Supernatural," and I don't know anyone else that watches it. I think that's one of the reason that TV-related sites on the Internet are so popular - people have found a way to get together and discuss shows they like even though no one in their "real life" will watch it with them. It helps encourage devotion.

I could be here all day on this thread.

Loved "American Dreams" and I have to say, NBC went a lot further out on the plank giving that one a ride that could have been predicted. I hope they do the same for "Friday Night Lights".

The late, great "Sons and Daughters" on ABC was a scream, which of course meant it had to go. It's like "Knights of Prosperity"...ABC comes up with these singular comic half hours, puts them up against the BIG GUNS of the other networks, and wonders why they don't survive.

I at least admire NBC for sticking with "The Office" and "Scrubs". I only hope they also give "30 Rock" a season or two, like "Cheers" to find its audience. It gets better and better. Last week's episode with the "I hate our troops" and Obama/Osama mixup/Entourage spoof was falldown funny.

Meanwhile, Fox are the guys I hate, having treated everything from "The Ben Stiller Show" to "Firefly" to "Wonderfalls" like crap. They try and claim credit for keeping "Arrested Development" on the air, but sh*t, they have about ten stations on the cable...couldn't they have kept it alive on FX?

The Nine was an awesome drama and George Lopez is one of the funniest shows on tv. I don't think anyone's watching either of them but me.

"Earth 2" from the mid-1990s was such a great show. It lasted only one season, but it was such an imaginative show with an amazing cast. NBC screwed it over with a weak 7PM (EST) Sunday night spot, so it was constantly pre-empted by sports or whatever else. There was no way a casual viewer could keep up with its schedule. And then shows like the "King of Queens" and other throwaway shows last for decades, it seems like. Argh.

Oh man, Cupid was great. So was Invisible Man. And what about Brimstone? And does anyone remember The Amazing Adventures of Jules Verne, or whatever it was called, on SciFi? That had the potential to be something pretty interesting, before they canceled it.

And going back a few years, anyone ever seen Houston Knights? By the time I saw it, it was a fourth-gen dub off of a single re-airing sometime in the mid-nineties, but it was still one of the more interesting shows of it's genre I've seen.

One of my favourite shows was the Pretender but as I lived in South Africa at the time, I was never sure of it's popularity in the States. Another short-lived but pretty good show was VR.5 which also got cancelled just before it got really interesting.