2010 will rightfully go down as one of the worst years for film in recent memory. Of course when it starts with Tim “too-cool-for-source-material” Burton's Alice in Wonderland earning more than $300 million domestic, what would you expect? Nevertheless, 2010 was also a remarkably unfortunate year for television.
The 2009-2010 Television Season
The 2009-2010 television season brought with it the finales of a glut of major television franchises. While most had seen much better days, many had at one point or another served as significant players.
The Long Timers
Syndication favorite Scrubs finished out its nine year run with the maligned final season derogatorily referred to as After Scrubs, due to its focus on mostly new characters (who actually weren't that bad once they got their feet wet and no longer had to deal with a regressed Dr. Dorian).
Heroes received a long overdue cancellation after three years of being embarrassingly directionless and redundant.
ABC's Ugly Betty ended.
FOX axed 24 after nearly a decade just as its final season began to improve (though the Dana Walsh storyline still makes no sense).
After 13 years, FOX let go of Mike Judge's King of the Hill. Possibly the network's most underrated cartoon, King of the Hill never lost its down-to-earth core or forced the characters into increasingly zany adventures.
In a shock move, NBC didn't even give its nearly two-decade old flagship series Law and Order a chance for a final episode.
One of FX's first noteworthy series, Nip/Tuck, finally limped towards it ultimate conclusion.
Also, although DirectTV picked it up, FX canceled one of its best series, the ethically challenged legal drama Damages, after a really strong third season that made up for its disappointing second one.
And Lost finally proved that the showrunners really had no idea what they were doing. (That 10 minute DVD "epilogue" furthered showcased their inability to answer anything.)
Also worth mentioning is American Idol. Though returning for the 2011 television season, Idol is doing so without the show's most identifiable mainstay, Simon Cowell.
The Short Timers
Highly publicized new series, some with potential, also got the shaft after a relatively short life.
Early during its second season, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse learned that it was only going to get a half-season order and finally presented a show worth watching (at least until the senseless series finale).
Starz' Party Down, one of the funniest shows on television, was unfortunately canceled after its second season.
SyFy axed the often-muddled-but-nevertheless-fascinating Caprica to make room for a more action packed spin-off of Battlestar: Galactica.
And ABC's Flashforward...could have gotten better, I guess. If they got rid of, or drastically reduce, Mark Benford. At least its second half was better than that of fellow the-next-Lost V's.
The 2010-2011 Television Season
Whether you loved the shows or hated them, the end of the last television season clearly left many open time slots. So what did the networks give us to replace these series? Put simply, the 2010 television season has been nearly universally lame. Unsurprisingly, the best new programs appeared on FX, HBO, and AMC. Unfortunately, two of the best ones were canceled.
Cable- The Unfortunately Canceled
The modern television landscape is full of series about detectives/proto-detectives solving a crime-of-the-week while dealing with some sort of overarching storyline. These season-long plots help give these show a better sense of complexity (even though they are virtually ignored for the vast majority of each episode), and a stable of recurring characters provide a sense of history and continuity. These elements make mostly fluffy shows come across as deeper and better than their direct predecessors like Knight Rider and The A-Team. This is called USA Syndrome.
FX, the best network for original programming in both quality and quantity, began airing Terriers. Of all the "detective" shows on television (including the other 2010 FX original Justified), Terriers quickly rose above them all. Bolstered by strong performances (especially from leads Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James), a well-integrated season-long arc, and clever writing with a brilliant ear for interpersonal relationships, what made Terriers unique was its heart. By heart, I mean a pain and honesty not present in most other television shows.
Similar to detective shows, spy programs have also found homes on their airwaves over the past decade (and even longer if you want to go back to shows like Mission: Impossible, Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Get Smart). Recent spy shows like Alias, Chuck, and 24 are fast-paced series that essentially function as a weekly, hour-long action movie that, oddly enough, are better than most action movies.
And then there was Rubicon. Also unfortunately canceled, Rubicon was probably the best new series of the season. By the time Rubicon came about, AMC had developed an untouchable standard with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Trying to compete with those series would be a daunting task, but Rubicon managed to pull it off. Often accused of being “slow,” Rubicon blossomed into one of the strongest spy shows probably ever put on television. Centered around an intelligence agency (in particular one employee uncovering a massive conspiracy), the show's deliberate pacing was perfect in building tension, developing rich and realistic characters (Arliss Howard's Kale Ingram was easily a standout of the most recent television season), and showcasing the hardship and monotony of actual "spy" work.
While most modern spy series seem to borrow somewhat from the Bourne template with a focus on fighting and explosions, Rubicon dialed everything back and found kin with movies like the Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation. One of Rubicon's greatest features was that the main characters never used computers. Whether going over documents, reciting facts, or trying to translate a potential terrorist's conversation, the team at the American Policy Institute used their brains. Their knowledge and analytical abilities came from inside them, not Google or some sort of instant facial recognition software. It was a small element, but one I personally admired.
Cable- Those That Thankfully Survived
However, several worthy new shows from 2010 did get renewals. HBO's excellent 1920s gangster drama Boardwalk Empire and David Simon's superb New Orleans post-Katrina character drama Treme will both return in 2011. Although the more popular True Blood and Big Love are decent, these two shows come closest to the quality that made HBO so impressive during the first half of the 2000s.
AMC's The Walking Dead continues to add to the network's high quality.
In addition to Terriers and Justified, FX also premiered the best comedy of the new season and possibly the best comedy on television today. Most accurately categorized as a dark comedy with hints of 1970s-era Woody Allen, Louie features comedian Louis C.K. playing "himself" and the strife and angst that comes with being him. Managing to find the perfect mixture of humor and depression while using surrealism to enhance reality, Louie is respectably unlike anything else on television.
The Networks
As an audience, we expect better from cable but the big five networks lost more shows and more important shows than its cable counterparts. What did the CBS, NBC, FOX, and ABC give us to replace those massacred at the end of the 2009-2010 season? Not much.
Constantly promoted as the child between Lost and 24, NBC's The Event must be a bitter disappointment to its two revered parents and the network hoping for the next big talked about hit.
None of the new shows seems to have made an impact on the cultural landscape. Although series like Hawaii 5-0 get good ratings, they lack a buzz. Yet last year, on the comedy front alone, the networks offered cult and critically revered shows like Glee, Modern Family, and Community.
And, of course, there was The Late Night Wars.
Why Did Culture Fail So Terribly In 2010?
Recently it was announced that movie attendance was down significantly in 2010, an unsurprising fact. Last year featured a significant dearth of quality films, both from independent studios and big budget ones, and very few word-of-mouth films or big budget spectaculars. As described above, television also suffered last year from losing important stalwarts, lacking place-fillers, and Jay Leno.
Was 2010 the year the effects of the economic recession hit Hollywood? That's one theory that I can neither prove nor disprove.
Will 2011 continue this trend? Obviously, it's too early to tell. We do know that audiences will see a significant increase in Major Movies Of The Week, especially in summer, but television remains unknowable. Previews of mid-season replacements like superhero fantasy The Cape and dating sitcom Perfect Couples do not bode well for the first half of the year, and it is impossible to tell what's going to happen during the 2010-2011 pilot season.
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