Not Only Movies- 2010 Television Stunk Too

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.

Updating Old Sitcoms (An Admittedly Hack Topic)

Hollywood's obsessive penchant for remaking/rebooting/re-imagining even relatively newer movies (or, as it's called on the internet, childhood rape) has ramped up in recent years . This is to the dismay of many audience members who lambast the lack of creativity in cinema, despite the fact that you'll never see most of them in an art house theater, and who blissfully ignore that there have been good remakes like:

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Still, over the past several years we've seen returns to Clash of the Titans, The Karate Kid, Star Trek, Nightmare on Elm Street, Pink Panther, I Spit On Your Grave, Halloween, with more to come. In 2011, we can expect at least Footloose and Fright Night. There's also going to be a Big Momma's House 3, so keep your eyes open for that one.

Even more recently, television has gotten into the remake game.

2004's Battlestar: Galactica set the bar not just for television remakes, but science fiction shows in general (up until the crappy finale). In 2005, Russell T. Davies successfully regenerated the legendary, nearly 40-year-old series Doctor Who. Hawaii 5-0 returned this season on CBS as an immediate fan favorite. The CW has become dependent on the television remake with its versions of/sequels to Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, and La Femme Nikita. Even previous mistakes got a second chance to fail, such as Rob Thomas' 2009 Cupid, which was received slightly less favorably than his 1998 version of the same series (7 aired episodes v. 14 aired episodes). And who can forget NBC's duel abortions of The Bionic Woman and Knight Rider?

A few weeks ago, Pushing Daisies' Bryan Fuller announced plans to remake The Munsters with more of a The Office/Modern Family spin. (Which I'm sure will be better than Tim Burton's The Addams Family. The man simply does not understand eroticism, and Gomez/Morticia might have been television's first highly sexualized couple. You'd want to watch them fuck.)

These reboots tend to follows a more “modern” (or postmodern) take on television. The shows are grittier, have a greater respect for continuity and ongoing storylines, are arguably smarter, and possess a much higher budget than their decades-ago counterparts.

However, for the most part, only dramas have been given the treatment. What about sitcoms?

I Dream of Jeannie

No longer the simple tale of a scantily clad servant desperate to please her astronaut master, Jeannie represents just one member of a much larger, quite extensive, universe of supernatural creatures. The complex mythology and history of Jeannie and the Jeannies will play a large role in the development of the series. The show's zaniness will be tempered with antagonistic spirits and considerable limits on Jeannie's powers. If the remake is still set in the 1960s, the space race and the communist fear plays a huge role in Major Nelson's life.

Additionally, Jeannie and Major Nelson's relationship, which will turn romantic fairly quickly, becomes one of epic destiny and TRUEST TRUE LOVE, forged in the annals of time.

(On the public front: people will swoon over Jelson, Major Nelson will be a teen heartthrob, and Nellows slash-fic will be crazy popular.)

Bewitched

Ignoring the incredibly misguided, but almost respectably crazy-in-concept, 2005 film, Bewitched is about a 1960s ad man who marries a hot blonde chick with issues. We know where this is going.

Bewitched 2010 does not need to change all that much from the original series, but the moral of the story will be vastly different. Even unlimited power and unlimited abilities cannot fully distract us or save us from the ennui and emptiness that is inherent in modern life. Sure Samantha can mess around with the laws of God and physics, but so what? Nothing ever changes.

At least not until season 3 when Samantha, fed up about everything, goes mad with power.

(On the public front: the internet will be outraged if Darren is recast. The very least the writers can do is make meta comments on it from time to time.)

Happy Days

Turns out the 1950s were not so happy. With our enlightened 21^st century eyes, we know that series and movies from the 1950s and 1960s were balls of lies. Even looking back at the 1950s from a 20-year window further perpetuated those untruths. (Curse you Garry Marshall for having nostalgia.) Sixty years later, producers can finally force the Cunninghams to deal with cultures clashes, post-war blues, racism, sexism, oppression, homosexuality, depression, and the tragic death/disappearance of their oldest son.

Probably not Clancy Brown.

Go balls out by ending the first episode with a music montage showing Potsy shooting dope in Arnold's basement and Fonzie being stabbed to death by some actual street toughs. You will have viewers for episode 2.

(On the public front, 1950s fashion might come back in vogue. Some people will cry over the show being America-hating liberal revisionist history that ignores the greatness of America; others will cry that it doesn't go far enough.)

Green Acres

Once a fish out of water tale about a city boy fulfilling his dream of moving to the country only to discover its full of hicks and incompetents, Green Acres 2010 presents the plight of the American farmer and small town America amidst monopolization, corporate farms, and organic farming.

In today's world of globalization, even Hooterville is not free from the internet, Best Buys, and other modern conveniences. Can the citizens retain their identity in the face of corporate colonization? When Evil Corporate Guy tries to buy the land from the Haneys and the Ziffels, can Oliver Wendell Holmes step up and become Hooterville's grand protector? Is Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes becoming part of Hooterville society charming, or a dangerous example of going native?

(On the public front, expect very special messages about the environment to be inserted into nearly every episode while the cast makes pleas to help some Green cause.)

Three's Company

It's doubtful that anyone can duplicate the sheer charm that enabled John Ritter to make a show based solely on misunderstandings last nearly a decade. Equally impressive is that the series went 172 episodes without “officially” hooking up Jack or Larry with any of the chicks. Today, networks would probably be very insistent on at least one love story happening.

Cool, sleazy ladies' man Larry Dallas might overstay his welcome. The Roepers will continue with lack-of-sex jokes, but will be good for at least two Viagra references an episode. Mr. Roeper will be accused of cyberbullying Jack due to comments on Jack's alleged homosexuality. Second landlord/social retard Mr. Furley will receive a tragic back story and become a man to be pitied, rather than laughed at- an offshoot of his bizarre dead cat speech from 1984's “Look What I Found.” And maybe we'll figure out what the fuck was up with Lana.

(On the public front, a modern Three's Company would quickly fall victim to the Shipper Wars. The internet will be taken over by Team Janet fighting Team Chrissy, but Team Terry all the way.)

The Andy Griffith Show

Oh how we hate those old television shows that present the past with any sort of fondness. If you're not ironically condemning them, what's the point? Sure everything was whitewashed, but that was the style at the time. Besides, it's not like many modern comedies present life in 2010 as shitty as it actually is.

Much like Twin Peaks' Harry S. Truman, small town sheriff Andy Taylor will be forced to look into the dark underbelly of Mayberry, North Carolina. A lot of horrible secrets lurk beneath the pleasant facade, and Andy must confront problems like Otis' alcoholism, his confusing attraction to Aunt Bea, Barney Fife's retardation, and the end of segregation. There will always be the old fishing hole, but the quiet introspective moments only serve to remind Andy about the death of a time gone by, and further morph into an embittered, hard-boiled police officer.

(On the public front, see Happy Days.)

Gilligan's Island

Thurston Howell III will be young, rich, and CW-pretty So will The Professor. And The Skipper. And probably Gilligan. Or they'll combine fat and stupid for Gilligan so that the least attractive qualities are concentrated in one unlikeable character.

Racist natives might be recast to be slightly less racist, and reimagined as an ongoing threat throughout the entire series.

(On the public front, people will be debating for the show's entire run what everything means, they they are stuck on the island, why The Professor can't fix the box (interesting fact, in an early episode, The Professor actually does invent a glue and they attempt to sail back but the glue doesn't hold), etc. At the end, it'll turn out that all theories meant nothing. The series finale will just be an attempt from the producers to make the audience cry to distract them from the fact that no questions were answered and nothing led to anything.)

Hogan's Heroes

(On the public front, outrage from special interest groups will cause this show to be canceled before its first airing.)

Dennis the Menace

Can a child still be a menace in 2010? With zero tolerance policies in schools, outdoor play vaguely a memory, and parents opting to medicate their children instead of actually parenting them, Dennis Mitchell must live in a world where his rambunctiousness is a sign of ADHD instead of a natural expression of boyish boyishness. Can one young boy fight against an oppressive system while dealing with constant allegations of elder abuse (Mr. Wilson) and sexual abuse (Margaret)?

Instead of being a fat little misfit, Dennis will have six pack abs and George Clooney charm. Maybe Jay North could play Mr. Wilson.

(On the public front, if the show obtains any popularity, news programs will call in “experts” to explain why Dennis is a bad role model, what The Mitchells can be doing better, and signs that your youngster is troubled.)

Coach

Although Coach is the most recent show on the list, it could benefit from the sequelization concept utilized by that shows like Doctor Who, 90210, and Melrose Place. With the massive rise in popularity of college football and fantasy football, Hayden Fox can return as a sports commentator where his no-holds-barred approach to life could run afoul of our more PC culture. Also, he can be accused of cyberbullying his daughter's closeted boyfriend Stuart.

(On the public front, FUN FACT: Jerry Van Dyke is still alive.)