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Today, I stumbled upon Your Tax Dollars at Work, a TV discussion forum, and the subject of cancelled TV shows came up. Aside from the procedurals like CSI and NCIS, I don't watch much TV, but it got me to thinking about the TV shows I loved that were Old Yellered by the execs.
-Haunted: This supernatural show preceded Tru Calling and Ghost Whisperer by several years, but only aired for 6 episodes before disappearing. I assume that since the lead possessed icky manbits as opposed to soft, nurturing girlparts of simmering infection, it was condemned. The writing and music for the show were great, and the second episode, which features a ghost singing Linda Ronstadt's "Long, Long Time" still wakes me up in the middle of the night. Diana Flack from "Going Under" is, in many ways, a twisted homage to the episode. Interestingly, Eddie Cahill was scheduled to appear in episodes 7 and 8, but they never made it to air.
-Friday the 13th: The Series: Laugh all you want, but I loved this show. It had nothing to do with the horror movie franchise. It dealt with Mickey, who inherits an antique store from her late uncle. The curios are all cursed, alas, and Mickey and her buddy, Ryan, must retrieve and destroy them all. Hokey, yeah, but the UST between Mickey and Ryan was thick.
-Glory Days: I never saw this because TV was at a premium in the dorm common room, and it only lived 9 episodes before going toes-up despite rabid fans and some critical acclaim. It starred Eddie Cahill and Poppy Montgomery. Rumor has it that burnt copies can be had on certain Yahoo groups, but only if you know the password and agree to shave a yak's scrotum with your teeth.
And now, a snippet from September When It Comes VI:
While the jurors had filed out of the courtroom with their conversation fodder, he had returned to his empty house and wandered aimlessly from room to room, occasionally lifting a cherished object from its place, turning it over in anesthetized hands, and setting it gingerly down again without seeing it. He'd opened drawers and hall closets, unsure of what he was searching for, but desperate to find it all the same, and when he had thrown wide all the doors of his life and stirred the dust bunnies from their comfortable slumber atop the linen closet shelves and the slats of the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, he had sat in the middle of the living room floor with a bottle of Jim Beam and a picture of his wedding day and taken long, bitter swallows until the picture blurred into indecipherable blankness.
You know what you were looking for, murmured a grimly practical voice. You were looking for Bonnie, as though you thought she had escaped her captors and sought refuge with the laundry detergent and the spare comforters she kept for guests. Each time you opened a door, you expected to see her huddled in the corner with her knees tucked to her chest, dressed in her flannel pajamas and staring up at you in dumbfounded confusion and childish relief.
All he had found were lint balls and dark corners and the musty smell of spaces long closed. That first night alone in the house, he had passed out on the living room floor, and when he had awoken the next day, the sun had been high in the sky and the carpet had reeked of the whiskey from his overturned bottle. He'd stared at the pungent stain and then at the finger-smudged glass of the wedding photo and made a graceless, lumbering lunge for the closest bathroom to heave his guts.
As bad as the first night had been, the second had proven even worse because there was no whiskey to blunt the sharp edges of involuntary solitude and buffer the memories that had crowded his head until it throbbed. He could only sit in his easy chair and watch the ghosts on his television set and pretend that his bedroom wasn't empty. The flickering images on his television had been a poor and temporary distraction, and eventually, the need for sleep had overridden his fear of the nothingness in his bed.
Except there hadn't been nothing. She had been there, bits and pieces of her infused into the linens and the bedding. Her shampoo was in the pillows, and the lotion she used on her elbows and legs haunted the sheets. The soapy, talcum-powder scent of her skin had overlain everything in an olfactory rime, and he had groaned and fallen into them, fisted the sheets in his burning, trembling hands and buried his face in the lumpy contours of the pillow, the better to capture her in his nostrils.
It had been an agony to sleep beside the revenant of his wife, but it had been an ecstasy, too, because it meant that she was not entirely gone, and so, when the scent of her had begun to fade at the end of the second week, he had been wounded and furious. It had been unfair that he should be robbed of his only solace after losing all else. He'd fought to stem the tide and preserve what he could; he had even started sleeping on top of the comforter so as not to taint her with his own stale sweat, but it had been no use. The more tenaciously he clung to it, the faster it had slipped through his fingers, and at the end of three weeks, there had been no trace of her.
He had stood in his bedroom in his bare feet and rumpled boxers, with the sheets bundled to his chest and pressed against his chin, and he had sniffed them until his nose was dry and scoured. Loose threads had tickled his nose like playful fingers, and his eyes had watered from all the dust and allergens, but his wife's shampoo hadn't greeted him. Just dust and sweat and unwashed fabric, and all the nascent rage and grief he had so stubbornly denied throughout the trial and its aftermath had washed over him in a bilious wave. His knees had buckled, and he'd sunk to the floor with the bedding clutched to his chest and wadded on his lap, and he'd howled to the indifferent walls.
It was in that moment, kneeling on the floor in his boxers with the sheets on his lap and snot dangling from his nose, that he hated Greg Sanders. Before, his enmity had been directed at anyone associated with the witch-hunt that had snared his wife, a diffuse, snarling beast that longed to savage them all in equal measure, but in that instant, it had crystallized, focused to an exquisite point in his stupefied consciousness. It had been an emotion of such purity that he had stopped weeping in mid-sob to savor it, spun sugar in his mouth.
Greg Sanders and his bag of modern magic had been the linchpin on which the case against Bonnie had rested. With his degrees from a respected university and his collection of scientific huggermugger, he had lulled the jury into a state of credulous rapture, and then he had opened his all-American, liar's mouth and woven a spell of DNA and foreign fibers and fingerprint analysis. He hadn't understood a whit, and neither had the jury, if their politely flummoxed expressions had been any indication, but the rhythm of the words and the lulling murmur of knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary men had been enough, and the jurors had sent his wife away on the words of a young pied piper in a three-piece suit.
-Haunted: This supernatural show preceded Tru Calling and Ghost Whisperer by several years, but only aired for 6 episodes before disappearing. I assume that since the lead possessed icky manbits as opposed to soft, nurturing girlparts of simmering infection, it was condemned. The writing and music for the show were great, and the second episode, which features a ghost singing Linda Ronstadt's "Long, Long Time" still wakes me up in the middle of the night. Diana Flack from "Going Under" is, in many ways, a twisted homage to the episode. Interestingly, Eddie Cahill was scheduled to appear in episodes 7 and 8, but they never made it to air.
-Friday the 13th: The Series: Laugh all you want, but I loved this show. It had nothing to do with the horror movie franchise. It dealt with Mickey, who inherits an antique store from her late uncle. The curios are all cursed, alas, and Mickey and her buddy, Ryan, must retrieve and destroy them all. Hokey, yeah, but the UST between Mickey and Ryan was thick.
-Glory Days: I never saw this because TV was at a premium in the dorm common room, and it only lived 9 episodes before going toes-up despite rabid fans and some critical acclaim. It starred Eddie Cahill and Poppy Montgomery. Rumor has it that burnt copies can be had on certain Yahoo groups, but only if you know the password and agree to shave a yak's scrotum with your teeth.
And now, a snippet from September When It Comes VI:
While the jurors had filed out of the courtroom with their conversation fodder, he had returned to his empty house and wandered aimlessly from room to room, occasionally lifting a cherished object from its place, turning it over in anesthetized hands, and setting it gingerly down again without seeing it. He'd opened drawers and hall closets, unsure of what he was searching for, but desperate to find it all the same, and when he had thrown wide all the doors of his life and stirred the dust bunnies from their comfortable slumber atop the linen closet shelves and the slats of the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, he had sat in the middle of the living room floor with a bottle of Jim Beam and a picture of his wedding day and taken long, bitter swallows until the picture blurred into indecipherable blankness.
You know what you were looking for, murmured a grimly practical voice. You were looking for Bonnie, as though you thought she had escaped her captors and sought refuge with the laundry detergent and the spare comforters she kept for guests. Each time you opened a door, you expected to see her huddled in the corner with her knees tucked to her chest, dressed in her flannel pajamas and staring up at you in dumbfounded confusion and childish relief.
All he had found were lint balls and dark corners and the musty smell of spaces long closed. That first night alone in the house, he had passed out on the living room floor, and when he had awoken the next day, the sun had been high in the sky and the carpet had reeked of the whiskey from his overturned bottle. He'd stared at the pungent stain and then at the finger-smudged glass of the wedding photo and made a graceless, lumbering lunge for the closest bathroom to heave his guts.
As bad as the first night had been, the second had proven even worse because there was no whiskey to blunt the sharp edges of involuntary solitude and buffer the memories that had crowded his head until it throbbed. He could only sit in his easy chair and watch the ghosts on his television set and pretend that his bedroom wasn't empty. The flickering images on his television had been a poor and temporary distraction, and eventually, the need for sleep had overridden his fear of the nothingness in his bed.
Except there hadn't been nothing. She had been there, bits and pieces of her infused into the linens and the bedding. Her shampoo was in the pillows, and the lotion she used on her elbows and legs haunted the sheets. The soapy, talcum-powder scent of her skin had overlain everything in an olfactory rime, and he had groaned and fallen into them, fisted the sheets in his burning, trembling hands and buried his face in the lumpy contours of the pillow, the better to capture her in his nostrils.
It had been an agony to sleep beside the revenant of his wife, but it had been an ecstasy, too, because it meant that she was not entirely gone, and so, when the scent of her had begun to fade at the end of the second week, he had been wounded and furious. It had been unfair that he should be robbed of his only solace after losing all else. He'd fought to stem the tide and preserve what he could; he had even started sleeping on top of the comforter so as not to taint her with his own stale sweat, but it had been no use. The more tenaciously he clung to it, the faster it had slipped through his fingers, and at the end of three weeks, there had been no trace of her.
He had stood in his bedroom in his bare feet and rumpled boxers, with the sheets bundled to his chest and pressed against his chin, and he had sniffed them until his nose was dry and scoured. Loose threads had tickled his nose like playful fingers, and his eyes had watered from all the dust and allergens, but his wife's shampoo hadn't greeted him. Just dust and sweat and unwashed fabric, and all the nascent rage and grief he had so stubbornly denied throughout the trial and its aftermath had washed over him in a bilious wave. His knees had buckled, and he'd sunk to the floor with the bedding clutched to his chest and wadded on his lap, and he'd howled to the indifferent walls.
It was in that moment, kneeling on the floor in his boxers with the sheets on his lap and snot dangling from his nose, that he hated Greg Sanders. Before, his enmity had been directed at anyone associated with the witch-hunt that had snared his wife, a diffuse, snarling beast that longed to savage them all in equal measure, but in that instant, it had crystallized, focused to an exquisite point in his stupefied consciousness. It had been an emotion of such purity that he had stopped weeping in mid-sob to savor it, spun sugar in his mouth.
Greg Sanders and his bag of modern magic had been the linchpin on which the case against Bonnie had rested. With his degrees from a respected university and his collection of scientific huggermugger, he had lulled the jury into a state of credulous rapture, and then he had opened his all-American, liar's mouth and woven a spell of DNA and foreign fibers and fingerprint analysis. He hadn't understood a whit, and neither had the jury, if their politely flummoxed expressions had been any indication, but the rhythm of the words and the lulling murmur of knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary men had been enough, and the jurors had sent his wife away on the words of a young pied piper in a three-piece suit.
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