Category: Television

What If… “The Class” Had Never Been Canceled?

In what will probably become a new series of posts about television, I explore a short-lived show I enjoyed that, had it continued to run for years to come, might have changed television dramatically. Or at least, you know, a little bit.

The Class (CBS, 2006-2007)

All the way back in the Fall of 2006, CBS debuted a new sitcom, about young people, called The Class, to pair with an acclaimed but still on the bubble sitcom about young people, How I Met Your Mother. It focused on a group of seven people in their late twenties who are all connected by the fact that they were all in the same third grade class. After a party thrown by Ethan Haas (Jason Ritter) brings them together, their lives start to intersect once again.

After this cute jumping off point for a hangout comedy, The Class (which was created by David Crane, of Friends, and Jeffrey Klarik) combined entertaining writing with a great cast, giving CBS a solid, but not spectacular (ratings-wise, anyway) one-two punch in the rough Monday Night 8-9 PM slot (other shows that were in this timeslot include NBC’s juggernaut Deal Or No Deal and FOX’s Prison Break.

Despite the difficult competition, the fact that the show was younger than what CBS at the time was pulling (a problem that HIMYM also struggled with at the time), and the fact that they had to spend part of the season launching the night (rather than being protected by an established show), The Class did reasonably well, pulling in numbers similar to the show that has just completed its eighth season and is headed for a victory lap next year.*

Then, despite reasonably good press, solid creative direction, and season-long story arcs that developed over the course of the season, pointing toward an interesting second season, the show was canceled.

But what if the show had endured, and grown into another CBS hit? Paired alongside HIMYM, it’s not hard to envision the show finding a decent amount of success, which means that potentially…

…Andrea Anders would never have gone on to the amazing (but also short-lived) show Better Off Ted.

…Jon Bernthal would never have gone on to embody Shane on The Walking Dead (a job that also likely led to his next, as he’s working again with Frank Darabont on the upcoming Lost Angels).

…Lizzy Caplan probably wouldn’t have had time to show up on True Blood. She definitely wouldn’t have been in Party Down.

…Jesse Tyler Ferguson wouldn’t have become Mitchell on Modern Family.

…Jason Ritter wouldn’t have tried to save the day in The Event, or earned an emmy nomination for Parenthood.

In television, shows are canceled all the time. Roles are recast, characters are brought in or removed. The failure rate is so high, doing any kind of real “what if…” over one’s career would probably drive someone nuts. We always wonder what might have happened, if we had just been allowed to keep doing what we were doing a little bit longer.

But we forget, too often, what wouldn’t have been.

 

 

*I have to admit, I didn’t watch The Class when it aired – a friend of mine suggested I catch up on it later and provided me with VHS tapes (yes, tapes! Remember those?). Part of me was very worried that, with the numbers so close, they might keep this show over HIMYM, which was probably my favorite sitcom at the time. Considering that CBS had not yet expanded comedy to two nights, and that the next season’s development brought The Big Bang Theory, it seems like it was always going to be one or the other, but not both. Ultimately it’s hard to argue that CBS didn’t make the right choice.**

**A footnote in a footnote? Yeah, sorry. But it’s interesting to point out that both The Class and How I Met Your Mother did worse that season, ratings-wise, than Rules of Engagement, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and The King of Queens.

Although to be fair, all of those shows spent at least part of the season behind 2.5 Men, which no doubt goosed their ratings up some.

May 17, 2013 Dan 0

A Pretty Good Example Of Letting Your Scene Partner Get His Initiation Out, via Community

Note: This is a post about improv. It also might spoil some plot points of last week’s episode of Community, if you haven’t seen it yet.

On last week’s Community, Troy and Abed lived out a body-switching movie (like Freaky Friday), except, of course, in this universe, things generally have an explanation that sort of makes sense – meaning it didn’t suddenly become a universe where body switching could actually happen, but rather was, essentially, a game being played by the two friends.

Thanks to the setup of the episode, what we end up with is a pretty good example of one person letting the other get his initiation out before adding on/jumping into the premise.

 

(The action starts at 0:36)

0:36-0:44: Troy initiates his premise to Abed – that their brains have switched bodies, meaning that Abed is Troy, and Troy is Abed.

0:44-0:47: Abed is clearly confused, but instead of railroading his own idea into the “scene”, his response, “…so right now…” suggests to Troy that he needs further clarification as to what the premise is.

0:47-0:50: Troy clarifies his initiation, stating once again that they’ve switched bodies.

0:50-0:53: Instead of rushing to respond, Abed takes a moment to fully process the initiation.

0:53-1:00: Abed buys into the premise and plays his part, his intonation, body language, and point of view representing what he thinks Troy sounds/thinks like.

1:00-1:10: Now that both scene partners have bought in, they can play their game for the rest of the episode.

 

Obviously, this is a scripted scene, so it’s not as though the two were improvising this (probably), but it still provides a couple of great reminders about dealing with these kinds of initiations in improv – initiations where the person initiating the scene clearly has a specific premise in mind.

In particular, if this were an improv scene, the real reason it works is because of Abed’s patience – he didn’t understand the premise at first, and instead of blowing past the initiation, he asked for a clarification. Then, when he got it, he took a moment to process/figure out what exactly that meant (and what Troy was asking from him), and then he launched into it full-bore.

As a random note, the episode was written by Jim Rash, who plays Dean Pelton on the show, won an oscar for co-writing The Descendants, and is an experienced improviser himself.

 

 

Incidentally, if you also to see pretty much a perfect example of a group game (as first pointed out to me by James Mastraieni), look no further than this (NSFW) clip from Django Unchained:

May 2, 2013 Dan 0

Even Though I’m Still Terrified Of The Veronica Mars Kickstarter… Here’s The Shows I Want To See Follow The Same Model Anyway

Although I posted yesterday about why I’m worried by what the Veronica Mars Kickstarter means for the future of film and television (in particular, the continued destruction of independent media as the conglomerates continue to move into the independent space), that doesn’t mean I don’t have my secret list of shows that I would like to see come back via crowdfunded campaign.

Does this make me a hypocrite? Maybe. I still think that some of my issues could be resolved with, at a minimum, greater transparency about the process, although like every other Kickstarter project ever, successful funding does not guarantee the funders anything, regardless of what was actually promised. I also think that some of these projects could be better served (read: treated as truly independent) if the studios were willing to license the content (i.e. licensing the characters/story/names/etc. back to the creators to allow them to make whatever they want) rather than, essentially, taking our money in directly.

But this post isn’t supposed to be about those fears – this one is supposed to be about shows that should come back and have some sort of resolution.

A note about the list – I am purposely leaving off shows that already have a second life (Arrested Development, Firefly/Serenity), are still on the air (Community), or have already been mentioned elsewhere by their creators, even offhand (Terriers, Pushing Daisies). I am also not considering shows that were brilliant in their time but could never be replicated now because of the time difference/age of the cast who were so central to the success of the show (My So-Called Life, Freaks & Geeks, Jack & Bobby). Also, these shows are not necessarily shows that would succeed at such a campaign (their creators likely don’t have the cache to pull in the kind of money necessary), but still.

So now, a few choice selections:

1. Defying Gravity (ABC, 2009)

Did you watch Defying Gravity? Of course you didn’t. Almost nobody did. Picked up by ABC as a summer series, it was never given a chance to succeed, which is too bad, because it was brilliant. Take the soap of early (i.e. good) Grey’s Anatomy, the thematic flashback narrative structure of Lost, and set it in a future where we’re traveling across the solar system, and you’ve got a very rough idea of what this show did. Add in a terrific cast (led by Ron Livingston and Laura Harris) and an excellent writing staff, and you’ve got a show that would have done 5 terrific seasons on Syfy. Instead, they aired about 7 of 13 on ABC in August and then pulled it.

 

2. Better Off Ted (ABC, 2009-2010)

You probably haven’t seen it, but Better Off Ted was the best-written comedy for the two years it was on the air. It also provided the most biting social commentary this side of South Park in the past decade (read this excellent post that I didn’t write on the racial sensitivity episode for a good example of what they managed to pull of). It was well-cast, incredibly well-written, and somehow managed to be supremely goofy and make you think at the same time.

Go watch the two seasons (they’re streaming on Netflix) right now. I’ll wait.

…

…

…

Okay, now tell me that this show doesn’t deserve another shot. You can’t, can you? That’s what I thought.

 

3. Kitchen Confidential (FOX, 2005)

Here’s what made this show awesome:

Based on the book by Anthony Bourdain.
It starred Bradley Cooper.
It co-starred (among others) John Cho, John Francis Daley, Jamie King, and Frank Langella.
It was about chefs.
It was very funny.

Not that Bradley Cooper would be available to do it (or John Cho, or Frank Langella, probably), but you could probably make this movie today with this cast and you’d be able to get a LOT of people to see it.

 

4. The Middleman (ABC Family, 2010)

An ABC Family show? Really? Yes really. Written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach (who was on Lost, among other shows), The Middleman was a sort of pop-culture-y Men In Black with a cute girl at the center. It was incredibly smart, well-written, and very funny. There were two problems:

1. ABC Family didn’t have the budget to make this show work completely (the effects, which are supposed to be cheesy anyway, looked a little too cheesy at times because of the budget).

2. It really didn’t fit in with what ABC Family was trying to do, which was become the next WB.

Although I stated up top that I don’t know that any of these shows have enough cultural capital to turn in a successful campaign, Grillo-Marxuach certainly has his fans, and The Middleman also is based on an indie comic (which Grill-Marxuach created when nobody would make the show, years earlier, before turning it back into a TV show), so… maybe.

 

9999. Work It (ABC, 2012)

Ahem.

March 15, 2013 Dan 0