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Lone Gunmen Get the Axe From Fox
squee23 noted that Fox is axing the lone gunman. Almost everyone I know watched the seriers premiere and bolted, which was unfortunate: the premiere sucked but almost every episode there after was pretty damn good: the first episode simply wasn't funny, and airing it was suicide. The X-Files is returning, sans Mulder. Fortunately, The Family Guy will come back, as well as the premiere of the live action version of The Tick.
"Fifty-seven channels and nothing on."
Not that you need any help with that anyways.
If I see scully cry in one more episode, I am going to heave!
If its plural, you're not exactly "lone"
(if you don't get the reference, please don't reply or moderate. thx.)
This next season of X-Files should DEFINITELY be the last one... Gillian Anderson's contract is up and she's already bitching about how she signed on for too long and for too little money. Unless they find another redhead to replace her.
Fox is desperately trying to find another 60 minute tentpole to hold up their sunday nights... something that will be around after X-Files is gone. They tried Harsh Realm... Lone Gunmen... they keep thinking they can recapture the magic of the X-files. Ain't that easy, folks. There is no formula.
BTW, anybody wanna predict how long it is before David Duchovny is doing softcore cable porn again? The X-files may be nothing without Mulder... but guess what: David Duchovny is also nothing without Mulder. Just another dull, good-looking, wooden guy. They're a dime a dozen.
I gotta agree with you. It wasn't "real", but what on TV is? I hope that those complaining that TLG wasn't researched enough aren't the same type who compare "Boot Camp" with anything resembling reality.
It was a decent enough show to come home to on a friday night anyway. Now what is there? Will I have to go out and discover a "real life" or something?
At one point in the series the Tick decided he needed a "battle cry." Well he was a super hero and all, and of course all super heros have battle cries. Unfortunatly he eating soup when this idea accidentally collided with his tick-sized brain. Arthur (his sidekick with the moth outfit) stayed perfectly in character and choose "Not in the face!" as his battle cry. It was a classic moment in the series.
Nobody is prepared for the return of the Ottoman Empire!
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
You know... when I left the U.S. (6 years ago) I was starting to become annoyed with American television. Since then, I've been back to various parts of the continental U.S. and Hawaii several times for 2 - 3 week stretches. Each time I've noticed American television gets dumber and dumber and dumber. It's been dumbed down to the pointed I'm actually insulted when I watch it (and I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed).
I used to think television in Japan was bad, but over the years I've realized it's stupid, but it's *OPENLY STUPID*. The creators know it's stupid, the viewers know it's stupid... it's stupid-fun stupid. The creators of American television programming really do think we're all morons. FUCK THEM and FUCK T.V. I'll stick with my BOOKS (WTF are those?) and the few DVDs I own (so few because the movie industry sucks even more!).
Word!
--
Kir
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
Agreed. Even though I can't stand Family Guy, it's still better than the 76th rerun of Police Videos Episode 41. But neither of them holds a candle to Lone Gunmen. There are only three things I even watch on Fox any more: Futurama, Lone Gunmen, and Malcolm. Nothing else looks even vaguely worthwhile. I'll miss Lone Gunmen; Friday night between Police Videos and the news is about the worst slot I can imagine, so it sounds like they never really gave it a chance. Now the question is what to do during the hour after Futurama and before Malcolm. The Simpsons has decayed badly, and there's no way Family Guy will keep me watching...
What? What can be better than police videos? I can never get enough of real-life car chases, bank heists gone wrong, and raunchy hilarious antics on the part of restaurant workers sneezing into someone's pizza. That kind of classic real-life drama couldn't be scripted! We need more reality TV Fox!! PLEASE! :-)
If you don't have cable or digital-sat service, check out late-night on your local channels - one of our local channels apparently has (current! believe it or not) episodes of The Invisible Man, Stargate SG1 and other shows that originate on cable, through a syndication arrangement. (Had digital-sat service, but we terminated it - god _damn_ it's a rip, but my parents thought it was a good deal for movies - too bad they didn't listen to me.)
If you're a poor bastard, or just don't want to pay the outrageous monthly fees, it may be a good alternative. (Yeah yeah, so you don't stay up till all hours - check schedules, and learn to set the clock on your VCR. Or just get a Tivo already.)
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Yes, but then Fox didn't have the same wide viewer base it does now either. Back when the X-Files was still young, a lot of cities didn't have local Fox stations - about the only place to see it was on cable at the time. They have a lot more audience that must be satisfied now, and I'm sure if the numbers aren't turning up, and quick, they decide "We need something new here, stat!"
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
don't forget the toilet humor.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
would you like your Steroid Crunchies, or Steroid Crunchies with Marshmallows?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
yeah, Ninja world, and the mascot, "Lil' Nip!"
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Evil Dead 2 was FAR superior.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"This also explains why stereotypes ABOUND on network TV."
To say NOTHING of how they abound on Slashdot:
Stereotypes of what Geeks are like (not good writers), and what they like (boring details about the evolution of life on planets 1.4 times the gravity of Earth with a Methane atmosphere).
Sterotypes of what Hollywood Screenwriters are like (cocaine-snorting yes-men cranking out mindless drivel).
I know we have to explain these phenomena as best we can, but let's avoid calling Mr. Kettle black now, shall we?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I agree about doing XFiles without Duchovny.
It also won't be the same with Scully tied down with a screaming brat - unless "they" kidnap the brat too (we'll see Sunday night).
The Satan Worshipper specialist partner could work out, especially since there was past involvement. That implies more soap opera side plots (which wasn't at all a bad thing about the original xfiles, you knew Mulder was a perv, and you knew Scully wanted him, and you knew they would eventually do it. - that was fun to watch - until it became tiresome after 5 years).
They really *could* pull off a decent transition of the XFiles, but I doubt they are capable. Someone else made the conclusion that the XFiles has been about formula, and rehashed to death plotlines, and a big soap opera for the past two years.
I think that the story line IS salvagable with the T1000 guy (I just can't call him anything else!) - but the writers are going to have to work damn hard, and churn out some damn good stuff, and CONNECT with the old material, without recycling it.
A lot of the fun of the old XFiles was the portrayal of little-known urban myths, (chubacabra, etc), monster-of-the-week, and frankly, they've run through them all. That angle is getting pretty weak - the only thing they have left is covering the fallout from past things (like the shape-changer guy whose in prison,etc). Then the Government conspiracy arc thing was great, but you can only drag that out so far, the bad guys need to get their comeuppance in the end, with drama, so once you destroy a 50 year old conspiracy, where do you go from there? You can't create a new one out of thin air. There's only one Government. Once cancer man was gone, that was it.
They've got some heavy challenges ahead. I think that the challenges are not insurmountable, but I also do not believe (based on past performance) that they will rise to the occasion. Sadly.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Actually, AFAIC, Futurama is already better than The Simpsons (note, not The Simpsons in their prime, just the show as it stands now). It makes sense, though. Groening, et al, took the good writers off of The Simpsons and put them on Futurama so that it would have the benefit of well-written episodes from the beginning to bring in a large supportive audience. Futurama is just plain funnier. The gags are faster, the humor is darker, the comraderie is more bitter, and the episodes all around are more cohesive. The use of special guests is consistently flaunted exceptionally well through the "heads in a jar" theme, which means you don't have to fight to believe Drew Barrymore as Krusty's suddenly received daughter or some such nonsense. Believing that Lucy Liu's head survived because of futuristic technology is much easier to digest. The recent episode with the Harlem Globetrotters and the time shifts was downright the fastest, most hilarious, continuously played-out gag I've ever seen.
...
What do The Simpsons have this season? I lot of completely inane, very loosely organized episodes without any constant thread that made the earlier episodes such a joy to watch. Now, it's like watch 4 five-minute skits. I'm glad the writers are living on in Futurama with fresh faces and fresh adventures (that's much easier to do in a completely fresh setting, of course), but it kind of hurts to see The Simpsons sort of degrade like an old NFL pro who won't retire.
Bite My Shiny Metal
Jimmy wasn't in the pilot at all. Based on that, I think maybe the network made Carter add him ("Put someone who isn't a geek on the show or you don't get to make it"). But I agree with the sentiment either way, the show didn't need Yves or Jimmy at all, and Yves actually hurt it by never letting the Gunmen get themselves out of their own predicaments. Why even bother calling the shoe "The Lone Gunmen" when Yves is the only one who ever knows what's going on? She would've been alright in an occasional part, but every week is way too much.
Actually, if you'd read the article, you would have seen that The Tick will be on on Thursday following The Family Guy. It isn't a fan-boy article, it's from a Fox press release. The reason it was bumped to next Fall instead of already being on is due to the writers and actors strike. They didn't want to show what they had and then be unable to produce for for an indefinite amount of time.
I actually saw the entire pilot in an early form late last year. It was missing most sound effects, no music, a few other rough edges, but it was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I am really looking forward to that show. The version I saw had no laugh track - I am really hoping it's going to stay that way, adding stupid canned laughter would just kill it. Luckily I think Fox actually understands that some of the time (Simpsons, Malcom in the Middle, all their other animated shows - none of them have laugh tracks).
I am glad they cancelled the show. It was stupid. Badly written and badly acted. Just like most of this seasons X-Files. I wish they would cancel that. I know most of this is redundant but I feel I have say something. The X-Files needs to be stopped. Check out http://www.paddlecreek.net/ for more.
Can you see Iron City here?
You are right!! The first four years were GREAT!! But you are right. After season 5 and some of season 5 it has sucked.
Can you see Iron City here?
So basically you're saying that the inclusion of any female in any action show is sensationalist and that all female action stars are there merely as sex objects?
What a load of chauvanist bollocks!
Breasts do jiggle, even small ones. Get over it. Having breasts doesn't make a woman a bimbo, it makes her a woman.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I'm proud to say that I caught it. But it was almost too quick. When they said it, it could have been, "Boole" (which would have been cool too). It's when they quickly panned across the sign is when you see that it's, "Boulle". They should have named the simp "Caeser" instead of, "Peanuts", or had him name himself that.
Are you sure you didn't mean suffix instead of prefix there?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Another instance of leave it on the air just long enough to get you interested in it and then, abracadabra, it disappears without a trace.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I was working in radio broadcasting when WKRP came out and it was the hilarious exception to that rule. Both I and a lot of other announcers I've talked to over the years were sure that the writers and producers must have worked at some of the same stations that we had. The only thing they missed was a dramatization of a "dead air" dream.
Okay, nothing like the Thanksgiving promotion episode ever really happened, but it could have.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
After the way CBS jerked us around with Big Apple, feel free to kill CSI (which the eyeball network seems to want to keep).
You and the missus aren't by any means the only ones to suffer from "*don't* ignore it and it'll go away" syndrome. I'm surprised that one of the networks hasn't hired me to sabatoge their competition by watching it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Just be glad there wasn't a TLG episode where *they* were in heat.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Unless they have him take several naps/meditation sessions where he battles the bad guys in some psychic realm or something. That could be be really wretched TV.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Who said anything about teeth?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Nope. Cartoon only.
Without you I'm one step closer to happiness without violence.
The TICK is awesome, I just hope the live action doesn't totally blow it.
I aspire to become like my hero, Little WOODEN BOY
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I can't beleive all the people who are dissing the Lone Gunmen! This show is NOT a geek show, it's a Scooby doo gone high tech. It's about 3(4) bumbling guys that try to solve mysteries and do it comedically.
The Lone Gunmen were all that gave X-Files levity in an otherwise lockjawed-acting-style show.
Some other network HAS to pick up this show, it's so funny to watch them bungle something so badly, then see them turn it around for the good in the end. It's only getting better!
I have nearly every ep on my replay, it's the only show I watch on Fridays, it's gotta go somewhere!
It's his battle cry. It's completely silly and arbitrary, and I'm not exactly sure why it's funny, but if you've ever seen the great gusto with which he bellows it, you can't help but chuckle.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Jimmy & Yves both had potential as characters: Yves as the mysterious agent-for-hire who actually knew the stuff that the Gunmen only wildly speculated about, & Jimmy as the average guy who was not as smart as the 3 title characters, but had more common sense.
However, none of them had characters that were well-thought out or more than one-dimensional. (What was the real difference between Frohickey & Langley -- besides the fact one was older than the other? And we saw little of Byer's geek quotent in the series -- he was just the guy who wore a suit & stood around.)
Oh well, another source for geek trivia, & we know some script kiddies will be mining the show for K-rad k3wl handles.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I turned off the season pass for Gunmen on my TiVo a couple of weeks ago. I gave the show a chance, I'm a devoted X-Files fan, but it was too brainless for me.
My biggest gripe is that there was nothing supernatural, spooky, or government-conspiratorial about the new series. For inhabiting the same world as Mulder & Scully, the Gunmen spend an awful lot of time chasing the world's lamest criminals. Jimmy Bond is just annoying and stupid, but at least Yves is hot.
The CONSTANT technical inaccuracies drove me nuts. I understand that you have to sacrifice some reality to make the plots work, but some of the errors in the show could be corrected with very little work at all.
In the pilot, they talk about the new fancy CPU having a built in modem to it that causes some security concerns. Never mind that you'd have to open up your PC and plug a cable into the CPU for this "modem" to work. All of their technology references fell short. I can forgive one or two, but after you're bombarded with 15 in a row, it just becomes apparent that the show is insulting your intelligence and attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I know that a show needs a large audience to be successful, but TLG was too geeky for the non-geeks and too inaccurate for the true geeks.
Check out Freaks & Geeks on Fox Family if you want a really enjoyable show. There were only something like 18 episodes made before NBC axed it, but they're absolutely hilarious. I never saw the show when it was on NBC, but after discovering it on Fox Family, every single person I've introduced it to has loved it and watched every episode. It all plays out very true-to-life, and you can actually believe that most of these situations could or would happen to these kids...
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Ever seen the UK show 'Spaced'?
That's geek TV. and darn good too.
-- koschei
Is this the same superhero-wannabe dude who is always ragging Superman... and once arrested a Buick? At least in the few issues I read years and years ago.
--Jim
That said, almost all my favorite shows have been cancelled in the last couple of years:
Total Recall 2070
La Femme Nikita
The Lone Gunman
Star Trek: Voyager
Cleopatra 2525
Stargate SG-1
Xena
As my husband says: <cue feminist rant> - most were series with strong female characters. Afaik, Cleo was the first hourly drama with a black female lead -- for example.
At least there's still Buffy, Angel and Andromeda. And Farscape.
_Deirdre
Pop quiz: who's the better actor: whatsherface, or William Shatner?
Tough one. I'm going to complicate matters by voting for the guy who played Frankie 'Dishpan' Santana in the last season of the A-Team.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Maybe they all use a lot of meth. That would make for a hell of a series. A bunch of Gen-Xer's locked in a room with a buncha' 8-balls of Teamster-grade crank. I'd watch that.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The big problem I had with the show was twofold: Jimmy Bond and Eve. They were so poorly written and so miserably acted that it was painful. In later episodes Jimmy became almost a good thing, because the character became less plain stupid and more idiot savant.
Eve is an all around loss. They really didn't need a guardian angel to come in and save the day every single episode. She's just too competent to believe. Plus, the woman who plays that character is a terrible actress.
All in all I think the "bit" characters dragged the show down. I think it's too bad that Chris Carter didn't feel that the Lone Gunmen could carry the show by themselves and had to come up with these two sorry anchors.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I'd prefer reruns of `The Muppet Show'.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Only if they're not married or don't have kids. Our kids are normally in bed by 8:00 so TLG was nice to unwind to. BTW, glad the high end of your definition of `young' includes guys my age -- though not by much. :-)
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The only thing worth watching on Friday night and now it's cancelled? Looks like I'll get more reading done now so I guess there's an upside after all.
(Sorry but `The Family Guy' was/is not funny.)
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Hack the flight control system of a commercial airliner and land it. =) Not over the phone ...
Agreed. Yet everyone seems to like the X-Files and they make the same type of drive you nuts errors.
How many times does Mulder or Scully go into a dark room/cave/alley/... alone without calling for back up? Pull out the damm cellphone and let somebody know where you're going for christsakes!
Aliens, immortals, poltergists, are all fine but it was the details that made the show unwatchable for me. Just like TLG.
Steve M
The inside jokes (ok Yves too) were the only reasons to watch. It was a trade off between the inaccuracies and the jokes.
Did you catch that Langley was wearing a Dead Kennedys T-shirt in the finale? (I caught the Boulle reference but not the Clinton one.)
But the inaccuracies just drove me nuts.
Steve M
Frohike/El Lobo was a tango dancer, not flamenco. Related, but very different. (And I'd have to say that that episode was the best treatment of (Argentine-style, not ballroom) tango I've seen in mainstream U.S. media, bar none.)
X files has sucked from season 5 and after. I'm sorry but you can only re-hash the same over and over and over and over. The first 3 years were the best, it's time to bury it.
I used to love X files, now it's just some stupid soap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Exactly. The show blew, plain and simple - I know some people think that kind of stuff is funny anyhow, but when the media tries to do the whole geek-chic stuff, it just never works. It wasn't nearly as bad, but I still can't understand how people can enjoy Hackers(other than the 2 very prominent, obvious reasons) - even if it was supposed to be inaccurate in a funny way, I still cringe.
The Lone Gunmen, on the other hand, was a bunch of obnoxious pseudo-techspeak mixed with run of the mill unfunny Fox comedy. I'm glad it's dead.
-=lx=-
It's the TICK, people.
--
--
And it'll all lead to a race of oil-slick aliens that can only be killed with a needle in the back of the neck before they seal their eyes and mouths with skin and...
--
The big (supposed) surprise for this Sunday's episode of the X-files is that someone will die. My money is on Krychek (ok, I know I didn't spell his name right but whatever). It won't be Mulder, because Duchovney has said in interviews that his character will be back next season in an episode by episode basis (no over-riding commitment like this year's 11 out of 22), Gillian Anderson has next year to finish out her contract, and Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish have both said they'll be back next year if asked. <p>What is really fun is that the guy who played the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) has said that his character isn't dead. Chris Carter (again,based on what he said in a recent interview) has something going on with the story line that will set things up for another movie.
The truth is out there...
i just wonder if this show can possibly pull any ratings after being debuted, canceled, resurrected, disappearing, re-appearing, and then repeating the same cycle over again.
:)
Yeah, it definately bites how it got moved around.. but that's one arena where Tivo shines! I didn't miss a single episode, and still have a couple saved on mine that I reply now and then.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
[slight Jamaican accent]
thank you it was cold down there on the floor
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I can honestly say I can live without another Lone Gunmen series. It really wasn't THAT good, although funny at times. I had absolutely no respect for the guys after Lara Croft^W^W^WYves Adele Whatever kept screwing them over and bailing them out all the time - I mean, come on, the show's about THEM. If you're going to portray them as incompetent fools a-la Inspector Gadget (the original), do it. Don't give me half way we-can-hack-into-the-pengaton-but-a-chick-in-a-tig ht-outfit-can-totally-pull-a-sheep-over-our-eyes crap.
It looked like that was going to change toward the end. Maybe it'd have got better.
The thing that really bothers me is it ended with a cliffhanger. I hate not knowing what happened next!
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Turn your television off.
[AOL]Me too.[/AOL]
I think this just may have been the funniest TV show of all time. This one hurt me sometimes.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The problem is the the Lone Gunmen show isn't at all like the scenes from the X Files with the Lone Gunmen.
In the X Files, the Lone Gunmen were cool geeks. Sure, they were exaggerated, but if you can believe the government/alien conspiracies, you can easily accept that.
I the Lone Gunmen show, the Lone Gunment were a geeky three stooges. Instead of being serious characters, they became funny. Humor is fine, but they went for forced sitcom humor. I don't want to watch a geek sitcom.
May I just say: "so what?"
Not news for nerds.
The plots are nonsensical, the characters one dimensional and the premise is completely absurd. Most science fiction is so far out there that it's not hard for one to suspend disbelief, and this is usually required (unless you're insane or some such). But the X-Files tried to be just on the edge of reality, yet had so many incongruities that disbelief was required. It's vey contradictory.
I just never understood why anyone with more than two neurons to rub together would willingly watch the X-Files. I guess it's a matter of taste. Otherwise I'm stumped.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Wow, good to see we have moderators so fucking retarded that they moderate a post up to +5 informative that is ONLY correcting a grammatical error.
WAY TO GO MODERATORS. YOU SURE SAVED THE FUCKING DAY.
Joseph?
> Here is a list of all the TV shows that will be cancelled or ending
I kinda miss Jack of all Trades. It was really silly, but for some reason I always looked forward to seeing new episodes.
I actually expected it to be pretty good once the writers found their stride. Alas; that won't happen now.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Lost in space?
he wasn't really evil....but....
I hope that we at least get to see the season finale! as for those of you who stopped watching--shame on you, now what am I supposed to do on fridays, while I am stuck at work? oh wait, Dark Angel will be on then!..well what about on tuesday?...oh isn't that when the tick is on?... well, then..what about...wednsday? no..thursday?--no...monday?...what am I supposed to do on monday? watch allymacbeal/boston public? thank you, but just plain NO!
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Well once again we have a repeat of the usual axe intelligent shows, now sure geeks might cry and complain that it was technobabble and that it wasnt plausible yadda yadda, oh but live action tick is? oh well who cares ... I just rememebr the year they cancelled sea quest, my so called life and kept super man ... you tell me who makes these decisions? Stop polling trailerparks!
I thought it was a great idea to spin off the gunmen when I first heard about it. I was encouraged by the original commercials they ran. I was utterly disappointed when I witnessed the first episode. I gave it one more chance for the following episode and it got a little better. And the next episode a little better, and so on. I think the show was original and had some real potential. You can run a show for part of a season and then just cancel it! Characters, writers, and actors all need adequate time to find their nitch. Granted I think they needed to do more research into their technobable... but that could have come if it had been given time to mature.
The Family Guy is not funny, sorry.
The X-Files was fine up until season 5 or so. I was a big fan but just got tired of plots never being tied up and conspiracies never being revealed. This is a good example of a show that either needed to grow and change or be canceled.
In my view, Babylon 5 is probably the greatest show that has ever graced the air waves. It was original, it had a vision, it had a dedicated run time. It presented basically what its creator wanted and then it ended. We may never see the ending to the season finally of The Lone Gunmen. Much like Gilligan stuck on the isle for so many years.
True. But
1) All == All
2) the poster said all geeks who can write are boring. (He/she said most geeks can't write)
3) Are you sure Stephenson doesn't translate? I reread Snow Crash recently, and it seemed very visual to me. (Not surprising, since it started as a graphic novel.)
Not all geek writers are boring.
every 2nd episode is... The Ultimate Anthropomorphic Evil form the Sewer! It drinks blood and can read your mind, but it looks just like you and me until night falls!
could they be more predictable?
even with mulder back, they can't do anything but Evil Lizard Man or Spooky Indian Death Eater Man.
fuckin retards. (them for writing, me for watching)
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
I'm sad to see it go. I had pretty much quit watching the X-Files when mulder went off and have only recently been watching with his return. The Lone Gunmen was my replacement. oh well. The mulder cameo in the last episode was nice.
BTW, what the hell are they going to do to explain the season finally? probably nothing I guess.
jason
I liked TLG, too. (My wife as well.)
Sure, there was technical nonsense, but I have this sneaking suspicion that this was on purpose. With all the humour on the show -- others have posted about William Jefferson and TPOT Apes -- it's certainly plausible that a fun-poking target includes geekdom and its sometimes all-too-self-important inhabitants. I mean, seriously, is it even possible to have heard about Linux and *not* know that it's an operating system?
Moreover, it seemed to me that the characters have been filling out in very interesting and amusing ways. (Who'd have guessed that the old guy was a champion Flamenco dancer, or that the blond guy has more than two brain cells?)
It seems to be a phenomenon with my wife and me: the more we both enjoy a show, the more likely it is to get cancelled. (Fair Warning: CSI is looking interesting.)
For those who have the Sci-Fi channel The Invisible Man is a fantastic show. It is proof positive that a balance can be found between talking down to the audience and explaining things in a realistic manner. If you aren't a science nazi IM explains the things that happen in a somewhat believable and intelligent manner. I cannot recommend this show enough.
i always wondered where the other 5 fans of the family guy had gotten to.
here's one of them. And I know at least a few others use Bearshare, if you know what I mean. Don't let stupid network execs keep you from watching raunchy comedy. I hope they decide to order some more episodes, it was good stuff.
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+&x
nah, I just have better things to do than watch commercials and wait until tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. EST to watch the programs I enjoy. Fool. Oh, and unless you read my comment as dripping with cynicism and sarcasm, you read it wrong.
--
+&x
EOM
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
That guy from Ninja Scroll with the electric string. He was a flamer and was 2nd in command.
'Course, that's anime. BUT to be honest white America has given up it's right to have gay villains. Too many people "hate fags" like people of similar dispositions used to (or still) "hate niggers." Don't want to encourage that behavior anymore. You don't see too many bad black guys, either. Or Cherokee. Or Navajo. Or Witchita. Etc.
"BUT THAT'S SO UNFAIR!" Yeah well chock it up to the sins of the fathers being visited on their sons. Deal.
If your still not satisfied I'll have you note that Pres. Bush speaks with a lisp. And he's an evil crime boss.
[There! Now you can discount everything I've said because I'm a liberal!]
- Rev.
"Not a liberal."
Amen to that - a great, funny cartoon. The lineup of Futureama, Family Guy and the Simpsons is nothing but gold... though it does make my sides hurt.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I LOVE this show! It's all about the obscure and strange humor for me! Now I just have to remember to tape all the episodes...
Almost forgot. Ninjas! Lots and Lots of Ninjas!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Counter-Strike, compile kernel, router down, All Your Base
Action, suspense, drama, comedy
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Because of some licensing issues, characters created for the cartoon series (American Maid, Die Fleidermaus, Sewer Urchin) will NOT be in the live action Tick. However, characters from the comic books can appear (even if they appeared in the cartoons also). And the pilot episode has the replacement characters, Lady Liberty and BatManuel
I haven't seen the pilot, only the brief previews and pictures. I think this show will be awesome. It looks like we'll finally see a great comic to live action show. At least, until Spiderman comes out.
All I want is a live action Chairface Chippendale! And Paul the Samurai! And Man Eating Cow! And The Chainsaw Vigilante! And Clark Oppenheimer!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
After you realize that the deus ex machina of "Ms Lee Harvey Oswald" is inevitable in every show, it really starts to grind. Did the show need such a painful, annoying and repetitive plot device?
And why play down the main (title!) characters as jackasses? As seen on the X-Files, they may have been fringe but were not completely useless. Why place them in a show which should have been titled Doofus and the Annoying Superbitch? (a very competent and self-assured, to say nothing of contemptuous person who somehow has nothing better to do than the exact same whatever the lone gunmen happen to be doing.)
On a related note, why hasn't Eve already made herself ruler of the world?
A lot of potential wasted with this programme. Oh, and too much "flying finger single keystroke breaks into DOD" stuff.
--
keete
When I first heard that there was going to be a "Lone Gunmen" spinoff - I thought "Great! It might be a fun show..." - then I saw the preview trailers, and thought "Gah! They made it a comedy!" - and I didn't bother to watch it.
Five weeks (and episodes) later, my SO brought home a tape she borrowed from a coworker - it had those five episodes on it - and I decided, "well, I will take a look"...
The following week I began archiving the episodes, figuring I would dump them to MPEG at some point - and get the tape from that guy again to dump and make an mpeg of that...
I love the show! It is campy - lot's of "in" jokes (esp in the pilot episode) that ONLY geeks would get. I hated when they brought in that "dumb guy" (Steve? Jeff?), but even he has his purpose, and I am beginning to see it. One of the recent episodes showed that their "base" of operations is a lot larger than x-files ever let on - it is warehouse size, with what seem to be apartments, or at least "sleepover" type rooms for those late nights.
Now it is all going away...figures.
Now I definitely have to get a copy of that tape, just so I can have all the episodes (I was hoping that after the season finali, provided they show it, that there was going to be re-runs, and I could catch the others that way - not a chance, now - and no chance for store tapes or anything).
Damn!
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I'm really sorry to see Fox pull the plug so damn fast
Fox seems to be awfully quick in pulling the plug on shows the last couple of years. The show "Action" comes to mind.....
Yep. TLG wasn't perfect, but I thought it was a pretty well done tongue-in-cheek kind of show. Plus, some of the crude humor was great: "We are so blown, and not in a good way".
Oh well. Now on Fridays I can go to the bar until SVU is on....
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SuperID
Free Database Hosting
And US TV does *not* (with very few exceptions).
I caught the premier of the Lone Gunmen, whenever that was- it was the last time I watched TV outside of a bar. I laughed my ass off. The plot was so incredibly WEAK that it made an episode of the Golden Girls look like intense, nail-biting drama. I lost count of technical inaccuracies, fallacies and blatant lack of cluefulness before the second commercial break kicked in. The characters are supposedly the creme de la creme of geeks.... do you really think you could hit that audience with gross misuse of buzzwords and terminology? No.
Star Trek loses me hear as well- the show really should be billed as a fantasy, rather than science fiction. Warp Drive may be mathematically feasable, but the fact that you couldn't follow a tech-heavy episode without a manual- and the fact that they relied on some sort of jury-rigged fix to save them half the time (which was promptly forgotten the next episode or show- why hasn't Voyager simply found one of the damned Transwarp Conduits from mid-series TNG and rocketed back home? Or asked a big one of Q?) and explained it in terms that would enrage and offend a scientist totally turned me off. Or Neelix, which is many ways worse.
This brings me to the Saviour of watchable Sci-Fi- Red Dwarf. The show gets most of its science fact correct- the ship itself is a sound concept and one could dig up details on the math behind it if they felt like it. It doesn't over-rely on tech explanations to save the day, and the characters are pretty much idiots when it comes to tech anyway... it *is* a comedy, after all... anyone who's sick of network suck and hasn't heard of Dwarf would do themselves a favor to check it out. Or Doctor Who... or the Prisoner....
What are all you guys complaining about? The Lone Gunmen is a great show! The characters are fantastic, breaking stereotypes and being multi dimensional as well.
It's the best TV show since Babylon 5. And the storylines are original and interesting
As for the tech not being perfect, who cares? TV isn't about tech, it's about character and story. Haven't you ever heard of artistic license?
You geeks need to get a life. Not every story has to read like a Cisco technical manual.
-Loopy
"X-Files" has actually gotten good again over the past few months.
Do you mean over the last few months where Mulder returned? SInce Mulder won't be back next year, I think everyone is dreading the samething I am, another season along the lines of Fall '00 episodes wher we have Scully as the believer (aka Mulder standin) and T2-guy as the skeptic (aka early Scully standin), minus all the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder.
They have run through all of the major thread of the X-files (actually probably more than once at this point) which basically leaves them with the monster of the week shows, which frankly, Special Unit 2 was doing better this season since they at least have the sexual tension between the leads.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
El Seed? Who cares? I want to know who the hell can pull off Chairface Chippendale without the use of CG??! :-)
"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I was able to find a copy of the pilot on gnutella a while back... it wasn't terribly impressive. Puddy from Seinfeld plays the big blue guy, and does a decent job, but the writing is, well, it's not what I expected. First of all, the Tick swears. That's... just... not... right... man. Second, they weren't able to use Die Fleidermaus or American Maid, due to some weird licensing issue. They've been replaced by Batmanuel and Captain Liberty, who have more of a love/hate relationship than the (IMO funnier) hate/hate relationship between D.F. and A.M.
I dunno, they might be able to pull a decent series out of this, but I'm not counting on it.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
The Lone Gunman filed simply because the writers tried to expand characters that were originally created for a supporting role into full-blown characters. There simply wasn't enough .. ahem .. meat to them.
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I would like to see a show on network television where gay characters are depicted in the same manner as straight characters; i.e., without any reference to their sexuality. Most of the time, in real life, it isn't relevant, so why should it be important in a sitcom?
I'm a bisexual male, and my sexuality doesn't come up in everyday life, ever. I am not introduced by my friends as "This is Chas, 40, left-handed, bisexual," any more than my straight friends are introduced with such descriptions.
Maybe if we ignore the sterotypes we will help them go away.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
oooooooooooon!
The tick was one of my favorite cartoons. I look forward to seeing it again. My only concern is how they will find an actor muscular (and tall) enough to play the Tick, but I'll certainly watch!
On an off-topic note: Slashdot owners it would be really nice if you implemented a spell-check button, perhaps with a popup window telling me which words I mispelled. *Just a thought.*
Jon Katz? Didn't he set up us the bomb?
The best show you've never seen has also been shitcanned due to abysmal ratings.
Unlike The Simpsons, it was actually funny.
On the X Files the guys rocked because it was something new. With their own show we expected to see something as serious as the X Files in the form of the hackers which never happened. Comedy? The show flat out sucked, and it was surprising it lasted as long. Same happened with Level 9 which aired for about 4 weeks that I know of. For those who never even heard of it, it was supposed to be I guess what people think the NSA are, a bunch of hacker crime fighters which never materialzed.
I watched that show once or twice till I heard them say "his website WHATEVERTHENAMEWAS.com is untraceable, he keeps moving IP address." or something along that line, and quickly thought "stupid ass clueless producers don't even do research."
Family Guy is funny as hell tho' Stewie just owns.
Sad to see the Lone Gunmen go, maybe Chris Carter will script them into X-Files a bit more since they do have that role under lock down. But by themselves... they're boring.
Lone Gunman
Want Root?
Are there other sources to get my weekly Lone Gunman fix ?
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Everybody I know loves the family guy. Absolutely loves it. I think it is *the* funniest show I've seen to date. It was cut because people didn't like it I suppose although I am very glad it's coming back. I'm just curious why people didn't like the family guy so if any of you didn't like it... why?
Also as far as x-files is concerned I stopped watching it at the beginning of this season. The reason? Not beacuse little Mulder... it was because I purchased season one on DVD. I spent ~$100 on an awesome set of DVD's but have I watched it? nope. So I figure I'll watch em when it comes out on DVD.
Stuff that I don't give a fuck about?
X-Files rings a bell though. So what am I missing out on?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
It's time to deply the middle child!
Regardless of how you feel about the actual shows themselves, I think this timeslot is horrible for the Tick. Putting it up against Survivor & whatever is on "Must See TV" at the time is a bad move. Since Survivor was the most watched, and Friends was the most taped, what's that leave for the Tick? Just us loyal fans and all the Tivo owners.
On another note, I don't get it, if Fox Kids owns the rights to lots of cool made-for-cartoon characters, why wouldn't they license them to a show that is going to be on Fox?? That could only help matters. I mean, what's the show going to be like without Speak!, or Little Wooden Boy, or even Bi-Polar Bear for that matter?
"Freaks and Geeks" was truly one of the greatest hour-long shows of the past decade.
If they make DVDs available (currently rumored to be coming through A&E), I hope ThinkGeek would step up and add them to a DVD section on their site. It seems like such a perfect fit. (I was glad to see a lament of the series cancellation in the Demotivators 2001 calendar Thinkgeek is selling...)
"Freaks and Geeks" should be mandatory viewing for slashdot folk, since it was so bloody dead-on about the formulative years of geekdom...
D&D episodes... Atari episodes... Model rocketry episodes... And the band STYX in constant rotation! My life flashed before my eyes, and then got cancelled by some bonehead and replaced with a who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-knockoff...
(sigh)
The original versions often really, really stink. With luck, the worst of those die off before they can cross the Atlantic to you.
I'm not sure you're missing much, except perhaps PBS programs; I don't know whether you can get _Frontline_ and so forth.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Sadly, ever area I develop any competency in, it ruins tv and movies that ever reference that subject matter.
Take any show with someone playing an instrument, or god forbid, conducting an orchestra/band. I can just hear the director instructing the actor:
"OK. Now you're going to conduct the band. Just get up there and flop your arms about madly for awhile. Isn't that what they do anyways?"
Makes me want to direct movies. "OK. Get up there and act real serious now. Camera guy, make sure you turn the camera on and shoot while this happens. Just make sure they're good pictures"
Don't even get me started on journalists... I've yet to have a quote read as it was actually spoken... (advice: record your interview - it might just save your butt someday)
*scoove*
I agree. Family Guy is fantastic, but has been screwed by FOX with the way it was moved around, yanked from the lineup every couple of weeks and then for this entire past season. Even in renewal, it gets screwed by being placed in a timeslot where it has no chance, opposite Friends and Survivor. I'll certainly be duethanks to the fact that very few others will be watching.
Family Guy is just stupid funny. Rare is the show that makes me collapse on the floor from laughter.
I hope there's some chance that, if fox cancels it, someone else will pick it up. Like maybe comedy central; all their shows, except for the daily show, suck anyways...
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Ah well... anyone else curious about the new Tick show?
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crazy dynamite monkey
The Family Guy is the funniest. Weren't there problems with voice-actors finding other jobs, however? Someone have a link?
Family guy was put on hiatus because the creator didn't think it was going to be renewed, but it actually did quite well in the ratings... the only problem was, because he thought it wasn't going to be renewed, he had no new episodes ready. Rather than run the same reruns over and over and get people sick of the show, they slated it to be a mid-season replacement, but that got pushed back because of the possible writer's strike. According to Planet Family Guy it'll be back on in the fall.
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"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
Yahoo's article has the title spelling wrong.
:)
Don't believe me? Try visiting the official Web site.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
http://www.pazsaz.com/cancel.html
Here is a list of all the TV shows that will be cancelled or ending (i.e. The Lone Gunmen is included).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Goddammit, Family Guy is funny and all, but somebody needs to pick up Home Movies. It was genius.
Enjoy!
It might be partially due to ratings but I've heard that it was also due to a large number of advertisers pulling out (some links) due to the pull no punches humor.
I loved the 5 minute rant on Canada at the end of one of the episodes, freakin' hillarious.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
You need to travel around the USA some more. The people on these shows outnumber people like us in real life by a factor of 10-to-1.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Besides, schedules mean nothing to me, now that I have a TiVo. I highly recommend you get one.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
For me, the X-Files is the only show on Fox worth watching. I hate TV shows about "dumb, average people", so I can't stand Simpsons, Family Guy, etc.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Family Guy is one of the single best television shows in years. The gags are all on-target, although it's a little crude at times. It definitely ranks up there with "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" as one of my favorite animated shows.
The humor is a little divergent from "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," though. The Simpsons tends to be more satirical (or used to), while Futurama is a little more sight gag/pun oriented.
Family Guy's approach is different. It just throws crude and offensive material at you until you can't help laughing.
If Fox dumped "King of the Hill" (funny, but not side-splittingly so) and replaced it with Family Guy, my ass would be glued to the couch from 7 to 10 pm every Sunday. (Fox lineup until 9, then the Sopranos on HBO)
odd. I kind of liked the premier and got turned completely off the show when they added, and almost completely focused the show on, the Doofus-Guy. It seemed to me that the 1st episode was done, then Hollywood got hold of it, couldn't understand the anti-hero slant and bolted the 4th guy on.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
Fox's page has photos:
http://www.newenglandcomics.com/ticktv.shtml
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Too bad nobody here is showing reruns of the animated series...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Any show that has a rabid fan base will have somebody who puts the time and effort into capturing the episodes, encoding them, and finding sites to host the files.
Or wait a few years and buy the episodes on DVD, such as the X-files sets just now coming out.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
RPM is a dastardly language, and it's essentially write-only. The code in my signature reverses a string. You'll find the necessary information and binaries at the above URL (binaries are for Windows, sorry... though they're probably portable with Kylix).
]$`};L(;/proc);[I(;];<C{;};1S[;`\/while=1E1L[`\p roc{>=
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
]$`};L(;/proc);[I(;];<C{;};1S[;`\/while=1E1L[`\p roc{>=
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Bringing them into the spotlight took away what made them special. They were no longer 3 social misfits with some tech know-how who'd stumbled on some secret fbi stuff. The whole reason people liked them to start off with was that they _weren't_ the center of attention. Who understands nerds as the protagonists of a show? Unless it's satire, like in Revenge of the nerds it's just not accepted.
I don't see how it can be good. The clips I have seen stunk and I'm sure it will be dumbed down. The real question is why the original cartoon went off the air -- it was great! My favorite was the "Ants in Pants" episode -- they'll never have a live action episode like that. Those bastards!
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
In a nutshell, Morris (? - the Man In Black) was running the whole thing as a scam to find / get Eve and tricked out heros plus Eve to show up at an underground vault holding the Holy Grail Database. They were all captured by the SWAT team from the beginning of the episode. To be continued....
Has anyone aside from me seen Boondock Saints? This was a very cool movie, but the reason I bring it up is Willem Dafoe's character. He's a brilliant FBI organized crime investigator who turns out to be gay, but in the most un-stereotypical way ever. They literally had to show him in bed after sex with another man for you to know. This is how anti-stereotype his character is. Not to mention some bloody BRILLIANT lines. He's sitting at a gay bar, and the VERY fruity bartender says "I'm sorry, i think you've had enough sir." Willem responds "Just pour me the drink, fairy" in a mean, deadpan. It's the funniest thing because every other guy in the bar gives him the most surprised "gay look" I've ever seen. I almost died laughing :) But definately a great movie with a brilliant Dafoe performance. One other reason I enjoyed his performance so much, especially from the "anti stereotype" position is because I'm friends with or am acquainted with enough gay people to see each end of the spectrum. Some of my friends are almost comically stereotypical, and some are not. Most are in the middle :) :)
Just some food for thought
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
I just wish Chris Carter could come up with something other than the X-Files that doesn't bomb immediately like his last two series did.
-Legion
I never knew there could be a spinoff of a spinoff. what a terrible idea.
Make That 3.... Can't forget Dark Angel!!!!!!!!!
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
I'm a geek (I think..), and I stopped watching the program after the first episode. More because I've grown tired of the x-files, and the pilot wasn't .. ah.. 'good'. Anyway, the fickle-nes s of geeks is probably contributes to the phenomenon.
Linus has,in fact,grown,and explosively-JonKatz
6:00 - Futurama
6:30 - The Family Guy
7:00 - The Simpsons
7:30 - The Tick
8:00 - Malcolm In The Middle
8:30 - King Of The Hill
9:00 - The X-Files
With this lineup, FOX would own my eyes from 6:00 until 8:00 every time, and sometimes until 9:00.
In my opinion, The Family Guy is the funniest show on television. Futurama is hilarious, and The Simpsons is almost always good for a few laughs - especially the Halloween shows. I'm looking forward to The Tick, and I hope I can just grin and bear it through the name and persona changes for American Maid and Die Fledermause. Patrick Warburton (?) (soon to be The Tick) was the voice of a guard in The Emperor's New Clothes, as a large goofy guy (much like The Tick), and he was great in that role. I think The Tick has a real chance of being good. I can't wait for the return of The Family Guy, and the premier of The Tick!
Education is the silver bullet.
By the way, I think that The Family Guy is only derivative of The Simpsons in that it's a cartoon with a fat guy. I mean, let's call The Simpsons derivative of FAT ALBERT. *chuckles*
The Family Guy is hilarious. It's truly inventive, and it's got Adam West - freaking Batman - as the voice of the Mayor. What more do you need? Oh, crap - I almost forgot - Norm Macdonald as Death was incredible. And Seth Green - Scott Evil - as Chris Griffin! This show is awesome - don't listen to Teahouse - check it out if you haven't seen it already. Just be prepared to be offended. *grins*
"Holy crip, he's a crapple!" -Peter Griffin
Education is the silver bullet.
Actually, thanks to some last minute changes in the script of the premiere by some not-so-well-known hackers, it was us geeks who made THEM look stupid =) Yeah, right. Back to that shitty reality with nothing to do formerly known as friday night. /me waits for another cheap parody like the star trek cast shooting phasers at the executives until they took the props away
I am !amused.
I found humor in compairing the Lone Gunmen and X-Files to Rosencrantz & Gildenstern and Hamlet. This linkage was so obvious to me that I'll have to watch the reruns for such a sub-plot.
You want unsavory queers on TV, get ye to Star Trek. Granted they are all lesbians (alas, perhaps Riker won't screw any sophont in existence) but definately evil. Kes kissed a girl when taken over by some evil alien, and on DS9 Kira and Dax II's evil mirror universe versions are gay. Also note Beverly Crushers revolted (and revolting) reaction to her Trill lover's slug being transplanted into a female. For a people so much more advanced socially than us, they seem to view derivation from norms as unacceptable. Typical neo-liberals (ie not liberals at all, just the reactionary left).
I had a point somewhere but lost it. To bad...
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Thank god for that - it was a terrible show. Bad characters, bad script and dreadful storyline. And just to make things worse, I caught part 1 of the XFiles season finale, and I thought that was bad too. Flame away, but I'm serious.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
That none of us Aussies will ever get to see this show, unless of course it's been on tv without me knowing about it.
Oh well...
--
This is reminiscent of Fox's pulling of "Get A Life", which was by far and away the most creative sitcom of its time, and just replacing it with crap emulating things that were on TV elsewhere. Get A Life episodes are now out on DVD, for people to see what television can be before Fox pulls the plug on innovation.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
i LIKED the original episode. It was something NEW on tv.
I was looking forward to an actual techie series. With a lot of
"mission impossible" type stuff with frohike.
But then My jaw dropped on the second ep, when those BOZOS decided,
"gasp.. this is different from our cookie-cutter show...
We Must Add a "Babe" and a "Jock", or people will never watch it!"
Frigging idiots. As soon as they did that, it became more like other
shows, and I was highly LESS interested in continuing to watch it.
Not to mention the "[ultra]dumb jock" then proceeding to get more
screen time than any of the other guys.
Damn network execs.
I'm glad we're getting family guy back (that was (dare i say it?) better than the simpsons! (maybe i shouldn't have said that)). Anyway, i LOVE the lone gunman, how 'bout someone starts a petition to get it back!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
the question we should be asking now is whether we can expect chris carter to do any more series for fox after this.
think of all the things fox has done to carter. they sold the series to a fox owned cable network for a song (reducing carter's residuals in the process.) and cancelled a couple of his series without having given them even half a chance.
after those fiascos, i'd expect he's very reluctant to continue working for fox. so the next season of x-files may turn out to be the last one with carter's input. i wonder what he'll do next.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
"Come for the cocktails... stay for the interrogation!"
The deliveries are always so brazenly shlocky you can't help but laugh.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
It was broadcast in 16:9 Widescreen format, like HDTV, and 60 fps progressive scan, but was at a lower resolution: 480p. While not up to the quality that CBS shows, in 1080i, it was MUCH better than standard TV.
FYI - Fox also does The X-Files, Malcolm in the Middle, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Titus, & Dark Angel in this format. CBS does even more, in full HDTV, 1080i mode.
You forgot "When Buildings Collapse" (all the parts).
I haven't watched TV in years either. I don't find it insulting, though. How could I? Not having watched it in years, I'm not in a position to hold any opinion about it at all.
You can tell that the Fox fall line-up sucks without even watching an episode of these shows. 1-Ally McBeal-okay, people like it, but it is stupid and has collapsed under its own weight. How many episodes of a show that focuses on a too-thin, whiny, passive aggressive member of the white upper-class can you watch before you puke? If the answer is more than 6, you should be looking for a good therapist. 2-Boston Public-this show is just bad. I can't believe that people don't read a magazine instead of turning this on before Ally McBeal. Twenty Four- Great. Basically, an obnoxiously long movie spread out in installments so that if you miss a week, you have no idea what is going on. Pasadena- starring Dana Delaney. You can tell that this is going to stink, just from the description. Stand-up comic Bernie Mac- this show (i.e., funny guy finds himself in akward situation with children) has been aired and failed so many times you would think they would have the sense to kill it before they waste time building sets. Undeclared-how many college-based comedies have died horribly in the last five years? Answer: just a few less than shows by comics in weird family situations. X-Files sans Duchovny: Stick a fork in it and turn it over. It's done.
So broccoli we meet again!
Who the Hell do you think you are?
Someday you're going to make a Jewish man very happy.
---
This
--
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fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
darn and I was starting to go into withdraw.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
I've seen the pilot, and it's surprisingly great! For only about 100k they managed to shoot a pretty darn good episode... even though my favorite character names are forever lost to Fox Kids....
jim
(Uh-oh! It's Apocolypse Cow...)
I HATE this. How could Americans still complain about which series they can watch on TV? In Germany it takes the major TV networks YEARS to start on a translation and it's practitcally a sure thing that these dubbed versions SUCK. I wisch I could watch any of theses series in their original language - it's simply not possible. I also wish that I wouldn't have to wait over a year to watch them here in Germany. That's really not cool.
Well, anyway. Have fun watching your TV series. But please DON'T COMPLAIN about some of them being axed because I'M ALREADY JEALOUS ENOUGH.
"It may be your sole purpose in life to serve as a warning to others."
The Family Man runs some infomercials on local cable that have to be seen to be believed.
The best show in the history of man. Enough said.
I wish they'd pull the plug on Dark Angel. I can watch nearly any sci-fi schlock but that show bites.
Lone Gunmen, I'm sorry to see you go...
Are you saying that you like Black Scorpion? Compared to that, Dark Angel is pure art.
:)
OK, even *I* won't stoop that low.
The concept of telling a story and then ending the series is not new at all. The original Star Trek was only supposed to run for five years -- thus, the 'five-year' mission. The same goes for many anime series. Most of the anime series are only budgeted for so long and the creators know that they have to finish the story within 24 or 36 or whatever episodes. The animators of Cowboy Bebop, for example, knew exactly how many episodes to make. Maison Ikkoku has a definite beginning, middle, and end.
It's not really about our short-attention spans, it's about telling a complete story. Few would say that books appeal to a limited attention span, but the authors do not try to write infinitely long running stories.
Drama is more powerful when people know the end, know that they have all the information and they recieve a revelation about someone's past next season which belies all they have seen so far.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the female "believer" agent that has been a semi regular for the past few episodes is being set up as a Scully replacement and as a flip flop of the Mulder/Scully role.
I was asked to watch some pilots for drama shows for CBS. You know what I spent an entire saturday watching? Either spinoffs of popular shows, or copies of popular shows. It blew chunks. I wrote all over my reviews "BE ORIGINAL. Nobody wants a copy of what they like, they want something new."
Of course, my opinion mattered little, because the new dramas coming out this fall are just copies of popular dramas on TV. And they will be replacing the copies/spinoffs of popular shows that just got cancelled (the tick may be a good exception, though).
That's what sucks about publishers for media. They want copies of what sells. That is why the video game shelves are full of FPS that are the same-old. No one is willing to take a chance on something new, unless you are proven in the field (i.e.: Warren Spector aka God).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Ben Edlund, not Elton. My bad. I had him mixed up with the guy who co-wrote the Black Adder series for BBC TV. Thanks for the correction.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
For those wondering about the new series, here is the skinny....
The pilot was made, clips of it have been leaked, and it is damned funny.
Yes, it stars the guy who was Puddy on Seinfeld.
No, it does not star anybody else you have heard of.
Yes, the show is written by Ben Elton, creator of the original comic book as well as the animated series.
Characters from the original comic book (Arthur, Chairface, etc.) can show up in the new series, but characters developped for the Fox cartoon (American Maid, El Seed, etc.) can not, because this is a Sony production and Fox holds the rights to those characters. Therefore, if you were a fan of the cartoon, several of your favorite supporting characters will either be absent or re-named.
The show was slated to be a mid-season replacement, but was then bumped to next fall. There is still no assurance from Fox that it will be in the Fall line-up, either... so you might not actually get to see it until January of next year.
Details are scattered all over drooling-fanboy sites like Ain't It Cool, so you can read more there.
Oh, FWIW. The Lone Gunmen did not get more funny as it went on. I had a friend who talked me into watching a couple more episodes, and if anything it got worse. So don't feel bad if you tuned out after seeing the pilot suck so badly. You have missed nothing. (Yea, yea "IMNSHO", "YMMV"... whatever. It sucked.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Have you ever considered the possibility that you're just using the wrong IDE?
--
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
"Dark Angel" is a good show but I worry about it moving to Friday. I can't think of any FOX show in recent times that has survived a move to Friday nights.
They come up, blank look.
Ask dumb question about disk drive.
Told, they will return.
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
Any idea where I can get more info on Fox's EDTV?
I've looked on fox.com but they're site is not to friendly for searching. Are all of Fox's EDTV shows in widescreen?
They come up, blank look.
Ask dumb question about disk drive.
Told, they will return.
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
The Lone Gunmen had a lot of potential.... and then they aired the first one. Man was it stupid!!! A really bad Jr. G-Men, written for idiotic teenyboopers, and it took me a month to find out what day it aired. It could have been really great, but they made it idiotically dumb. oh, well, they are bound to showback up in X Files.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Stewie told the execs, "you'll rue the day you canceled my show..."
and they did... Do people outside of New England "get" the rhode island/NE centric humor BTW?
Maybe Peter is just like the northern version of a "redneck"... *shrug*
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I thought this site was for "stuff that matters". I don't know if this qualifies....
Here in SAT question Form:
"SPOOOOON" is to The Tick as "Yo Joe!" is to GI Joe...
Soccer couldn't have caused you to miss the old GI Joe cartoons.
Cause knowing is half the battle...
Rehab is for quitters...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
While watching the last episode (the one with Mitch Pileggi guest starring as Skinner), I was thinking that The Lone Gunmen was finally finding its legs. Just like how ST:TNG found its legs in the second season, and finally became thoroughly enjoyable in the third.
It's really too bad Fox isn't going to give TLG the chance that the monster franchise name of "Star Trek" gave to TNG. My feeling is that those two words were the only reason TNG lasted longer than a year.
P.S. Was anyone else rolling on the floor at Pileggi's rendition of Jimmy Bond? That man is a much better actor than I ever gave him credit for.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I think you're making a mistake by trying to compare sitcoms to real life. (Quick show of hands: How many of you out there have a wacky neighbor who shows up once every day or so to utter a wise-crack or two and then be on his way?) In a sitcom, sex generally is relevant. We're watching every bit of these peoples' lives. Anything that's funny is more or less fair game, and there are certainly lots of potentially funny things that take place when you throw dating, sex, and relationships into the mix.
Besides, in virtually all forms of story telling (television, books, movies, etc.), you're generally expected to identify and understand the characters to one degree or another. Empathy helps draw the observer into the story and keep them hooked. While sexually orientation is (rightfully so) a relatively private part of what makes up a person, it's still an important part. Of course, I'm not saying that there's a "gay outlook on life", but rather that your sexual orientation, your race, your nationality, your religion, your upbringing, and where you went to school are all things that affect how you see the world -- knowing some or all of these factors are a key part to understanding a character.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Yes, I'll admit that the show has its painful spots. Too self-deprecating for about 5 minutes an episode. However, much like Jimmy, its heart is in the right place. Yeah, the speak is DEFINITELY off, but the stories are decent enough, and the characters can play off each other. And, oh, yeah, it has a good sense of humor.
For those who did like the show, go to the "Lone Gunmen Second Season campaign". http://lonegunmen.furvect.com/lgmseas2.htm
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
TLG seemed to work better in the context of the 'Files, anyway.
---
The buddhist hamburger joint: They'll make you one with everything.
This is cable, not network TV. They operate by different rules - if the channel is "all yoga, all the time" or whatever, then a show on yoga is to be geared to people interested in yoga, so you're cut some slack.
I haven't seen Invisible Man, but I'll check it out.
Fox really doesn't have that same luxury - they're pitching a show based on the population as a whole, not a subset interested in X.
Hence the rules, above.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Manboobs don't sell ANY beer whatsoever.
Oh great. Now I've got that image of Eric S Raymond in a latex penguin suit someone described a while back in my head again.
Not exactly the diet plan I had in mind.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
RE: Why, for instance, is every single gay character depicted as a clean, good-hearted, middle-class, sassy best-friend type?
Consider the tightrope you walk on this one (don't count Showtime's show). Make the guy in ANY way some kind of freak (leather, whips etc) and the Falwell crowd will go more psycho than normal. They're probably writing letters just for having the nice sassy clean upper-middle class neighbour with a cat.
Make the guy evil, insulting, gross, stereotypical in a nasty way, whatever, and you get to deal with the same Politically Correct hordes that shut down Dr. Laura (rightly). And shut down they did.
This particular community LIKES being portrayed as clean-cut, affluent, upper middle class and excitingly interesting. Why not cater to em?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I was referring to the perspectives of media buyers. Not to the average public.
"Stereotypes of what Geeks are like (not good writers),"
Hollywood wants a 90 minute script, crisis at the 45 minutes mark, boy gets girl in the end, preferably with explosions and jiggling boobs. There's actually a template they expect you to follow. Unless you're doing "art" pictures or "independant" cinema, in which case you aren't in Hollywood.
RE: and what they like (boring details about the evolution of life on planets 1.4 times the gravity of Earth with a Methane atmosphere).
Most people like sci-fi when it's cowboys and indians, but zargs vs. zoombas in fast rocket ships. That's why Star Trek (white hat Federation, black hat enemy-of-the-series, we're riding on the range, oops in the Federation space on the star cruiser, long range scanner indicates injuns whoops I mean Klingons/Borg/Ferengi/whatever, lots of lasers, cap'n we've got a problem, just "remodulate the frequency..." FIRE! BLAM take us outa here.) did well. And why Babylon 5 was inaccessible to most people.
RE: Sterotypes of what Hollywood Screenwriters are like (cocaine-snorting yes-men cranking out mindless drivel)."
Oh, I'm sorry, you're so right. They're all English majors, attempting the next version of Citizen Kane. WRONG. They're looking for proven formula of this month, and then to patch a few relatively original ideas onto it. e.g. There's Something about Mary begat Tomcats begat Freddy Got Fingered. OR Saving Private Ryan begat Pearl Harbor will beget another bunch of WWII films...
People don't want risk. They want to get paid.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
RE: So basically you're saying that the inclusion of any female in any action show is sensationalist and that all female action stars are there merely as sex objects?
Right. The inclusion of Jeri Ryan was a plot device to advance DS9 to high art. The fact that she's one of the few women who don't require Federation Standard Issue Padding in the chest area had nothing to do with it. The fact that they knew the geek hordes would start trading her picture in terabytes over the Internet the moment she was cast - come on, how chauvinist. They were only interested in her for her splendid acting ability - noone else does that Borg monotone so well!
Let me ask ya this. That woman on the Lone Gunmen. Or even the stripper on "FPS" in X files. Were they REALLY necessary? No. They were eye-candy of the most offensive, objectifying sort.
The day they render Lara Croft as a 230 lb woman with acne, we'll talk.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
This also explains why stereotypes ABOUND on network TV.
Consider how much time you have for a show. Not long (assume 30 minutes). Now. Remove time for credits on both sides (we're left with 25 minutes, say), and commercials. You have about 16 minutes in which to construct a story, set it up, let it roll, wrap it up, and move on.
This explains why, for example, if you need a drug dealer, you don't have a clean cut white kid, and then waste three minutes explaining how he got into selling drugs. And even then, half the audience will drool into its cheetos cause you didn't put "THIS GUY IS A DRUG DEALER" in ten inch high letters on his shirt. You're supposed to have a sleazy looking, shifty eyed hispanic guy in a hairnet with a pistol going "chu wan coke, mon?" 10 seconds guaranteed, vs three minutes, maybe. You think assembly language coders strive for efficiency in clock cycles, you ain't seen network TV.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Is nigh on impossible for several reasons
1) It is against unwritten network rules to write something above an eight year old reading level (they figure that by doing so, you risk losing a sizable chunk of the TV viewing population who don't have a high literacy and will switch off)
2) Computer programming/hacking doesn't involve smoke, explosions, fractal 3D patterns that escape the computer monitor and chase you down corridors, and especially not jiggling bits of female anatomy.
3) RE the above: a chess match is high drama for those in the know: but to a channel surfer flipping through the channels looking for some light entertainment between "Survivor" and "WWF Raw", it's terrifically boring. Ditto software development or hacking.
4) Keeping things bleeding edge is difficult with the writing/editing/shooting cycle, so either set it so far in the future you just plug your cyberBorg headset into the computer and stare steelily into the Federation flat-panel screen, or risk people laughing their ASSES off at "yeah! This state of the art 486 is k-Rad!" (especially when the show goes into reruns).
5) Biggest hurdle: most geeks can't write. Those who do are VERY BORING WRITERS. "Hey dutch! When are you going to finish the script!" "Quiet! I'm working out the physics of the alien lifeform given a planet 1.4 x Earth's gravity with a methane atmosphere!". Most writers are cocaine snorting media whores. Write to spec as fast as possible. Open up the template, stick in some stock characters, sell the script, move on.
Hence, any "geek" oriented show will have to by definition not work. Hence the inclusion of jiggling women, dumb jokes, offensive stereotypes, and unrealistic, stupid storylines.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
``Twenty Four.''...a real-time drama that plays out over 24 episodes."
A real-time drama that chronicles all 24 hours of a particular day... can't wait for those eight "sleeping" episodes.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Though that theory doesn't explain all network stereotypes. Why, for instance, is every single gay character depicted as a clean, good-hearted, middle-class, sassy best-friend type?
Just give me one good evil gay crime boss. That's all I ask.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Create shows that are short lived and complete in a handful of episodes? I wonder where they got that concept from? <cough>Survivor</cough>
Is this television's way of both catering to our short attention spans while simultaneously preventing television shows from going on so long that the actors can demand more money to keep a good thing going?
I only recall one good series that worked this way. It was called Starblazers.
Anybody remember the show "Brooklyn Bridge?" Didn't think so. It was an excellent show from my youth that lasted 2 seasons on CBS, but midway through the second season it was moved to, you guessed it, Friday night. Whatever made Fox think "The Lone Gunmen" was strong enough to survive the time slot is beyond me. Friday night is when the key demographic, young Americans in high school and college, are out having lives, not sitting at home watching Fox. If you ever see your favorite show move to Friday evening, either make like the trekkies of the sixties and start a massive write-in campaign to save it, or start your funeral preparations. That show is dead meat.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
Stewie rules -- Rex Harrison on acid.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Those super monkeys have tossed themselves into my salad again! I understand that the dude who played Putty on Seinfeld will be the Tick. Excellent casting choice. But who for Arthur? More importantly, who will be cast as El Seed, quite possibily the funniest evil character ever.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
He put a colon into the Shrek article, which was new. But then, then he put two into one sentence for this article. That has to be a record of some sort.
I agree with you about Hush. Not least because the cast of teenaged characters were almost entirely silent from beginning to end. *8-)
~cHris--
Chris Naden
"Sometimes, home is just where you pour your coffee"
Thanks for the constructive criticism, asshole. :)
Got friends?
i am just happy to hear that the television show with the BEST COMIC TIMING EVER is returning to air. just in time too -- the simpsons is going into the pooper with whatever godawful talent they've recruited to write over the last season. ("hey -- then homer should say 'WOO-HOO' again -- THAT'LL BE A LAUGH RIOT!")
fisfhucerk.
a must-see -- if you've witnessed the few "einstein" scenes, you know what i'm talking about.
... The Lone Gunman. It's hilarious. And now... it's gone.
The Tick: "Aw, man, that's the pits!"
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
What sweet honey is going to play American Maid?
Anyhow, I don't see a live action Tick working well.
The animated series rocked, but the buzz about the live-action version isn't so hot. They nuked one of the writers who helped make the animated version everything it ever was. The word is that they want it to be more "Seinfeld with Capes" than "The Tick". Well, that's the price you pay when you switch to film, a medium where creating an explosion is significantly more expensive than creating a wink. Spoon!
I don't know about the rest of you, but after the first three episodes of Family Guy the show crashed and burned. It got incredibly boring and not-funny.
On the other hand, the only reason I stopped watching the Lone Gunmen is that it switched timeslots, to a time when I couldn't watch. I loved the show--finally geeks as heroes. And that includes the first episode, which I thought was great.
I also recommend Farscape, on Scifi. If that gets the ax, I'll kill myself. But luckily it's not looking like it's moving in an ax direction.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
or even better, the Olson twins as Stewie stand-ins, Fifteen Minutes of Shame
"Blast! I am victorious!"
"Whose leg do you have to hump to get a dry martini around here?"
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Thank GOD The Lone Gunmen is gone! It was so bad it made us geeks look stupid!
Yes, sure The Tick will be live action, but has that ever stopped anyone? Of course not!
So, when the opening credits of Futurama start running and you see a blue figure leaping from building to building, you'll know The Terror That Has No Sequel, Episode Zero!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
1) Simpsons. A classic, simply the funniest show on TV. To get all the visual puns takes approximately 4.6 viewings a show, which is the perfect amount.
2) Futurama. Almost as good as the Simpsons, in the same style. Bender is quite possibly the funniest character on TV right now.
As long as Fox has these they're OK.
--------------------------------------
No sig for you.
How can you say something SO foolish - All the varients of Buffy et al are perfect TV - Friday nights here at uni wouldn't be the same without them. I used to like the X-Files until the last coople of sereis completely turned me off. It is something to think about that all of Chris Carter's series except for the X-Files have been a flop - Harsh Realm (I think that's what it's called - my sister (font of all things Chris Carter) is miles away at the moment) being a prime example.
Here in Scotland we haven't had the Lone Gunmen yet (certainly not on terrestrial TV anyway) but having read the (online) reviews I am fairly certain that it will rank with Dark Knight, Xena and Hercules which usually are only worth watching because nothing else is on.
Anyway - Who is the X-Files answer to Faith?
And the pilot episode has the replacement characters, Lady Liberty and BatManuel.
It's Captain Liberty, not Lady Liberty. And to answer the original question, she's being played by Liz Vassey, guest star extraordinaire.UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
Jessica Alba! Ooooooo-wheeeeee!
Jessica Alba.
What about Ashley Judd? Yeah! Ashley Judd!
Jessica Alba - though - those dark eyes...
No... Ashley Judd.
I'm too old for Jessica Alba, anyway.
How old is Ashley Judd?
Yeah, Ashley Judd, definitely.
Well, maybe Jessica Alba.
...
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
Weirdness!
______
jeff13
Look, I liked the show. The premier SUCKED, but I gave it some time and it got better. But really, where was the premise going? We knew the Gunmen already as interesting - albeit 2D - characters and the new show didn't really flesh them out any further. Instead, they add the Good-Hearted-Doofus-Guy and Mysterious-Sexy-Gal to round out the show's possibilities. These characters were interesting to watch, but really amounted to denizens of the same last ditch sidekick world as The Great Gazoo and Scrappy Doo. In the end, the show was better than Harsh Realm, but still couldn't stand up on its own without a lot more depth of character. *sigh*
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
I'm glad the X-Files are coming back, but they didn't have to cancel the lone gunman. In my opinion, the downfall of the show was when they put it on Friday. I just have Sunday nights reserved for Fox. Friday's are more NBC-based. ;)
Seeka
is going downhill fast IMO.
Malcolm in the Middle, Titus etc might be semi-popular, but they are hell to watch. There shows just get dumber and dumber every new pilot. Ever seen an episode of Malcolm in the Middle? NO PLOT. Horrible. The Lone Gunmen had huge potential and it is sad that it was axed so early, as it could have turned out to be a XFiles/Simpson type show.
Instead Fox continues to go for the 'quick buck' with shows like Cops, Who wants to marry a multimillionaire(or whatever it was called) and the like.
Very sad to see the Lone Gunmen die as it showed promise, I see Fox getting their own problems because of lack of quality in the future.
You can find all of the shows going off the air, as well as returning shows here.
Do you like German cars?
Jesus! Fox has been trying to schlock this weak-ass Simpsons knock-off for fucking 2 years with no luck...SOMEBODY HAS TO KILL THE BABYSITTER! The producer of this brain-dead show must be blowing Rupert Murdoch. TLG is gonna get killed. Knew that was inevitable....it was put in the friday DEATH-slot. Unfortunately The Family Guy lives on like some vampire in a crossless, sunless, steakless world. Fat-slob comedy is dead...unless you live in New England...get over it Fox. Whew...I feel better now:)
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I think the renewal of "X-Files" for a 10th season is bigger news . . .
.
Well, that would be big news, especially since next season will only be The X-Files ninth.
. . . Anyone see Sunday's episode? Damn, that was well-done action/adventure TV! . .
I will agree, last week's episode was good. However, the general quality of the series has degraded significantly this season. The last few episodes have been good mostly because Duchovny has been back. The episodes earlier in the season were lacking in comparison to some of the greats from the earlier seasons. It was rumored that there were two options for the series after the eighth season, keep going another year, or stop and produce one last film. I would have loved to see the series end on a high note like that, rather than try to squeeze out another 20 episodes without Duchovny.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
Then support them, and shoot an email to: askfox@foxinc.com And let them know your opinion on the cancellation.
All we ever see stories about on /. is Trek drek.
Let the flames begin.
Not sure I really wanna think about Taco's colon(s) right now - brings to mind too many goatse flashbacks.
The sad thing about the FOX network is that if a show doesn't achieve cult status, it gets cancelled. It seems FOX has cancelled alot of shows that would have made it on other networks. Many good shows have seen the FOX axe. Ned & Stacey comes to mind.
No! Buffy stays! Aside from the babe factor, it has some of the best writing on TV. 'Hush' from last season is one of the best pieces of TV writing in years.
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
TLG was really a mediocre show; applause to Carter for at least giving it a try though. Now all eyes are on XF again, but what will it give after Duchovny's permanent departure? The writers will have to come up with some quality character development (which IMO means focusing more on Doggett, a tad less on Scully, and making Agent Harrison a regular) and truly surprising developments in the Colonization storyline, which absolutely needs to be resolved by the series finale.
The coolest voice ever.
I'm well aware of all that. But Duchovny's leaving the show after this season.
The coolest voice ever.
Yves Harlow is a more benevolent cancer man. Personally, I didn't mind her character at all.
I thought the series had some very clever writing. I particularly enjoyed clever bits, like the episode with the super-genius chimps taking place at the "Boulle Primate Research Center". French author Pierre Boulle wrote a novel "Monkey Planet" which was later the basis of the movie "Planet of the Apes". (Another book of his was the basis for "Bridge over the River Kwai".)
I was looking forward to the rebroadcast of the X-files episode that episode where the Lone Gunmen first come together.
Then there is the "Mark Twain factor". Once you learn how to be one of the few people who is successful in your chosen field, you may find that it stops being your dream job, and has become just as boring and stultifying as all those mundane jobs you couldn't dream of ever doing.
In his autobiography, Sam Clemens described his childhood dream of becoming a Mississipi River Boat pilot. Young Clemens grew up next to the dark, powerful, mysterious river. Being a River Boat Pilot in those days was a very high prestige occupation. The navigable channel, and navigational dangers, were constantly changing in those days. Pilots were hired for one passage only. They were paid as much or more than the boat's regular captains.
When they were on, they had tremendous responsibility -- but in short bursts.
Clemens wanted to become a River Boat pilot. Clemens did learn how to become a River Boat pilot.
And what did he find? He found that once he learned how to read the surface of the river, once he learned the meaning of the smooth "boils", eddies and "snags", the river totally lost all of its mystery and romance for him.
So he quit, and did something else. His pen-name, "Mark Twain", is a remnant of his love for the occupation of river boat piloting. When the depth was uncertain a sailor would sit on the bow, measuring the depth. "Mark Twain" is a particular depth measurement.
This is a cautionary tale I tell to any young person I meet who wants to become an artist or musician.
Many slashdotters criticized the Lone Gunmen because they found it contained too many technical inaccuracies. I won't argue with that. But they got the most important thing about the dark side of geek culture nailed down.
You see the dark side of geek culture where technical accuracy becomes a tool for emotional expression and the assertion of social dominance. Langley and Frohicke aren't really friends. They have an armed truce, where they agree not to fight out who was the true mojo, the right stuff -- in other words -- who can be most technically accurate. And they fail. They fight all the time. And they brought in visiting geek experts, who use their greater technical knowledge to dump all over L & F.
Is it possible that the real problem some detractors had with the show was that it hit too close to home?
OK, a number of you guys have mentioned a pilot for TLG, that did not feature Yves, or Jimmy. When was this broadcast, and what was it about?
Sorry to sound like a mindless drone with a brainslug, but I used to think there was never anything good on TV until I bought my TiVo. Now there's always something good on TV. Usually, there's a lot more than I can possibly watch.
I thought The Lone Gunmen was hilarious and I'm really sorry to see Fox pull the plug so damn fast. Sometimes, it's really hard to believe they're the same network that kept the X-Files on the air when it wasn't popular, or that had the nerve to put The Simpsons on the air.
But can you really be surprised since it's Fox? This isn't the first time they get a great show then just cancel it because it doesn't fit the apparent "standards" they set out. I'm specifically thinking of Escaflowne (which they butchered nontheless with their translation and story "fixing") but it's happened before and I don't have any doubt it'll happen again. At least they brought back the Family Guy (after they prematurely cancelled it, too).
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Hold on a second, somebody's knocking on my door...
In general, how does one download from IRC? I thought it was just chat...
Many thanks! Of course, my wife just told me that she was a freshman in college when she learned what "fart" meant, so I guess I'm notthe lamest one in the house!
I can't believe they're cancelling Cleopatra 2525! Granted its stupid, but there was something amusing and eye-catching about a chick ninja/special-ops team of the future. They had a good villian (Krigen), and in retrospect, the writing wasn't that bad at all. In fact, the ending episode had a cool twist (Earth was taken over by Eco-AI machines). On second thought, it would seem damn predictable and formulaic, given the Matrix, but it does have an original feel.
What the hell is the WB thinking?!?! They've just lost Buffy and probably Angel. They're giving last rites to Xena and getting rid of some underperforming shows, but what the hell do they think will be better replacements?!?!
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
But I find it difficult putting the finger on what was wrong.
1) I disagree with the criticisms of the Jimmy Bond and Yves Harlow characters. You have to expand the character base for show longevity (or three guys become damned typed after a while). JB adds muscle to the group, and his naivete gives contrast to the LG. Yves ALWAYS playing the LG was annoying, but she was much needed eye-candy and wasn't too bad otherwise.
2) Wasn't Langley supposed to be the computer geek extraordinare? Then why is he ALWAYS bringing in some other kung-fu dweeb to get into a particularly difficult system? A smarter thing to have done would be to expand Langley's RPG friends for characters and plot devices. I would have also liked to have seen Byers do more social engineering.
3) Lack of good, reproducible villians hurt the show too. (Mebbe they were aiming for a PI noire, which didn't need them, but... eh.)
4) The real problem was that instead of the LGs being the central characters, they ended up being scaffolding; they were the machinery that made the plot go. How many classic lines or scenes can you think of for that show that were from them?
5) Also I think Carter wanted to brand a theme to the show, "comedic three stooge geeks" and EVERY episode turned out the SAME damned way. Besides that flaw, it brings the problem of killing the persona they had in X-Files, which was goofy but resourceful and COMPETANT(!) geeks. The LG show had them as chumps everytime. How can you develop character interest over that?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
K... I'm impressed with how well that dude from Terminator 2 has done in Mulder's place, but... X-Files isn't X-Files without Duchovney.
The Family Guy is the funniest. Weren't there problems with voice-actors finding other jobs, however? Someone have a link?
The tick was humourous in it's cartoony elasticity. Live Version=Suicide.
Just my 2 cents.
I'm angry, but not surprised that Fox killed The Lone Gunmen. I think they should have kept showing it on Sunday nights at 9:00 so they could stick the X-Files back to it's original Friday night spot where I could more easily miss it.
I'm glad to read that The Family Guy is back. That is one of the best shows to ever be televised!
As if real geeks actually gave a shit about how they looked. Any alleged geek who truly cares to look the part is only a wanna-be.
Supposedly, according to the engineer at our local Fox affiliate, "Fox intends to use the wide format for most all of their prime time entertainment programs, starting this fall." I can live with that, too. Now if I could just get some 1080i Scully yummies, I'd never leave the house.
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-"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." - Arthur Dent
Slightly offtopic here, Slashdot now require 2 minutes between posts? Why not just make it 5 minutes, 15 minutes or 5 hours!?! A number won't fix what's broken.