All Shows

The utter failure of the show that couldn’t fail. Premiering to vast hype after the must-see World Series of 2003 (go, Marlins!), this Bruckheimer-produced spectacle was built for a FOX demographic. People, it was about porn. Ron Silver played the dad of a beautiful blonde girl who falls in love with the son of Silver’s arch-nemesis, the eeeeeeeevil District Attorney who wants to put Silver behind bars. But even a cavalcade of impressive guest stars — well, just Sydney from Melrose Place, actually — couldn’t get the viewership above four million. Which is, like, the number of people who watched syndicated reruns of The Nanny two hours earlier on the same network. Actually, it’s fewer than that.

Less than super.

Fade out on a girl…

Six seasons of laughter, pain, therapy, gangland executions…pretty much the same stuff David Chase gave us in I’ll Fly Away and Northern Exposure. It was a crazy, critically-beloved ride — but then, should we be referring to it in the past tense? There could still be movies! Don’t stop! Believing!

Because the world was clamoring to see what went on inside a sorority house, the great Sergio Myers created Sorority Life. Because what we found had no resemblance at all to our fantasies, no one watched. Though the cat-fighting and back-stabbery that came with girls desperately trying to become the Queens of Davis, CA and Buffalo, NY was at times amusing, it wasn’t enough to keep TWoP recapping the thing. Goodnight, Maggie’s Gigantic Boobies of Hatred, wherever you guys are.

ABC never seemed to know what to do with this half hour, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Was it a comedy? A drama? Certainly the network could be blamed for a couple of bad decisions, like imposing a jarring laugh track early on and never giving the show a regular timeslot. After two seasons, ABC cut the show loose, but it’ll live on in our hearts forever.

Step off.

Aaron Sorkin came back to network TV to save it from itself. At least, that’s what he told us in the pilot. Unfortunately, years of watching “illiterate” reality programs had left viewers enfeebled and unable to watch his new show correctly. We kept expecting the lauded sketch comedy show-within-the-show to be funny, for example. We can be so stupid sometimes. Sorry, Aaron.

H’elle no.

It was summer. There was…land. But somehow the mix of teen poster boys, family hijinks, and Francie from Alias didn’t have enough appeal. We blame the Creepy Cult Kid.

Imagine if you will, six former celebrities who still have egos the size of Pittsburgh being forced to live together in a mansion for two weeks and do all sorts of crazy activities like visit a nudist colony and take part in a fake talk show that crushes those huge egos. Sounds like a great show, right? So why weren’t you watching it and reading the recaps?

Summer dreams ripped at the seams, but oh, those summer nights.