There is a good epsiode of “Dinner for Five” with Judd Apatow, who was F&G’s executive producer commiserating with Peter Berg, who a “Wonderland” ex. pro., over how their shows were cancelled.

And yes for a post on school size.

OK, anyone up for a post on school size?

Firefly was terrific, but maybe not successful? I don’t think we’ll look back in five or ten years and say thank god for Firefly, it really led the way to this or that thing. I am glad it happened, and I saw the movie twice, running from the theater the first time to call a friend and say, “If I told you there was a movie where a teenage ninja girl kills an army of cannibal space zombies, you’d want to see it with me, right?”

Of course, this is to say nothing of half-hour comedies. Simpsons! Family Guy! News Radio! Arrested Development! And that’s just the present moment and recent past. And yes, I meant all four of those.

and

The latter, a classic Terry Nation piece from the early 80s (see also his: The Survivors, Dr. Who and the Deadly Assassin), had most of the elements that we now treasure in B5, Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda had many straight ripoffs from it, ST: Deep Space 9, Firefly.

A ship full of characters on the run from the ‘Federation’. Conflict between the ship characters. An obsessive leader (who gets killed off)—Blake. An anti-hero (Avon). A villainess (Jacqueline Pierce as Servalan) who out-villains all space villains.

Main characters who get killed off. Episodes that end badly or inconclusively. Betrayal. Leaders who make fatal mistakes for their followers. Infighting amongst the ‘heroes’. Onboard supercomputers (Orac).

If you watch ‘Firefly’ or ‘B5’ or ‘Andromeda’ you will realise how much these shows owe to Blake’s 7.

http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/

Barney Miller was apparently dead on accurate. Remember when Harris (the black cop) couldn’t get an apartment because the landlord said New York cop was not a stable job?

If you remember the film K-Pax (Kevin Spacey as a maybe alien) then there was a Barney Miller episode which was even better: when the alien tells Harris about the future price of zinc, and Harris is running around ‘has anyone ever heard of a town called ‘Medicine Hat’?

Cops I knew said being a cop was 20% Adam 12 and 80% Barney Miller.

I got bored of the melodrama in St. Elsewhere (yes, I know, the same thing happened on Hill Street) and the more and more extreme plots. But the one where Dr. Sigmund Ausfaller refuses to allow the hospital to join in Reagan Administration planning for nuclear war, and quotes Robert Oppenheimer (quoting the Hindu Scripture) at the detonation of the first atomic bomb

‘for I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’

was completely classic.

And the scene where they show the head of the hospital’s autistic son being treated with electroshock, and at the end him reading his son a story.

For the same sort of thing, and killed off because of actor Ed Asner’s stance against the Reagan Administration, Lou Grant.

In particular, the episode where the US and USSR face off over ‘Kular’ (read: Iran) and the episode, having run all over the issues of nuclear war, ends with an ambush of American troops, and as the rest of the cast leave the newsroom, Lou Grant saying ‘no, I’m gonna sit here and watch TV, and see how it all comes out’.

I’ve actually met a number of cops who loved the old “Barney Miller” though…kind of a cross between a cop show, a sitcom, and Sartre’s “No Exit”.

“My So-Called Life” was quite good and pretty original for an early/mid 1990s show.

“Firefly” was mildly entertaining but overall mediocre at best.

The new “Battlestar Gallactica” is indeed good and it is clearly more than just a scifi show.

But my best TV shows ever would have to be “Picket Fences” and “Farscape”; though they both are of very different genres, it’s hard for me to decide which is better.

Sorry, haven’t seen “Freaks and Geeks” but I will keep an eye open for it in the future.

This is the show that ended the first episode by (apparently) killing off two main characters. I mean in 1980, TV didn’t do things like that. That had complex, multi-episode story lines that were difficult to follow. That had characters who never redeemed themselves.

That first 2 minutes, when the late Michael Conrad finishes the morning briefing and then says ‘Heh, let’s be careful out there’

and then the credits roll with the police despatcher voiceover:

‘Call dispatch. Armed robbery in progress, see surplus store corner People’s Drive and 124th Street.’

And like knights riding out of the castle, the boys in blue roll their cruisers out onto the streets.

And then one episode, Michael Conrad was dead, and Betty Thomas’s character is appointed duty sergeant, and as she finishes the first morning briefing

‘and heh, let’s be careful out there’.

For a moment, she’s not acting, the cast and the characters are one at the loss of their colleague.

I am sure Homicide, the Wire, the Corner have surpassed it. Let alone Buffy. For various reasons, I am in a TV near zero zone since the late 1980s (try it sometime—you will have a better, happier life).

(On the animated track, Daria was very, very clever. A bit too adult and knowing perhaps. But Samurai Jack beats them all—see the work Genady Tartovsky went on to do in ‘Star Wars: Clone Wars’ (the first series wasn’t great, but the second).)

And in the history of television, who could forget those first 120 seconds of Hill Street Blues?