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I love music, books, movies, blah, blah, blah! I love people, learning new things, and always progressing to be a better person.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Blog Where The Geek In Me Beats Up The Nerd In Me...Or Top Ten Television Shows That Ended Or Were Cancelled WAY TOO SOON!

Hey Everyone!
Out of sheer boredom and the fact that I picked out some shows from my roomate's DVD collection (it's okay, I asked and he said it was cool). I was home sick for a day and I decided to make the best of it by trying something new. I watched a few episodes from some of the TV series I had never heard of and came to find that THEY ARE AMAZING!!!! But the big problem is that some of them are long gone or sadly only lasted one season. So now I am going to make a list of the top 10 TV series that ended or were cancelled WAY BEFORE THEIR TIME!!!! These are not in any particular order by the way...and I've added some small descriptions as well.

Top 10 Awesome TV Series That R.I.P.

10. Firefly -This show was created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the vampire slayer, Angel, and a few episodes of the office). It's if star trek met bonanza! It's set in a future after a large "Alliance" has taken over the galaxy and left the bandits and cowboys on the outskirts of the universe to try to make a new living. It follows the ex-Independence fighter Mal and his rag tag team into small crime after small crime until they come across a young doctor and his hyper intelligent sister who are on the run from the Alliance. The series is AMAZING! Cowboys and spaceships, it sounds retarded but the dialogue and characters are incredibly likable in the ridiculous situation at hand. Plus it's the series debut of Summer Glau...hubba hubba. The series only lasted a season but they made a movie to wrap everything up called Serenity that is an amazing send off to a great series! Check them both out! Shame on you FOX for cancelling this gem WAY TOO SOON.

9. Dead Like Me - Any series that focuses on a teenager killed by a burning hunk of metal from the space station Mir has something going for it. Even more impressive is the fact that Mandy Patinkin finally has a role as good as when he was in the princess bride "you killed my father prepare to die." Dead like me was a Showtime channel series about a college dropout, George Lass who is killed by a toilet seat that falls from the MIR space station on her first day at a temp agency. Upon death, she is recruited for a team of grim reapers - undead who mix among the and take people's souls just before they die. Along with fellow team members Mason, Roxy, Betty, and leader Rube, George discovers life after life. A hilarious and dark look at life in the afterlife. Since it wasn't on cable it is more R rated than any others but my hell it was entertaining. And sadly enough it left with a giant cliffhanger before it was cancelled all together.


8. Pushing Daisies - Ned possesses the unique talent of being able to bring the life to dead merely by touching them. However, the person may remain alive only for one minute, or else someone else dies for them. Through his connections with PI Emerson Cod, Ned revives his childhood sweetheart, Chuck. The trio, aided occasionally by Olive Snook, helps solve the mysteries of various murders, whose murderer is often surprising. Created by the guy who made Dead Like me and With a co-star like Kristin Chenoweth (who in my opinion is one of the most beautiful 40 year old woman, I have ever seen) this show should have been on for years...but alas...it's as dead as the people he revived in the series.

7. Frisky Dingo - This is one of the two cartoons on the list. Xander Crews is a billionaire playboy whose alter ego is the superhero Awesome X. He'd much rather goof around as a superhero than tend to the everyday aspects of running a corporation. The only problem is that Awesome X has gotten rid of every super-villain in the city. Coincidentally, a new super-villain named Killface appears. His goal is to destroy humanity using the Annihilatrix, a machine which upon completion will hurl the earth into the sun. The only problem is that he has no way of getting the 12 billion dollars needed to complete his doomsday device. This show was OUT OF CONTROL! There was no way to predict where it was going or why but everything that comes out of the characters mouths is comic gold!

6. Deadwood - HBO's kick ass drama is about the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, a lawless sinkhole of crime and corruption. A disillusioned and bitter ex-lawman, Seth Bullock, a man hoping to find a new start for himself. Finds himself quickly on opposite sides of the legal and moral fence from Al Swearengen, saloon owner, hotel operator, and incipient boss of Deadwood. The lives of these people intertwine with many others, the high-minded and the low-lifes who populate Deadwood in 1876. If you can keep up with the rough Shakespearean dialogue and come to terms with the fact that there really is no closure to the multiple story lines in the series then you will LOVE this show!

5. Carnivale - Carnivale in two seasons won 5 Emmy's and was nominated for dozens of other awards. Yet, at the end of the second season, just when the drama was peaking in suspense, HBO decided not to renew. The show takes place in depression-era America and follows a traveling circus, as an epic battle good and evil is emerging. Imagine X-files with more likable characters, a more compelling story, amazing production & sets, and you have Carnivale. HBO also charges ridiculous amounts for its DVDs so find it and rent it!


4. Andy Richter Controls The Universe - This single-camera show was to office sitcoms what "Scrubs" has been to hospital sitcoms. Richter played a fiction writer stuck in a generic job, fantasizing about his own heroics amid office bureaucracy. This short lived series showed us why Richter left Conan O’Brien.




3. Freakazoid - Now I know what you're thinking...yes it is a kids show...But I watched this show as a kid! If this show had stayed on the air I probably wouldn't have gotten bored sitting at home watching my little brother and came up with the game we used to play called "Can Neil hit Glen with a baseball from across the room?" and the answer is yes he can. Freakaziod was a kids show from the creator of Animaniacs. If followed a geeky kid who would turn into Freakaziod to save the day. The thing I loved about this show was the references to movies from the 1930s...and how most kids would have NO CLUE what those jokes meant! My parents even liked this one because it tailored its jokes to kids and adults...which shows like Hannah Montana and other Disney spew fails to do today.


2. Action - "Action" beat "Entourage" to the punch, and its punch was much harder. This was a dark satire of Hollywood cynicism and deal-making that took no prisoners. It probably belonged on cable, where viewers are willing to accept characters who are not cozy. The cast was sharp, and the writing was even sharper.





1. Arrested Development - Finally, no list would be complete without the best thing to happen to television in the last ten years...period. For three seasons we followed the Bluth family in their corruption, adoption, Never Nude, possible incest and loved every minute of it. The premise of the show is level-headed son Michael Bluth takes over family affairs after his father is imprisoned for fraud. But the rest of his spoiled, dysfunctional family are making his job unbearable. It doesn't sound like much but trust me this show is AMAZING!!!! I've never laughed so hard or quoted so much until I watched this show. Sadly I was one of the many people who heard about this show only after it had been cancelled. If you are bored with reality TV, crappy game shows, and mindless gossip shows please buy all three seasons and watch!

For those of you who read this all the way through...thank you for joining me in this journey about what I did when I probably should have been studying, working, or doing something else a million times more productive. If you get a chance please check out these shows and please, please, please if you see a good show struggling on TV tell someone about it or at least watch it because if you don't these people will be the ones left on television...













































And let's be honest...no (intelligent) person wants that...