The NY Times has an article about what TV might look like post strike:
Scripts have been junked, pilots have been canceled, deals with writers have been wiped off the books, and almost no one in the television industry has been able to make any plans during the past three months.
In an industry where business as usual means nobody knows anything, the three-month-old (and counting) writers’ strike has contributed a new state of uncertainty: Everybody knows even less.
Networks Ponder Poststrike Landscape
Audiences then often decide that the regular episodes fail to live up to the pilot. One recent example: “Bionic Woman,” NBC’s remake of an old series, which got off to a roaring start thanks to a film-quality pilot and never measured up again.
I'm not sure that was the problem with Bionic Woman.
What do you think was the problem?
That makes it sound like people thought the pilot was fantastic and then the quality dropped off. I thought the general response to the pilot was "That wasn't very good, but maybe it'll improve."
That was my take on the pilot, although I heard raves from some. I kept wondering if we'd seen the same show.
My take on the Bionic Woman pilot: I went in thinking 'This could be great!'. Followed by 'It'll be great in a minute, right?'. Followed by 'Oh, it finished'.
I watched about half of the second episode, switched over and forgot about the show.
I'm finding The Sarah Connor Chronicles weirdly compulsive, also. (Even if I do keep calling it The Summer Glau Chronicles). The writing is laughably bad in places, but thematically there's some great stuff going on. It's one of those shows where I wish they would give Tim half an hour with each script and said 'MAKE IT NOT SUCK' - it'd be amazing, then.
Also, this made me laugh:
Two-thirds of Americans say they are aware of the strike but haven't been following it closely, according to a survey conducted for Entertainment Weekly. One-third of Americans correctly identified WGA as the acronym for the striking Writers Guild of America; 20 percent believed it was a women's professional golf association, the survey of 1,000 adults found.
If it were the WPGA striking, the producers would have been too scared to use a lot of the stalling tactics they've employed.
I'm finding The Sarah Connor Chronicles weirdly compulsive, also. (Even if I do keep calling it The Summer Glau Chronicles). The writing is laughably bad in places, but thematically there's some great stuff going on. It's one of those shows where I wish they would give Tim half an hour with each script and said 'MAKE IT NOT SUCK' - it'd be amazing, then.
I'd disagree that it's laughably bad in places. Occasionally clunky, but not laughably bad. The characters are, for the most part, very well realized, the acting is good, and the dialogue is solid, if not exceptional/quotable. Thus far, no one suffers from Too Stupid to Live Syndrome (which is what drove me away from Heroes), and it's the only new show other than Pushing Daisies that's held my interest past the first two episodes.
Son might be too stupid to live. Time will tell.
