"You Can't Take The Sky From Me..."

Alert! I have officially joined the cult of FIREFLY, the greatest series never to make it on television.

I just do not understand the mentality behind what makes it on television and what doesn't. Well, I guess I basically do. If people watch it, the show stays on the air. If the executives in tv land realize people watch a show, they'll keep it.

Did FIREFLY really not have enough viewers? How can this be? I never gave it a thought when it was on the air. That's probably because I was in law school, and had bigger fish to fry. At least, I thought I did, but I digress. This show had it all: great writing, great characters, great acting, great plots, great sets. There wasn't anything bad in it, period. Yet the show got yanked after 1/2 a season. Why?

Basically, imagine the better John Wayne westerns such as RIO BRAVO and THE SEARCHERS, add in a healthy mix of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, throw in a bit of STAR WARS, and there you have FIREFLY. A space western. How cool an idea is that?? Joss Whedon is a certified geek genius, and he did a great job with this show. He put together a top-notch cast, a cool premise, and just ran wild with it. The show had intelligent writing, though. That probably killed it.

It also had nice guns, used prominently. Another plus in my book. Also some nice conservative values thrown in here and there, and Lord knows we can't have THAT on television.

It seems the more mindless a show is, the better chance it has of staying on the air. Look at FRIENDS. Sorry for those of you who watch it, but that show is worthless. It's a bunch of city snobs sleeping with each other, and then whining about it. They are rude, stupid, venal, and base. And this show lasted TEN SEASONS. I just hate watching it. The same with WILL & GRACE. Let's take the whole homosexual thing out of the mix on that show. I would hate the characters even if they were all straight. Again: rude, stupid, venal, and base. How can we care about people like that? Why would I watch them?

What disturbs me is what this probably says about our culture. How Americans watch this stuff is beyond me. I think I lose IQ points every time that stupid FRIENDS theme song plays. But what did I expect? Twice the number of votes were cast for AMERICAN IDOL than in the last presidential election. If that doesn't tell me about the collective IQ of the country, I don't know what will.

Take a show that actually fires up the imagination a bit, and it can't survive. That's apparently because the viewing public has the collective IQ of celery, and the attention span roughly the equivalent to that of a fly. So goodbye to FARSCAPE. Goodbye to FIREFLY. Sayonara STRANGE LUCK. Adios, KNIGHT RIDER. Just kidding on that one.

They did follow up FIREFLY with a movie last year, called SERENITY. Not bad, but it still didn't hold a candle to the television series.

We watched the whole series this week. I'll probably go back and watch them all again, it didn't take very long. I guess my wife summed it up as best as anyone ever has. She looked at me and said, "STAR TREK survives, and THIS show gets cancelled?"

She's got a point.