Re: Jezebel James Deathwatch: As Expected, RIP

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:11:04 -0500, Keith Baird
<keith.baird@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Shut-In Rob wrote:
>> Fox has closed the book on Amy Sherman-Palladino's post-Gilmore Girls
>> comeback vehicle, The Return of Jezebel James, after three
>> abysmally-rated outings.
>
>Unsurprising.  After all, the Gilmore Girls quality plummet began while 
>ASP was still in charge of that series.  Either she doesn't have it any 
>more or, more likely, early seasons of GG were simply a fluke.

Gg wasn't a fluke -- it was simply that by the end of s6, she was
burnt out.  IMO she probably went and did another series too soon,
thinking, "Oh, it's a sitcom, I'll only be doing half the work" and
then that not happening.

FTR, too, most creator/showrunners (ie: showrunners who write their
shows) are not of the David E. Kelley variety.  DEK is pretty much
obsessive/compulsive about writing and cranks out a lot of scripts (a
lot of even DEK fans like me would add, " . . . to his and his shows'
detriments").  Most creator showrunners are only going to have one or
two shows in them that really click with the audience to become
classics.  Even Joss having two hits (Buffy and Angel) and one
short-lived cult classic (Firefly) is unusual and I would hazard a
guess that before it even airs there's a high probability that his
upcoming vehicle for Eliza Dushku, Dollhouse, might not withstand the
several orders of magnitude larger pressure/expectations from the fans
that Joss may not be aware he's now working under or absurdly
increased scrutiny he might get from the increasingly stupid
entertainment press corps (particularly from reviewers at the NYT,
Newsday and USA Today and a couple of other papers that escape me
right now.)

Also, to look at it from another perspective:  Gg isn't a fluke --
it's 153 a large body of works (yes, plural) centered around these
characters.  Stories where only a handful of them (mostly in s1, 2 and
4 IMO) were disasters.

Gg's got a hit-miss ratio that's far superior to a lot of other series
(Monk comes to mind, for one.  Every Trek series except DS9, which is
in the same ballpark as Gg, for four others.)

So I just think it's fallacious to look at any show creator's success
rate from such a black-and-white perspective as the one you pose. It's
just not that simple.

  -- Rob
--
LORELAI: I am so done with plans. I am never, ever making one again.  
It never works.  I spend the day obsessing over why it didn't work 
and what I could've done differently.  I'm analyzing all my shortcomings 
when all I really need to be doing is vowing to never, ever make a plan 
ever again, which I'm doing now, having once again been the innocent 
victim of my own stupid plans.  God, I need some coffee.