You'll never see them again
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Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say "Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!" vs "Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!"?
Yeah, but half a season?
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It also guaranteed work for those actors. A 3 season show meant you had steady work for 3 straight years and could still do auditions when you had time. This 10 episodes every 3 years is dumb
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Yes, it was a guaranteed paycheck... until the show ended. And doing a movie in the off months basically only worked for a Clooney level talent where anyone who ever interacted with him realized he was a generational talent that guys and gals would swoon for. Everyone else MAYBE could get a bit part if they knew the production crew (see: The Schwim on Band of Brothers). And then, if you were lucky, you were basically typecast by the time the show ended and stuck either playing the same character or needing to find a company that wanted to take a chance on you reinventing yourself... which lined up with the weinsteins of the world.
And all of that assumes that you aren't in a role that requires you to spend most of your off time staying in shape and having more or less the same appearance in case pick-ups are required. Otherwise you have entire VFX teams working to... remove a mustache.
That is why there is increasing pushback to Marvel Movie contracts from a lot of actors. Yes, it is a guaranteed paycheck (although those get smaller and smaller with each geneartion) but it is also the only thing you can really do for however many years in case you get called up that you just got one of your appearances added to a TV show everyone will hate.
Which is more or less where we are at. Sure you sometimes have something like a Zendaya where the Disney Channel actress you got for your lead suddenly becomes the most popular actress on the planet and you have to work around her schedule AND all the supporting actors who became high B listers. But mostly you are just dealing with talent who care more about their careers than making sure they are available for the one episode you want them to come back next year.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
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Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say "Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!" vs "Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!"?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This is how I've always felt about it too. All of Whedon's other shows had twists that made the audience hate entire seasons; there's no reason to believe Firefly would have escaped that pattern.
So instead of being sad it died early, we can be glad we can still imagine where it could have gone in the best case scenario. The vision in our minds will likely be better than what we would have got if it'd continued.
No need to worry about Jayne's inevitable face-heel turn, or whatever other terrible subplots could potentially have cropped up in later seasons like River developing explicit (rather than merely suggested) incestuous feelings for Simon, or Inara betraying the crew for a cure to her disease (before being welcomed back a season later), or Kaylee getting killed off out of nowhere because Whedon loves doing that to characters of her archetype, or YoSaffBridge becoming a core crew member after we learn her tragic backstory even though her awful personality hasn't changed at all.
And that's not even getting into what the network execs, who hated the show, would have done with their meddling. Things could have been so much worse. Fans should console themselves with the fact that the show at least died with its dignity intact, and we even got a movie that resolved a few of the major hanging threads.
No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way.
Something like this would have happened even if Joss Whedon wasn't revealed to be a scumbag. Adam Baldwin, the actor who played Jayne, went on to become a major mouthpiece for the alt-right and a mainstay of conservative Twitter. IIRC he's even the one who named GamerGate (not that the name required even a modicum of creativity).
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Yes, it was a guaranteed paycheck... until the show ended. And doing a movie in the off months basically only worked for a Clooney level talent where anyone who ever interacted with him realized he was a generational talent that guys and gals would swoon for. Everyone else MAYBE could get a bit part if they knew the production crew (see: The Schwim on Band of Brothers). And then, if you were lucky, you were basically typecast by the time the show ended and stuck either playing the same character or needing to find a company that wanted to take a chance on you reinventing yourself... which lined up with the weinsteins of the world.
And all of that assumes that you aren't in a role that requires you to spend most of your off time staying in shape and having more or less the same appearance in case pick-ups are required. Otherwise you have entire VFX teams working to... remove a mustache.
That is why there is increasing pushback to Marvel Movie contracts from a lot of actors. Yes, it is a guaranteed paycheck (although those get smaller and smaller with each geneartion) but it is also the only thing you can really do for however many years in case you get called up that you just got one of your appearances added to a TV show everyone will hate.
Which is more or less where we are at. Sure you sometimes have something like a Zendaya where the Disney Channel actress you got for your lead suddenly becomes the most popular actress on the planet and you have to work around her schedule AND all the supporting actors who became high B listers. But mostly you are just dealing with talent who care more about their careers than making sure they are available for the one episode you want them to come back next year.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
I always wondered how they planned to pull that off with the Wheel of Time show. I know it's a moot point now, but there's a big one that left and came back way later. There are also some smaller examples, but I feel like with the bit parts you could probably get someone that looks similar enough.
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Also TV now: This show/movie did well 40 years ago so we rebooted it with people who never saw it, a shitload of special effects, and totally missed why it was popular in the first place.
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Twin peaks?
Twin Peaks started out good and stayed good. I didn't get around to watching it until the late 2000s. I had heard that it started to fall apart after the killer was revealed, but it just kept getting better.
It isn't for everybody, though, and it probably just got too weird for a mainstream audience.
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Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say "Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!" vs "Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!"?
If you want to know how the series would've been if it had stayed on, you can read the comics.
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Part of the problem is that modern shows have far smaller audience than two decades ago in absolute numbers. The most watched shows today have horrific numbers compared to previous decades.
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Yes, it was a guaranteed paycheck... until the show ended. And doing a movie in the off months basically only worked for a Clooney level talent where anyone who ever interacted with him realized he was a generational talent that guys and gals would swoon for. Everyone else MAYBE could get a bit part if they knew the production crew (see: The Schwim on Band of Brothers). And then, if you were lucky, you were basically typecast by the time the show ended and stuck either playing the same character or needing to find a company that wanted to take a chance on you reinventing yourself... which lined up with the weinsteins of the world.
And all of that assumes that you aren't in a role that requires you to spend most of your off time staying in shape and having more or less the same appearance in case pick-ups are required. Otherwise you have entire VFX teams working to... remove a mustache.
That is why there is increasing pushback to Marvel Movie contracts from a lot of actors. Yes, it is a guaranteed paycheck (although those get smaller and smaller with each geneartion) but it is also the only thing you can really do for however many years in case you get called up that you just got one of your appearances added to a TV show everyone will hate.
Which is more or less where we are at. Sure you sometimes have something like a Zendaya where the Disney Channel actress you got for your lead suddenly becomes the most popular actress on the planet and you have to work around her schedule AND all the supporting actors who became high B listers. But mostly you are just dealing with talent who care more about their careers than making sure they are available for the one episode you want them to come back next year.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
You didn't have to be a huge talent on A level movies. There was always work for minor actors doing documentaries, B, C, and family movies, dozens of TV channels desperate for shows to put on the air, and other opportunities. Acting has never been an easy gig, but it's getting harder and harder to find good work these days.
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You didn't have to be a huge talent on A level movies. There was always work for minor actors doing documentaries, B, C, and family movies, dozens of TV channels desperate for shows to put on the air, and other opportunities. Acting has never been an easy gig, but it's getting harder and harder to find good work these days.
But it gets back to "what am I going to do when this show is over?".
Which is why I referenced David Schwimmer and Band of Brothers. His portrayal of Sobol was spectacular (and wildly disrespectful but that is what happens when you make a miniseries based off someone's memoirs). But he was basically in 3 episodes and was arguably more background than not in 2 of those. But there is a reason that every few months you have a "Holy shit, So and So was in Band of Brothers?". That was basically a production where anyone whose agent knew the right people could get a bit part.
But it gets back to the "problem" with the old TV model. Signing up for a TV show was basically admitting you were going to "cap out" at that unless you got INCREDIBLY lucky. Versus staying flexible and potentially becoming a great.
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Conversely
Producers find a new show idea that looks interesting and could be popular .....
Writers: yeah we got this idea that could be turned into an hour and a half hour long film ... it's very interesting, great plot dialogue, and there's a great twist
Producers, executives: Great idea! I love it! But it would give us more content if you could turn it into a series instead. Take the whole film and stretch it out across seven one hour episodes.
Writers: how?
Producers, executives: just cut it up into seven parts, slow everything down and make a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of every episode.
It depends. I really like the ability to flesh something out into a longer format - especially book adaptations. Not that there isn't space for 2 hours and under films, but the rise of high production TV series that aren't meant to go on forever IMO has been net positive.
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the one thing i do appreciate is them dropping filler episodes
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the one thing i do appreciate is them dropping filler episodes
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Community has the best "big round number" episode.
And also the best bottle episode.
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Community has the best "big round number" episode.
And also the best bottle episode.
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Yeah, but half a season?
If memory serves, the DVD set had 3 extra unaired episode, plus the follow-on movie. So all told, closer to a full season.
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If memory serves, the DVD set had 3 extra unaired episode, plus the follow-on movie. So all told, closer to a full season.
But those didn't air prior to it being shitcanned.
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If you want to know how the series would've been if it had stayed on, you can read the comics.
They just make me miss Ron Glass
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a major drop off of people dropping off the show
Uhh.. what? So more people kept watching?
Yeah. That first season was really good! And Kate Mara!
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My guess is that if you didn't like the dog scene, you wouldn't like the rest of the show. The tone is the same.
Nailed it. Kevin Spacey, in the show, does whatever he needs to get what he wants. Just like in real life.
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Also TV now: This show/movie did well 40 years ago so we rebooted it with people who never saw it, a shitload of special effects, and totally missed why it was popular in the first place.
Curious - do you feel a lot of reboots have missed the mark?
I'm starting to feel the opposite, where a lot of reboots are way better than the original.
