Movie/TV cliches

[honeybee]

The term curse, in this case, is facetious. It's just a term writers use.

And Joss Whedon wrote not one but two of the most compelling television romances in history - Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike - though both were inherently doomed. He also wrote the first truly organic, not-done-for-shock-value lesbian romance on television with Willow/Tara. And I might be in the minority, but Zoe and Wash were my favorite thing about Firefly. So. . .Joss is wrong that he's not that good at romance. He did screw up every romance on Angel, though.

[WarpGirl]

Well I am a Firefly Fan, I love Zoe and Wash, but I HATE HATE Mal/Inara. But definitely never a Buffy or Angel fan, so I wouldn't know about them. I was just saying what the man himself said. If he feels he can't write a true romance, than that is what he felt. He thought all of us John/Cameron shippers were out of our minds. After all John Conner can't love a Terminator, its sacreligious. Yet strangely enough he did. And she loved him. But I must have read dozens of interviews where he said "I cannot write a romance, if I do they aren't really romances they're tragadies."

[Alelou]

Well, Zoe and Wash certainly played that out, eventually. I liked them, too, but they were not the leads. Star Trek purposely built in romantic suspense as B or C plots in all its shows and usually only allowed people to get together if they were less important characters, like Miles and Keiko, or if it was so late in the series run that it hardly mattered, or if they had so much built-in conflict they knew they could keep people watching in suspense. Paris and Torres fall into that category, I believe, and Trip and T'Pol could have -- but not without some risk. Given that the show spent its entire run at risk of cancellation, I completely understand the lack of desire to risk jumping the shark.

X-Files just got so incredibly stupid in so many ways by the end that I stopped watching.

[WarpGirl]

Given that the show spent its entire run at risk of cancellation, I completely understand the lack of desire to risk jumping the shark.

Now that says something! The first half of season 1 the ratings were Astronomical. But they dropped off so fast it couldn't have been the romantic aspects of the traditional Moonlighting curse. TnT was by no means the nail in the coffin there.

[honeybee]

X-Files just got so incredibly stupid in so many ways by the end that I stopped watching.

In some ways, the X-files was a reverse example of the Moonlighting curse - the writers were so obsessed with not getting Mulder and Scully together that they road the show into the ground without giving so many viewers what they wanted.

But they dropped off so fast it couldn't have been the romantic aspects of the traditional Moonlighting curse.

Obviously. TnT didn't happen until season three and the ratings problems happened way before that. From what I gather, TnT excited the base and made a lot of the still loyal viewers happy. It certainly added lightness to an otherwise very dark season. But TnT had little or nothing to do with the show's ratings problems. I've anecdotally heard of viewers coming back to the show because of TnT - but the ratings indicate that they didn't draw in a lot of new viewers.

[WarpGirl]

Well Alelou said they didn't want to risk jumping the shark by giving a full relationship. That wasn't possible because the show had already jumped the shark in terms of ratings before TnT ever got truly started.

Heck just because a show does Jump the shark doesn't mean it gets axed. As a JAG fan who stuck with it to the bitter end I'd say the show jumped the shark in season 6. It lasted another four.

[Silverbullet]

I may be wrong but I belive that what killed Mooonlighting was the fact that Willis and Sherpard hated one another and could not stand to be on a sset together much less act. Nevertheless they wre so professional they could do Love scenes and make them believeable.

If the writers beleive in their chracters I think they could write a romance that would work and not bore the viewers. If the writers thought the characters deserved to be together they could write compeling stories for them. Certainly Trip and T-Pol had enough built in tension being two species and with the addition of Terra Prime a coupling would lend itself to the drama in the show. How many Fanfic have been written on that theme. Succesful Fanfics. Many take a different angle on it but they are all valid. They build tension in even ordinary stories. The writers and Produces have to believe in thier characters. With Ent it was too easy for them to have a one Hero series. Just one character they had to concentrate on the rest were window dressing to make the main character look good.

I will say tha all of the other series were Ensemble and were succesful and were not under the axe all of the time. Yet they had couples. Not the orginal Trek as Roddenbury was just feeling his way when they got cancelled. But even in that Nurse chappel had the hots for Spock.


I think if the writers had beleived in Trip and T-POl and thought it out they could have had a good B Plot line.

[WarpGirl]

Like anything else a strong desire to actually do it is necessary in order for a success. If it isn't a comittment it isn't going to work. One of the things that made the Paris/Torres romance so good rocky times, and all was the fact that the team was committed to making it work. TPTB and the actors were going to show the relationship as flawed, hard, insane at points, but it was never a question whether it would be successful.

[panyasan]

ENT TV Tropes. This covers pretty much all of them.

I especially agree with the fake nationality. I would have like Hoshi to be Korean instead of Japanese. She looks so much like an Korean-American friend of mine (including her speech), Linda Park last name is Park (Park is the most common Korean name) and the way Hoshi acts so totally not Japanese... I had a hard time buying her being Japanese. Everytime I saw her I was like "there is H. (my friend).
Then I only remembered how Dutch actors in Hollywood always play bad Germans or Russians or bad Eastern European, any thing bad goes..

[Alelou]

I really don't think we can blame Ent too much for its crappy ratings, though I'd be tempted to after some of the dud episodes. It was the victim of a start-up network flailing around and weird-ass scheduling. TNG was pretty bad for the first two seasons, too, but it got a steady time slot and commitment from above.

I think I might have been able to stick the keeping-Mulder-and-Scully-apart shenanigans of X-Files better if it hadn't indulged in such completely implausible story lines (Mulder is buried and then resurrected months later? Seriously???) and an increasingly incoherent alien conspiracy plot. To me the X-Files is story of Chris Carter, who controlled every word there, falling into a rabbit hole and just digging it deeper and deeper as time went on. Star Trek was more of a committee effort. This meant it could be a little bland and homogenized, but it also maintained its sanity.

Speaking of insane affection for a show -- my parents have had to delay their trip north, first because my dad had a kidney stone and even after treatment for that wasn't feeling up to hitting the road (especially with rest stops as far apart as they are), and now they also have to wait until Wednesday morning to leave because 1) My mother refuses to miss the finale of Lost, and 2) she refuses to watch it in the same room with my father, who will sigh or make disapproving comments.

(Apparently I inherited the TV show addict gene from HER.)

[WarpGirl]

Awe I actually felt really bad for Linda Park. Once a "fan" was completely brutal saying she had no right to play a Japanese woman because she was Korean. I liked her response, "I'm an actress what difference would it make if I played an Irish woman and did it well? Now if you say I'm not playing my part well that's another story."

Alelou Bones has the most insane juggle through a schedual in TV history (and insane hiatuses) and Fox Network went nuts too. They're still wonderful. You have to have magic to survive. And ENT magic was severely limited.

[Alelou]

A matter of opinion, surely.

I've tried Bones but perhaps because of the sour taste from X-Files or perhaps because the episodes I tried were not particularly exciting, I decided I had better things to do. I have watched YouTube links Escriba sent me -- and they were cute -- but that's all I need. That way I don't have to sit through all the other crap.

[WarpGirl]

Possibly but I doubt it. Bones is a show with a 52 day MID-SEASON hiatus. We've only had a perminent time for two seasons out of five. That is definitely insane. And the ratings exploded over the last three years, inspite of the crazy waits because to fans it is magical. ENT never even had that with die-hard trek fans. Never. All I'm saying is crazy networks and scheduals aside you have to have something to offer. ENT killed itself with bad episodes and too little character development.

Even Sarah Conner Chronicals killed itself... Joss Whelan's "Crazy Sarah" episodes killed it. The ratings dropped like a stone fast. Couple that with the writers strike that killed the first season and it died.

[honeybee]

I really don't think we can blame Ent too much for its crappy ratings, though I'd be tempted to after some of the dud episodes. It was the victim of a start-up network flailing around and weird-ass scheduling. TNG was pretty bad for the first two seasons, too, but it got a steady time slot and commitment from above.

100% agree. UPN failed as a network - and Paramount sent their worst executives there to end their careers. And those executives had expectations that ENT would get TNG style ratings without factoring in the massive amount of competition that had appeared in the tv landscape from digital cable. Genre shows, outside of occasional hits like Lost, continue to struggle because they are expensive and generally attract a small, niche audience - and they take time to find their footing. The CW now considers 2 million viewers a week a huge, huge hit. ENT got those numbers until the fourth season when they dumped it Friday night. ENT was also big hit in other countries, including the UK. Also, the fact that UPN ran ENT episodes twice a week in primetime really cut into the first run numbers. Also, DVRs were brand new and trek fans tend to be early adopters. Apparently Enterprise was the number one tivo-ed show - with at least a half million people recording it every week.

So, it was a perfect storm. Without making any excuses for the weaknesses of the show, ENT got a bad deal as far as ratings, timing and scheduling.

TNG's first season is far worse than ENT's first season. And ENT's first season - as you say - has some real clunkers. And the TCW did not serve the show well. But by the third and fourth season the show was producing episodes as good as anything Trek had ever produced. And even the much-praised DS9 didn't really start getting good until its third season - and still managed to produce some clunkers all the way through its run.

TNG had the good luck to have network support and a fanbase that was far more forgiving.

My experiences with Bones is weak. I think it is a show that had good writers and bad writers. And the episode quality really depends on who is writing that particular episode. But I'm not a big fan of procedurals. I tend to lose interest about one season. I know people find the formulaic nature of them comforting - (RIP L&O) - but I've always enjoyed the trek shows and the Whedon shows because they don't follow a formula - and the episodes differ ever week.

[WarpGirl]

All I know is this and a guy who worked on TV shows told me, if you have a rabid fan base, (and Trekkies are the second most rabid fanbase it history, other than SW's...) and you lose them, it's more than networks.

You either have to get new blood which ENT did not attept to do at all. Or get back your rabid fanbase, which ENT could not do. To blame UPN for everything makes no sense. Yes, the ratings for VOY took a hit the last two seasons, but when ENT premiered it was an explosion. They had the potential to keep them, even with network dust ups. Other shows have survived it. A network can screw up no question. But it takes more to kill a show.

The reason why J.J. Abrams Trek exploded was because it was good enough to keep a lot of die hards and bring in a lot of new blood. ENT couldn't do that. If J.J. Abrams had done it as a series instead of a film the ratings would top anything on TV because he's "in" and he did it well.