Little Lost Shows: TV That Died Too Soon
Enlightened hasn't been cancelled, but from all the talk on the web since Sunday's season finale, you would think it had. The buzz may be well-founded because of some insider knowledge, but in TV, the numbers seldom lie. According to some reports, Enlightened was averaging 200-300,000 viewers this season, and that puts it in Terriers territory — and that's not good. In fact, for HBO, which used to own Sunday night with such shows as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, it's relatively dismal, and it's almost a lock that Enlightened won't be back.
And that's a shame. Lots of stories were running last week calling Enlightened the best show that no one was watching. It is. Stars and co-creators Mike White (right) and Laura Dern (top photo, right) brought something very worthwhile to series television: literary-like depth to characters, and a story that took small, surprising steps mirroring everyday life in all its awkwardness.
Enlightened's theme of being courageous instead of comfortable was quiet and relevant at almost every turn. Dern's character, Amy Jellicoe, despite her selfish, sometimes reckless methods, made us consider: Do we live just for work? Does grace mean only quiet suffering? Do we chase what it is we desire, or are we able to pursue what is sustaining?
No so bad for a little TV show. It got us thinking about some other small favorites that should have lasted longer, but didn't.
There were some recent ones; the twisty Awake (2012), the equally twisty Rubicon (2010, with James Badge Dale, left), and the aforementioned, scruffy Terriers (2010, Donal Logue, top photo, second from right). Those got a full season before getting the ax, and we were able to get closure on most of their story lines.
There were some shows, like Enlightened, that got two or three seasons, but we wished had gone on. Men of a Certain Age (2009-10) comes immediately to mind. The oddball Pushing Daisies (2008-09), a fanciful tale of a pie-maker (Lee Pace, top photo, second from left) able to bring the dead back to living by his touch, is another.
There was Eli Stone (2008-09), about the lawyer whose larger-than-life hallucinations lead him to think something greater might be going on. Many other good shows, though, like Caprica (2010), the almost uniformly acclaimed prequel to Battlestar Galactica, did not make it past one season.
A quick call to David Bianculli, Fearless Leader of TVWW, had him instantly pulling a few less recent examples out of the Way Back Machine: Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds (1977-81), the PBS "talk show" that had panel discussions between actors playing significant historical figures. He also eulogized CBS's He & She (right, 1967-68) often cited as the forerunner to The Mary Tyler Moore Show family of sitcoms; the landmark HBO western Deadwood (three short seasons from 2004-06); and The Great American Dream Machine, the PBS political sketch comedy show/documentary series/unpredictable hodgepodge that lasted a single brilliant season (1971-72).
Some TVWW contributors, their impeccable taste being above reproach (and I write that with all humility), while having picked out sure winners for the past five years, have not been above buying into some that did not even make a full season. I was pleased with Allen Gregory (2011) for its retro-hiptser animation style and its irreverent subject matter (seven episodes.) And I was waayyy out in front of this year's Do No Harm, which got cut after a total of exactly two. (But, hey, The New York Times was with me on that one.)
None of us will miss this season's The Mob Doctor or the certifiably incoherent Zero Hour, but the possible demise of Enlightened got us thinking about shows that really touched us, and have stayed with us long after they were gone.
If you have any favorites that got away too soon, let us know.