RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Tragically short-lived TV shows

I saw the old Outer Limits tv series the first time in 1978, when I was 15 years old, otherwise some of them might have given me nightmares too.

STAR TREK series, episode list

But I remember the first Star Trek episode I saw, back in 1969, "The Man Trap" (episode 6), with the monster that takes the illusion of being human, and then puts its suction-cup hands on a person's face and absorbs all the salt out of their bodies, leaving red rings on their dead faces... man, that scared the crap out of me !


I thought the woman who played the monster in human disguise looked really creepy too. Very true to her role.



But her other disguise persona was hot !

http://www.sixtiescity.com/startrek/LOST/nancycrater2.jpg

At six years old, I wasn't fully appreciative of that beauty. And of course, she's probably older than my grandmother now...

The Tick - the best superhero show of 2001, and it was killed off right out of the gate.

The Critic - I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this show, and it showed what a versatile and gifted actor Jon Lovitz actually is. (I've never seen him do anything even remotely as dynamic and rich as this before or since, which is a shame. He showed a depth and range I never would have expected from him, and that was one of the show's strongest points.) Then a stupid FOX exec decided he didn't want it on the network despite its good ratings and loyal fan base, so he killed it out of spite. To this day, I still mourn this show's demise, and I sincerely hope they make a movie out of it at some point. That, and I still scream with laughter when Orson Welles says Rosebud Frozen Peas are "full of country goodness and green peaness!" (Don't bother with the short-lived webisode version of this; the showrunners gutted the webisodes of everything that made the series so great.)

Flying Blind - this show was just a riot. It was my first exposure to Tea Leoni and her brand of self-humiliating slaptick silliness, and the way she drove her boyfriend completely bonkers always had me laughing.

The Edge - Julie Brown, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Kenny...not a bad comedy team at all. Add Bill Plympton to the equation, and you got a pretty cool sketch comedy series. Too bad it got whacked.

So far, all the shows I've listed came from FOX (although The Critic had a short run on ABC), so it's only fair that I take a swipe at Cartoon Network:

Welcome To Eltingville - this was a fantastic pilot, pure geek heaven. Why the hell wasn't this picked up as a series? It's easily the best thing Adult Swim ever produced, and it still deserves to be revived. Hell, pair this up with The Critic and you'd have an unstoppable hour of quality comedy.

MYP's Masters of the Universe - hey, CN, think you buttheads could have jumped this around your schedule any more? This show was jumped and jerked around so much that it never had a chance to find its footing or build a stable viewership. And now it's gone, right along with the whole He-Man revival. Again, it's a shame, because MYP managed to take what was so good about the old series and improve on it to a degree. I loved seeing actual swashbuckling action for a change. *Sigh* Oh, well, I guess we'll just have to wait a while longer before He-Man and the gang come back for good....

EDIT: Forgot to add The Flash to my list. It was everything Lois & Clark should have been and wasn't, and it was snuffed by The Simpsons. Did CBS WANT this show to die on the vine?

A conversation with Animalman just now brought back memories of "The Norm Show"(changed to just Norm after a comic strip writer bitched about it). I think it was really the best utilization of Norm MacDonald's style. Although it was kinda hard to buy him being a former hockey player(he's much more convincing as a guy who keeps getting thrown through windows), that did lead to my favorite episode, where everybody remembered Norm as "the guy who scored a goal with his ass."

Happy Gilmore, the only guy to ever attack another player with his hockey skate.

My list...

Disney's Gargoyles- A brilliantly written animated series, sabotaged by by poor writing in the 3rd season.

Special Unit 2- This was just a fun action/fantasy show.

Super Adventure Team- Before Team America, MTV had a parody of Thunderbirds, which was pure genius.

The Chronicle- This show was trippy.

The Lone Gunmen- Fun.

Firefly- More fun.

Invisible Man (or I-Man... whatever)

G V E (aka Good Vs. Evil)

John Doe (I'm not kiddin'... with the right writers...)

Babylon 5: Crusade

Eerie, Indiana was a great show! I watched it with my daughter every Saturday morning. Fox had some interesting kids shows that year. Mostly you get shows with some stupid moral lesson to preach on Saturdays now.

Oh yeah. I liked Touching Evil too...

I bet it liked touching you even more.

You fucking know it.

...I wanna go to the Pariah School of Crazy Method Acting!

Smart move.

Which course would you prefer?

Disassociative lessons

Paranoid Schizophrenic impersonation

Berserker Rage 101

Or Nymphomania?

Now and Again: John Goodman's brain in the body of a super soldier. Excellent show, loved by critics, cancelled after one season.
The Fugitive: Great modern reworking of the 1960's show. High production costs of working a different city each week killed it.
Brimstone: Amazing show about a cop who kills his wife's rapist, gets sent to hell and then "paroled" on the condition he recapture 113 escaped damned souls. John Glover as the devil.

Does Get Smart count? Nevermind.....I think that one was long lived.

Speaking of Brimstone, Millenium was alright. But it got waaay convuluted near its end.

I can't believe "Green Hornet" (or "The Kato Show" in Asia) hasn't been mentioned, with a young Bruce Lee as Kato.

There was a second one too that was not-so-tragically short lived...cause it sucked.

Roar: A summer show back in the mid-90's.A young boy trying to unite the various peoples of Scotland(I think Scotland or maybe Ireland....can't really remember)against the Roman invaders while also dealing with a witch and and a wizard searching for the Spear of Destiny.Of course I'm not positive about the details,as it's been a while since I saw this show....but I do remember liking it a lot.

you should probably stop calling yourself the champ......loser.

Dunno Snarf, I can't stand Andy Dick. Kill 'im...kill him and eat him.

So... you're saying you want to eat dick??

Herman's Head: This series went on hiatus after three seasons. I never heard about them airing any reruns, but at least we have that Simpsons episode when Lisa thinks about using Bart as a science project, then laughs, and Marge asks her what's so funny, and Lisa says "Oh nothing, I just remembered an episode of Herman's Head." I believe the episode she's thinking of was when Louise slammed the phone down on someone, then asked Herman "Do you think I sound like that Lisa Simpson character?" and Herman gave a 'huh?' look and said "No!"

Charlie Hoover: Charlie had an alter-ego who was played by Sam Kinison, who had died (car accident, I believe) that same year.

The Heights: It's a shame that the song "How do you talk to an angel" did so well, but the show did badly, even though the cast was in the music video. Lenny and Stan were friends that put together the band, Jodie and Dizzy were a couple that became expecting, engaged, and married (in that order), Alex (Jamie Walters, later played Ray Pruitt in 90210) and Rita were a couple that became engaged, JT and Hope were remaining friends. Half the people tried to tell me it was a spin off of 90210, but it wasn't.

Everything's Relative. A sort of proto-Arrested Development by the same creator (also featuring Jefferey Tambor as the patriarch). Only 3 episodes aired in 1999 before NBC pulled the plug.

Sliders. When Fox took over creative control completely in the 3rd season it was unwatchable.

Actually, one that comes to mind is Beakman's World. It was entertaining and educational.

Ooh! The Weird Al Show!

r3x: I've seen every Sliders as of a few months ago, literally cried during three of those episodes. The show lasted five seasons (some of which were after they moved to the Sci-Fi channel), but the show IMO wasn't as good as the first two seasons or so. They started of with better ideas for parallel worlds based on time lines, but later they tried to compete with X-Files so they slid to more freakish worlds (dream invaders, vampires, magic, underground mutated zombies??). The final episode was a cliffhanger, but I have a link somewhere to a Sliders fanfic web page where people wrote Sixth and Seventh seasons.

Incidentally, the last episode I saw for the first time was the first hour of the pilot, because I kept missing it for various reasons. That line from Professor Arturo was funny "I think I just saw God, and I could have sworn he was driving a Cadillac."

The Wizard: Just remembered this one from the mid 80's. It starred David Rappaport (a dwarf) who created all kinds of toys and gadgets, mostly for fighting crime (or maybe it was solving mysteries, don't recall right off hand). I vaguely remember one where he made this robot seeing eye dog that looked real but only responded to the blind person's voice.

David was supposed to guest-star in the STAR TREK:TNG episode, "The Most Toys," but he committed suicide as fiming commenced and Saul Rubinek was brought in at the 11th hour to reshoot Rappaport's scenes.

Ouch. I never knew that..