Good ideas are a dime a dozen, but it’s the execution that’s tricky. Dozens of new TV shows pop up every season, but only a few go on to become moderate successes, much less smash hits. Here are a few shows that I wanted to work.
Emerald City (NBC, 2017): Emerald City is a gritty reboot of The Wizard of Oz. It sounds crazy (and but was way too over the top for network television. In this version, Dorothy is a cop. She also has magical powers and becomes the unwitting heir to the Witch of the East. The Scarecrow is a tragic soldier. Glinda isn’t such a good witch after all. The Witch of the West basically runs a brothel and is usually high on poppy tea. The Tin Man is a teenage amputee and Ozma is his magical transgender BFF. Oz is, of course, a fraud–but he’s also a scientist who is scared to death of magic and tries to ban its use in order to preserve his own power.
The cinematography was excellent, but the show was ultimately brought down by trying too hard. It started really slow, and there were just too many plot points. It also dealt with some very adult themes that had to be glossed over in order to be fit for a prime time audience. A few edits and a move to SyFy or HBO could have made this show a success.
Constantine (NBC, 2014): Constantine sought to take advantage of the new wave of comic book adaptations. However, NBC was definitely the wrong network. The comics were created by Alan Moore, the same man behind The Watchmen. John Constantine is an occult practitioner and demon hunter haunted by his failure to protect innocents in the past. But the demons he fights are not of the wise cracking variety displayed on Supernatural (The CW)–they’re the baby eating, serial killing, apocalypse bringing kind. Moreover, in trying to add a female character they shoehorned in a reluctant sidekick who had escaped from a cult. The writers tried to split the difference between grim dark and comedic by making it sorta kinda dark, which killed all narrative momentum.
Almost Human (Fox, 2013): This science fiction drama shakes up the usual buddy cop dynamic by making the sidekick an android. Michael Ealy plays an AI who has seemingly developed sentience. It hit all the beats of a traditional procedural, but with an intelligent exploration of the tension between humans and robots. Karl Urban’s character also has a prosthetic leg, due to an injury he suffered in the line of duty. He hates it because he is staunchly anti-android, but as he starts to develop a true partnership with Michael Ealy, his feelings start to shift. However, the show was much too niche for Fox. SyFy would have been a natural fit, and they’ve kept worse on the air (Wynonna Earp, anyone?).
Sorry To Bother You was such a deep movie, and it put me in a mood to digest more media like it. My review (despite its length) just barely scratches the surface and there was a lot of stuff I didn’t get to. So if you’re interested in doing the same, here are my recommendations.
WATCH
Atlanta (FX, 2016-present)- If you aren’t watching this show, you should be. It’s hard to describe but most episodes are kind of like a magical realism black Seinfeld. But then there are episodes that veer into very weird territory (especially in the second season).
Bamboozled (A Spike Lee Joint, 2000)- This isn’t science fiction, but it is a satire very much in this vein.
Dirty Computer (2018)- This 45 minute visual album is sci-fil all the way. The protagonist is a black queer woman whose identity is literally being erased by technology. The music shows her journey of self acceptance and rebellion against the status quo.
Get Out (2017)- Also something you should have seen by now, but it’s still very much in the vein of STBY and I’d be remiss to leave it off.
Lamborghini Angels/ITAL (Roses)/Audubon Ballroom (Lupe Fiasco, Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1, 2012)- There’s a lot packed into this 12 minute music video if you listen and watch closely. Interestingly, while this video was officially released it is no longer on Lupe Fiasco’s or his former record label’s official YouTube/Vevo page, even though all of his music videos push the envelope. I’d love to hear your conspiracy theories if you’ve got them.
“Negrotown” (Key & Peele, 2015)- A comedy sketch that cuts so deep you have to laugh to keep from crying.
“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates- This longform essay is sci-fil only in the sense that reparations is seen as an impossible fantasy by most. Yet, Coates deftly rips apart the idea that slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and the civil rights struggle are ancient history. It’s an idea that only benefits the system of white supremacist capitalism that America is built on. Germany paid reparations to Europe after WWII. When apartheid fell in in South Africa there was reparations and a restorative justice panel–why should the US be different?
Futureland by Walter Mosley- This writer is best known for his noir detective novels starring the rakish, smooth, but troubled Easy Rawlins. Remember that Denzel Washington movie, “Devil in a Blue Dress”? That was based on the first book in the series. Mosley is also a very talented sci-fi writer and this collection of stories remains one of my favorite.
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction in the African Diaspora”, edited by Sheree Thomas- Another great collection of black sci-fi, this one pulled from black authors across the ages, including W.E.B. DuBois. If you read nothing else, check out Derrick Bell’s story “The Space Traders”, which is even more interesting in light of the current administration.
LISTEN
Everybody (Logic, 2017)- I actually reviewed this album in a post last year. I’ll link it here so I won’t repeat myself, but the TL;DR of it all is that this is a conscious concept album that bangs. Give it a try.
“If Your Love Cannot Be Moved” (Stevie Wonder ft. Kim Burrell, A Time to Love, 2006)- Stevie Wonder is best known for his love songs. This isn’t one of them. It’s a deep cut, not one of his singles, but the lyrics remind you that Stevie lived through segregation. He was born in 1950 (just like my parents!) and started his music career in 1961, just 7 years after Brown v. Board of Education integrated schools and another 3 years before the Civil Rights Act ended segreation altogether. When he says “You can’t say we shall and not fight through hell. . . You can’t shout out peace and then vanish in the crowd” or “You can’t free the slave to enslave them differently”, he means that shit. This is a revolution song, no doubt about it.
“They Don’t Really Care About Us” (Michael Jackson, HISTORY, 1995)- The title says it all. But in case you forgot, they (whether that be the Republican Party, patriarchy, the 1%, or corporate interests) don’t care about anything but what they can get out of you. So get off your ass and VOTE in this election and everyone that follows.
I watched this movie over the weekend with my husband and we were both left wanting more. There was so much context and subtext in this film that I know I need to watch it at least two more times to get the full picture. But it’s so profound that I really feel the need to sit and wrestle with it first.
There are plenty of spoiler free reviews about this mind-blowing movie, and this isn’t one of them. I went scouring the internet to find some critique and analysis of the film and, strangely enough, came up wanting. Somehow there are dozens of thinkpieces on “A Star Is Born” (which is the THIRD REMAKE of a film that came out in 1937 and tells a fairly predictable show biz story) but none on this amazing film. But one woman’s failed Google search is another woman’s blog post idea! FYI, this is going to be long.
Quick synopsis: LaKeith Stanfield (of Atlanta fame) plays Cassius Green. He lives in his uncle’s garage and is desperate to find a job to help his uncle, who is several months behind on the mortgage, from losing his home. Cassius gets a job as a telemarketer and shoots up the ranks using his white voice. Meanwhile, the other employees (including his best friend and a traveling union rep) attempt to go on strike and form a union to get better pay and benefits, and he crosses the picket line because the money he’s making is just too good. Of course he loses his friends and his girlfriend (a protest artist played by Tessa Thompson) as he gets rich and gains notoriety within the company. Then he finds out the company he’s working for is evil (not normal evil, but sci-fi dystopia evil) and has to figure out what side he’s on.
I’m going to make my points roughly in the order that the movie takes, so here goes.
The White Voice ™.
If you’re black (or any person of color), you probably know what this is. This movie made me think about how much code switching I do. Turns out I actually have 3 different voices. My natural voice is high pitched but sits in the middle of my range, quiet and slightly monotone, with a slight drawl and soft consonants. My White Voice (warmer tone, higher up in my register, more upbeat, faster paced, and with crisp enunciation) is for networking events, job interviews, and any time I have to deal with the bank or something like that. I developed my Lawyer Voice after entering practice and realizing that while men could talk like they were having a couple of beers at Hooters and still be taken seriously, I couldn’t. And my White Voice wasn’t quite doing the trick either. So my Lawyer Voice is slightly lower pitched and declarative with deliberate pacing.
This part of the movie drove home how much Black people have to perform for the white gaze. When you think about it, even the title There is also a poignant scene where Cassius is at a work party being pumped for information about “the hood” because since he’s black, surely he’s shot someone before or been in a gang or at least raps. His boss starts a chant and pretty soon the whole room is yelling “RAP! RAP! RAP! RAP!” I cringed so hard because we’ve all had some version of that moment. Cassius complies, is terrible, and then leans into minstrelsy by simply shouting “N***a shit! N***a shit! N**a, n***a, n***a shit!” At first he’s elated when people start to cheer for him, but as it turns into the audience shouting along with him you see the moment where his eyes dim and he realizes, These people only care about how I can entertain them. It was so hard to watch because it was just so damn real–look at what happened to Colin Kaepernick! The fact that he dared to use his fame to bring attention to black people getting murdered by the police caused him to lose his football career.
How physical comfort undermines resistance.
Cassius starts his job with the sole intention of making enough money to save his uncle’s home. Then he discovers that he can live a comfortable life. Soon enough, the accolades are rolling in and he begins to dream of advancing and becoming a Power Caller, one of the highest paid employees at the company. Cassius was down with the struggle when he was broke, but once he got a taste of money and power he turned his back on his friends. He gets really friendly with his white coworkers and lets them gas him up with celebratory high fives and dances every time he closes a sale. He moves out of his uncle garage and into a fancy downtown loft with expensive furniture.
When Cassius gets confronted by his girlfriend Detroit, his best friend, and the union organizer, Squeeze, he lashes out. He says that they’re hating, that he can support the strike from the sidelines, and that what he’s doing has nothing to do with what they’re doing. I’m pretty sure every black person who’s ever worked in corporate America has met a Cassius. If there is more than one black person at your mostly white job and you think you don’t know a Cassius, it’s probably you.
Capitalism is designed to dehumanize.
I don’t know how you made it this far if you are avoiding spoilers, but if that’s the case this is your ABSOLUTE LAST CHANCE TO BAIL. Everybody ready?Well after Cassius becomes a Power Caller he is faced with the ultimate test of complicity: the company he works for is a subsidiary of megacorp Worryfree , which is trying to create the perfect workers. At Worryfree, poor people can erase their debts for life in exchange for what is just slavery with better marketing. They wear generic factory uniforms, have living quarters that look like prison cells, and get three cafeteria meals a day along with a lifetime job at Worryfree.
But in case that message didn’t get through to you, there’s a huge twist. Cassius gets called in for a meeting with the CEO, who offers him cocaine adn says he needs to show him a video about a new opportunity. Cassius is clearly impaired and says he needs to go to the bathroom first. Well, he takes a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom and runs into the room where some nightmarish looking half-human, half-horse creatures are being held. Have you ever heard the saying, “he’s such a workhorse”? The corporation is trying to create the perfect workers by genetically engineering a new species called “equisapiens”. There was some really good costuming and visual effects because they look realistic and creepy as hell. Had I seen this movie in the theater I probably would have jumped out of my seat!
Cassius’s boss tries to calm him down by showing him a video about how the equisapiens are stronger, faster, and (hopefully) more docile than humans. They will triple WorryFree’s profits. But WorryFree knows that the equisapiens will rebel, so they want an inside man to be the “MLK of horses”. They’re willing to pay Cassius $100,000 to turn into a horse for 5 years, and at the end he’ll receive the super secret reversal serum (which sounds made up and nonexistent if you ask me). He refuses to do so and goes on TV to expose them.
Throughout the film we see clips of a show called “I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me!” where, surprise surprise, people get beat up on camera. Cassius goes on the show to reveal his video footage of the equisapiens, but they make him get pummeled on and dropped in a pool of excrement before they will show it. It’s a very scathing commentary on how media not only distracts us from the issues, but how reality tv in particular is desensitizing us to cruelty. Real life example: on MTV’s “How Far Is Tattoo Far?” people who have relationship issues tattoo each other to show their true feelings.
Despite the expose, WorryFree’s stock shoots through the roof and the Republican party praises the CEO for his innovation. Cassius and Detroit work with Squeeze to start a big protest to cause a distraction so they can break in and free the equisapiens. The scene turns brutal because the police and SWAT team show up and start spraying tear gas and beating people up, as they are wont to do.
Capitalism is a system, and systems are hard to destroy.
After the equisapiens are freed, things go back to normal. Cassius takes his original call center job back (now with better benefits!). He even moves back to his garage apartment which has been upgraded with the luxury furniture he bought during his stint as a Power Caller. He and Detroit are about to get cozy when Cassius sneezes. When he looks up, we see he has started to mutate into an equisapien. (That cocaine he took before the meeting wasn’t just cocaine!) Cut to credits.
But wait, there’s more! We get one more scene during the credits. The CEO is sitting on his couch in a bathrobe looking stressed. The doorbell rings; he limps over to his security camera and sees some equisapiens on the porch. The lead one bangs on the door and says “Open up motherfucker!” in CASSIUS’S VOICE. Oh snap! We smashcut to the door being broken down and an equisapien stomps through, roaring (neighing?) furiously. Then the movie ends for real.
A good ally is hard to find.
Now this is just my interpretation, but I thought it interesting that when the union organizer, Squeeze, is introduced to Cassius and Detroit, he and Cassius immediately size each other up as romantic rivals. It’s true that Detroit is clearly more woke than her boyfriend. But if you’re really trying to organize a movement, you need to win over the people who are on the fence. Instead of doing that, Squeeze starts flirting with Detroit. This is a symbolic illustration of how he seduces the workers and distracts them from the larger evils being perpetuated by the company. Throughout the movie, Squeeze seems to treat the creation of the union as just a job; he wants people to march in the street but doesn’t care about them individually. And once it’s over and the workers have negotiated a (paltry compared to what the company can afford) raise, and slightly better working conditions, he’s on to the next. Meanwhile, the equisapiens are still out there and there’s no indication that WorryFree isn’t still operating. Squeeze is off to the next city to stir shit up, and help people get just enough to keep them from rioting. Kinda seems like he’s not really on their side. . .?
Final Thoughts
That fucked me up. Like, you go through this emotional rollercoaster and the main character, who ends up doing the right thing and already didn’t make the revolutionary change he wanted, gets turned into a horse person. It’s equivalent to how Martin Luther King, Jr. fought his whole life for civil rights, but while he was alive they made only incremental gains…and he lost his life in the process. People who go against the system are basically sacrificial lambs. But it’s only through violent upheaval that real change is made.
Heavy, heavy stuff especially considering the Mexican internment camps, shootings of black and Jewish places of worship by white supremacists, and voter suppression happening as we head into election week. Resistance is painful but we can’t afford to turn a blind eye to injustice. No matter how much money you make, what title you earn, or what power they allow you to have. . . it can all be ripped away in an instant if you step out of line. And that’s not freedom, that’s just indentured servitude.
I’ve always enjoyed superhero stories. I love science fiction and fantasy, and comic books almost always contain a little bit of both. I’ll admit that before the movie came out, I didn’t know much about Black Panther other than the fact that he existed. I watched the miniseries back in 2010, but that was it.
As you can see, the production value is decidedly subpar. But the story was good and the voice talent (Djimon Hounsou, Jill Scott, Kerry Washington, Alfre Woodard) was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but promptly forgot it existed as I had no real expectation of ever seeing a live action version. I watched Blade but never really got into it. Halle Berry as Storm in the X-Men movies was a disappointment, Halle Berry as Catwoman was an even bigger disappointment. Don Cheadle was good as War Machine but he was still a sidekick. It was a feel good moment, but not one that made me run to theater.
Then Chadwick Boseman showed up as Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, and Marvel announced a Black Panther movie and I was excited. As casting news kept trickling out, I got even more hyped up. My brother (an OG comics nerd) has watched all the #BlackPantherSoLit and #InWakanda feverishness with a detached skepticism. I’m a skeptic too, but I couldn’t suppress my inner child on this one. We went from a low budget cartoon on BET to this:
I GLADLY bought my opening weekend movie ticket almost two months beforehand.
*******SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON********
Black Panther was EVERYTHING. It felt so good to watch a movie where black people and black problems and black culture were the focus, and not an afterthought. The production was loving and thorough, as each Wakandan tribe incorporated references to actual African cultural clothing, hairstyles, and rituals.
Best of all, the women were the black women I know in my own life–fierce, sexy, competent, multifaceted. Wakanda’s elite fighting force is all female. They rock bald heads and armor but still retain their femininity. Their general had a black male lover who respected her. T’Challa was in love with a covert operative who wants to serve not only Wakanda, but disenfranchised people all over the world–and we catch her in the middle of a mission to save African women from being sold into the sex trade. And all four of the women featured in the main cast are brown to dark skinned. It just felt so good to see women of my complexion being both objects of affection and trusted advisors to royalty.
T’Challa flanked by his love interest Nakia, on the left, and general Okoye, on the right.
So often the token black person in media is lightskinned; recently, more and more often they also look mixed and/or racially ambiguous. Kill all the diversity birds with one stone, as it were. But Black Panther is different. Because Wakanda is an African country untouched by colonizers, the Wakandans are overwhelmingly dark skinned–with natural hair! I’ve honestly never seen this in a movie that wasn’t about slavery. Wakanda is the Africa that exists in every black American’s mind, a myth of what could have been if slavery had never happened.
Lupe Fiasco captured this feeling in the track “All Black Everything” on his Lasers album. It’s one of my favorite songs of his, but it makes me feel so emotional that I can’t just listen to it at any old time. The first time I heard it, I felt chills down my spine and tears pricked my eyes. I’m an African American descendant of slaves; I’ve actually seen my ancestor’s burial grounds and the record that reduces his life to a mark on a tally sheet and a comment in the margins that “He was a good slave”. I am also descended from the Muscogee/Creek Indian tribe, a tribe whose remnants exist mostly on a reservation in Oklahoma.
But Black Panther takes us a step beyond the color blind utopia that Lupe imagined, into a world where Blackness is, at least in one corner of the world, undefeated. It’s supreme, even, and because the Wakandans were more concerned with pursuing excellence than being conquerors, no one else had to be oppressed in order for them to thrive. However, their choice to remain isolated means that the rest of history still unfolded as we know it. Could a small but technologically advanced country have defeated colonization on the African continent, creating a unity of nations so powerful that it stopped slavery long before the Civil War? We don’t know. But Erik Killmonger’s (righteous) anger at Wakanda stems from a feeling of abandonment, that Wakanda was strong enough to help its brothers and sisters in the diaspora and chose to turn away instead.
Killmonger was a powerful villain because in him, I recognized the same anger I feel whenever another black person is gunned down by the police, or gets a sentence three times harsher than the one given to the white person who committed the same crime. I feel that anger when I hear rhetoric about welfare queens and entitlement mentalities. To keep it 100% real, I felt that anger when I heard Africans complaining about black people wearing kente cloth and dashikis to the movie theater. My roots are lost to me. Ancestry.com can tell me I’m from Nigeria and most likely of the Yoruba tribe. But I don’t have a cousin whose house I can stay at. I don’t know what village I’m from. And anti-American sentiments are widespread enough in Africa that I wouldn’t necessarily be welcomed if I went exploring to find out.
The conflict between Killmonger and T’Challa is one that every African-American descendant of slaves faces. Do we fight and live solely to protect ourselves and our families from the dangerous forces of white supremacy? Or do we share our resources in order to preserve Blackness across the country and across the world? It’s a hard choice, especially so because white supremacy is so vicious and the resources that we have are not nearly as much or as organized as Wakanda. We don’t have vibranium weapons to ship to the hood, or a superpowered king who can bring in allies from the United Nations. We all we got.
Even though Black Panther grappled with some heavy questions, I left the theater feeling lighter spiritually. For a couple of hours, I was in Wakanda; and there at least, black people would get a happy ending.
This is going to be a lengthy post because I’ve been a fan of Logic for awhile. Tex is super into rap, and so is Mr. Teenage Dream. So between the two of them I was kept pretty current despite my preference for soul and R&B. As a matter of fact, I’ve been put on to at least one artist on the XXL Freshman cover every year since they started. I knew about folks like Kap G (2017), Ty Dolla Sign (2014), Machine Gun Kelly (2012) and Wale (2007) waaaaay before they hit the mainstream.
Logic was on the 2013 Freshman cover, and of course, by that time I’d already added his mixtapes into my regular rotation. (By the way, Young Sinatra is still dope). I happily paid for each of his commercial albums so when I found out this week that his third album, Everybody, had dropped over a month ago, I made it my business to buy it immediately. Since then I’ve listened to it twice through in its entirety, and it’s stuck in my head. The concept, the production, the lyrics…it all blows my mind.
In a nutshell, the album is a musical journey based on a short story, “The Egg” by Andy Weir, which you can read here. Logic explains it in the video below.
The TL;DR of all this is that the human race is just one being, reincarnated until it has experienced every walk of life and can evolve into a higher existence (i.e., become God). Therefore the universe is just an egg that we have to hatch from by maturing enough to realize that every time we hurt someone else, we hurt ourselves.
That’s a provoking and comforting thought in these troubled times. Some days it all seems so hopeless. I stay away from the news because it can really f*ck with my mental state. No matter how happy I am in my little bubble, there is a lot of hate out there. A couple weeks back I was walking through Target holding hands with my husband, feeling blissfully in love and chatting about some silly thing. A white lady came up the main aisle, in the opposite direction of us and nearly jumped out of her skin. Her whole demeanor changed–her eyes widened, she went from walking slowly to doubling her speed, clutching her purse and looking down at the ground as she passed us. “How do you know it was a race thing? Maybe she was just startled,” I’m sure you’re thinking. Well, there were five or six white people she would have just passed and we were the only brown people in sight, so I’m pretty sure it was a race thing. Sh*t like that is just demoralizing.
Logic gets it. And while many people are quick to throw it in his face that he could pass for white, that didn’t insulate him from many of the same struggles that poor black kids face growing up, along with the unique struggle of being called a racial slur by your own mother. Despite that, he maintains a positive outlook and his music is always hopeful. And hope is what we need right now.
Are you a Logic fan or never heard of him? If you listened to the album, what did you think? Let me know!
I’ve always been a bookworm. Mostly because I love reading, but also because I grew up without cable so books didn’t have much competition. When your only options are Matlock reruns, Jeopardy, and the local news, books look much more attractive. Now we’re living in the age of peak tv and I have cable, DVR, and Amazon Prime. I used to have Hulu until it stopped being free. The worst part of television is starting a new show. Unless it’s something I’m excited about from the commercials alone, I wait until a show gets a second season before I invest time and energy. Nevertheless, I’ve been burned a few times over the years. Here’s a roundup of some shows that I loved and lost.
Powerless (NBC, 2017): An inside look at the lives of regular folks in the DC Universe. Vanessa Hudgens plays the newest hire at Wayne Industries, headed by Bruce’s incompetent cousin, Van. One of my favorite episodes deals with Hudgens’s character having a new boyfriend who turns out to be an evil henchman. This show got pulled before it even completed its first season. I feel like this was a case of the right show on the wrong network. It probably would have done better numbers on the CW (which has successfully adapted DC Comics properties Green Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow) or even Comedy Central (perhaps as a lead in to Tosh.0 or At Midnight).
Still Star Crossed (ABC, 2017) : This summer series, based on a YA novel and produced by Shonda Rhimes, should have been a success. It looks great–the cast is gorgeous (and super diverse), and so are the costumes and setting. This covers the romantic and political machinations of the Montague and Capulet families after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. However, it got moved from Monday nights after The Bachelorette to Saturday nights, and ABC hasn’t put original programming on Saturday nights since the 90s (way back when there was no DVR and you watched reruns in the summer!). Honestly, this never really had a chance. While the show definitely doesn’t fit into the mold of Shonda’s Thursday dramas Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, and How to Get Away With Murder, it might have done well airing on Sundays after Once Upon a Time. The OUAT audience is prepared to accept a universe where fairy tale characters are real, so this wouldn’t be a huge leap. Still Star Crossed also would have been a perfect fit for the CW, taking the time slot recently vacated by the series finale of Reign (a teen drama adaptation of Mary, Queen of Scots’s life story).
Pitch (Fox, 2016): Pitch tells the story of Ginny Baker, Major League Baseball’s first female player. I’m not a sports fan and I find baseball especially boring, but I enjoy sports dramas (Survivor’s Remorse on Starz and Ballers on HBO are two of my faves). I love seeing black people on screen, and Ginny’s character was something you don’t see much. She was a female athlete who was dedicated to her sport, but who also had a love life. And the behind the scenes, Money Ball-esque machinations of the coach and front office were entertaining as well. Plus: plenty of topless Mark Paul-Gosselaar (aka Zack Morris aka the finest white boy alive)! Unfortunately, Fox chose to air this in a competing time slot with actual MLB games, therefore cutting out a large portion of the potential audience. Another time slot could have saved this. It also might have done better on TNT, which has a history of turning unconventional TV shows into hits (a la Leverage, Franklin & Bash, and The Librarians).
Dracula (NBC, 2013): This update of the Bram Stoker tale starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a sophisticated American businessman in London circa the Industrial Revolution. The bones of the story remained the same and Meyers was a great casting decision, as his commitment to the role kept it grounded. It came on after Grimm(which just wrapped a fantastic six season run!), so it had a solid lead in audience. It got tanked or low ratings after the first season, which I felt was unfair. Friday night shows, even the most successful, have much lower ratings than their Sunday – Thursday counterparts. It was set to be picked up by Netflix, but rumor has it that problems with Meyers sank the possible reboot.
The Gates (ABC, 2010): Nick Monohan is a cop who takes a cushy job as chief of security for an upscale suburban neighborhood. Little does he know, the families he’s watching are vampires, werewolves, witches, and other supernatural beings. This was basically Desperate Housewives with an urban fantasy twist, and even starred Rhona Mitra, who was in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Ultimately, I think this was a few years before its time. In 2010, the Marvel cinematic universe was just launching with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton version). It wasn’t until 2011’s Thor and Captain America that the MCU picked up steam and studios started to realize that fantasy/scifi/comic book adaptations had a real audience, and weren’t just a fluke. Had it come to television in 2015, I believe it could have developed a strong following.
Mercy (NBC, 2009): This was a medical drama about a nurse who served in the Army’s medical corps in Iraq. She had an affair with the doctor she worked with, who of course gets a job at her hometown hospital. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except she left behind a husband and is dealing with PTSD. Her fellow nurses also had their own problems. It starred Taylor Schilling, who now helms Orange Is The New Black. Mercy was a worthy successor to medical drama ER, which had wrapped up its final season in the spring before Mercy aired. Apparently, I was the only watching it because ratings started low and got lower. It never caught on like Grey’s Anatomy, but it had really great characters. Looking back, it felt similar Nurse Jackie–yet another show that might have done better on cable.
Eastwick (ABC, 2009): This show was a lighthearted adaptation of the 1987 cult classic film The Witches of Eastwick, itself based on the novel of the same name by John Updike. The lead actresses had great chemistry. The magic stuff was cheesy but the likeability of the cast made it fun. It was very similar to the 90s WB show Charmed, but was canceled after one season.
So, what are the shows you wish could have a second chance? Tell me in the comments!
