Flops

Yesterday I made a snarky comment that was at least partly serious. I said that most cult flop TV shows are like American Idol contestants: they’re incredibly important for a few months, and then they’re forgotten as soon as the show is over. Every year there are some shows that make 10-best lists, get save-our-show campaigns, and inspire more online discussion than most hits. Then they’re canceled and they vanish from the discussion; even those of us who loved them no longer have much to say about them. The show that goes away and still lingers in the public memory — the Freaks & Geeks type of thing — is rare.

Fans of time-slot arcana will enjoy James Greene Jr.’s post “The Curse of the 9:30 ‘TGIF’ Time Slot,” about ABC’s many failed attempts to fill the final time slot in their Friday night lineup.

I recently got some tapes/discs of flop shows, some good, some bad. So I’m going to try something a little different with the “Weekend Viewing” posts for a little while: I’ll present an episode from one of these flops, and post it here, so we can see these rare shows and figure out why they flopped, or if they deserved better.