They Were Fun While They Lasted

Very few TV shows actually hold my attention these days, but it seems as though the ones that do always end up being cancelled in short order. Maybe I’m the problem?

After airing only four episodes and sending the remaining two episodes to die on Saturday nights, NBC has announced the cancellation of Andy Richter’s Andy Barker P.I. The show wasn’t always a scream, but I thought the premise was great, the style unique, and it had room to grow if it would have been given the chance. Tony Hale (formerly of Arrested Development) was brilliant in his video store geek co-star role, but it appears as though Richter is just doomed to failure on network TV. It’s too bad; I kinda like the big lug.

Another show that I was really starting to enjoy -- The Winner, which was produced by Seth MacFarlane and starred ex-The Daily Show correspondent, Rob Corddry -- has seemingly bit the dust. Although there hasn’t been any "official" word yet from FOX, how do you say, their silence speaks volumes. It’s too bad, because this was a show that was as charming as it was wacky and it had some genuinely funny performances by the cast all-around. They could have ditched the obnoxious laugh track, but even that grew on me in an ironic way. I’ll still keep my fingers crossed for this one a bit longer -- and if you want to check out the show for yourself, FOX still has all six episodes streaming on their website.

Last, but not least, there was this excellent show that was airing this time last year that I had been meaning to say something about for a long time now. I guess I felt like if I didn’t acknowledge that it disappeared that it might just magically pop-up on my TV one day. The short-lived situational comedy was called Sons & Daughters and it played on ABC for about two months last Spring. Do you remember it? The show centered around an extended family of dysfunctional dim-wits with just a few "normal" people sprinkled in for good measure -- namely Fred Goss who played the lead character as a neurotic do-gooder to awkward perfection. He spent most episodes obsessing over his own silly insecurities while simultaneously attempting to fix all of his family’s various problems. It sort of felt like Woody Allen directing a Christopher Guest movie. Or maybe it was the other way around? Anyway, the partly-scripted, partly-improvisational style of the program followed the Curb Your Enthusiasm model for comedic success. They just kind of forgot the success part. Still, the show was heartfelt and funny and it’s a real travesty that it never got a shot at season two as the axe dropped in late April 2006 after ten episodes aired, leaving one unaired episode. A rumored DVD is being held up by music licensing issues. This is one show I’d love to see return, ala The Family Guy. But, there’s no reason to think that it will as Goss wrote on a MySpace blog that "Sons & Daughters will not be picked up on another network."

I guess it’s true what the Billy Joel says: "Only the good die young."