Poll Results–The Biggest Disappointments of 2011-12

When I started the poll of the “Biggest Disappointments of the 2011-12 TV season” I originally didn’t have a shutdown date for the poll. I thought I might let it run until the Emmy Nominations came out and I’d then launch my famous Emmy Polls. More recently I was leaning towards July 1st because it seemed to me that most of the people who were going to vote had voted. I am now pulling the plug effective immediately….because there is news.

In one of the greatest turnouts in the history of the polls I’ve run, 30 votes were cast in this poll. The following options received no votes:

• “Working It getting on the air”
• “2 Broke Girls having stereotyped secondary characters”
• “The Secret Circle being cancelled while lower rated CW shows were renewed”
• “Missing being cancelled”

These options received one vote (3%) each:

• “Ringer not being a better show”
• “The X-Factor not delivering the audience that Simon Cowell (and various “experts”) expected”

“GCB not living up to the hype” got two votes (7%).

“NYC 22 not being as good as the people associated with it” and “Terra Nova delivering neither value or quality for the money spent on it” each received three votes (10%).

The big – overewhelming really – winner was “Unforgettable being cancelled despite the ratings” which picked up twenty (20!) votes or 67% of the votes cast. And just for the record, I don’t vote in my polls but if I had, I’d probably have been the 21st vote. Based on virtually every standard (except maybe the almighty demographic and even that wasn’t clear-cut) this was a show that shouldn’t have been dropped.

Which brings us to the news, and why I decided to pull the poll. On Friday CBS announced that they will give Unforgettable a second season. This preempts negotiations with the TNT and Lifetime cable channels to revive the show. Admittedly the circumstances aren’t the best. The renewal is for a 13 episode run, and the plan is that the show will air in the summer of 2013 but it’s a start, and I have a suspicion that we might be seeing this show sooner rather than later if some of the CBS line-up fails to perform as well as the network expects. After all Nina Tassler said that the big problem for Unforgettable wasn’t “what went wrong” with the show but rather “what went right with the new pilots.” If those pilots turn out not to have been so “right” after all, I hope that the network will be willing to swallow their pride and push the revival of unforgettable forward into the second half of the regular season. (I just wouldn’t bet the farm on it).

I had a couple of comments on the original poll so I might as well finish up with them. Todd Mason corrected me on the name of the creator of NYC 22 (Richard not Robert Price) and added this:

… NYC 22, which (as I've noted on my own blog) managed to be more feckless and lifeless than ROOKIE BLUE (which I hadn't noted never quite admits it's set in Toronto, so obvious is that fact...it's even more blatant than HILL STREET BLUES being set in Chicago).

Being blatant isn’t the same as outright stating the fact, and to the the best of my knowledge (not that I watch the show) Rookie Blue has never admitted that it’s set in Toronto. Then again neither has Flashpoint, though on Flashpoint the crowns and Canadian flags on the uniforms suggest it.

Sadly, TWO BROKE GIRLS was created by Michael Patrick King, the hack behind the hack that is Darren Star, and the comedian Whitney Cummings, who is clever but is willing to go for the easiest imaginable joke, particularly in a sitcom context (hence the quick exhaustion of her other sitcom, WHITNEY... where we had the unusual result that her performance, rather than the writing of a comedian's sitcom, was what saving grace there was).

The thing for me about 2 Broke Girls is that I basically like the show, and am only vaguely bothered by the supporting characters because I’m focused on the leads. Or maybe I’m just an old fart who doesn’t see the racism in most of this.

pattinasse (abbott) wrote:

I would add ALCATRAZ and AWAKE, which both seemed promising. ALCATRAZ was too wedded to its central idea and AWAKE, not enough.

I definitely should have added Alcatraz, probably replacing Working It. Alcatraz was a show I really loved and was ready to review…right up to the moment when I saw the ratings for either the first or second week and knew that it was doomed. Too bad, because it was a fun show, and I’m a sucker for just about anything that Sam Neill does. Awake was a show that intrigued me and I was going to watch it, but then I missed recording the second or third episode and then lost most of what I had when the PVR expander died. I guess I should have also made mention of another show I didn’t watch but which some people felt disappointed about losing: Harry’s Law. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.