Thanks to Tigger for sending this in!<\/p>\n
From E Magazine:<\/p>\n
Save This Show!<\/strong><\/p>\n
It was the year youth dramas flunked out. But three endangered standouts
\ndeserve promotion
\nBY JAMES PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\nJUST HOLD ON: This season’s adolescent dramas need some time to mature
\nAll in all, 1999-2000 was a pretty good season to be a bitter old person,
\nwhich is to say, as defined by TV advertisers and the Internet economy,
\nanyone over 27. Not only did dotcom whippersnappers get spanked by the
\nNASDAQ, but TV’s youthquake–when networks unleashed a hot-bodied army of
\nDawson’s Creek clones to capture young audiences–triggered an avalanche of
\nzit fatigue. The teen cop (Ryan Caulfield), the earnest young politicos
\n(D.C.), the sexy prepsters (the never-aired Manchester Prep)–all were dead
\non arrival, while older-skewing dramas thrived.<\/p>\nFor much of the new crop, DOA was not a moment too soon. But the backlash
\nalso caught three of TV’s brightest, most heartfelt programs–Felicity,
\nRoswell and Freaks and Geeks–each of which happens to feature protagonists
\nnot yet old enough to drink, and each of which is counting on creative fan
\nsupport and deus ex machinas to keep it from becoming a teen angel.<\/p>\nOr, in the case of Freaks, to help it rise, Carrie-like, from the grave. The
\nfinal episode of the comedy-drama, about high schoolers fixated on Dungeons
\nand Dragons and Led Zeppelin in 1980, may be the most elegiac, exuberant and
\ninventive finale of the season. But you’ll have to go to a museum to see it.
\nWhen NBC axed the series in March–after shelving and relaunching it so many
\ntimes viewers needed a divining rod to find it–the Museum of Television and
\nRadio made the unusual offer to screen its six unaired episodes at its New
\nYork City and Los Angeles locations, on April 29 and May 13, respectively. As
\ncreator Paul Feig notes, the museum honored the show earlier at its annual
\nWilliam Paley Festival, an ironic comfort as the ratings flagged. “The
\nrunning joke on the set was, ‘We’re doing it for the museum.’ As it turned
\nout, we actually were.”<\/p>\nFreaks’ strength, and perhaps its ratings liability, was that it resisted
\neasy pigeonholing. It captures the joy and miseries of adolescence but from a
\nwry, adult perspective, without easy nerd jokes, implausible sex scenes or a
\nsingle false moment. “It’s closer to Welcome to the Dollhouse than to
\nDawson’s Creek,” says executive producer Judd Apatow. “And as much as I liked
\nWelcome to the Dollhouse, it didn’t make as much money as Scream.” Indeed,
\nthe closest analogs to Freaks are not TV shows but independent
\nfilms–Dollhouse, Rushmore, Dazed and Confused. Unfortunately, there aren’t
\nas many outlets for indie TV as for indie film. So the show’s studio,
\nDreamWorks, is making a last-ditch effort to sell it to a broadcast network,
\narguing that the show’s fiercely loyal fan base indicates room for growth.<\/p>\nSuch Lazarus acts, while rare, have become less so lately, with six networks
\nlooking for content. CBS picked up its hit JAG from NBC, and the WB just
\nspirited off ABC’s teen-witch com, Sabrina. (ABC’s psych-ward drama,
\nWonderland, and on-hiatus Sports Night may also shop themselves around.) But
\nApatow admits the re-Freaking of TV is a long shot. “If anyone needs to fill
\nan hour with NBC’s lowest-rated show,” he cracks, “they’ll buy it!”<\/p>\nNo network has felt the teen fallout more than the youth-heavy WB, home of
\nboth Felicity and Roswell; it has fallen to sixth place, behind UPN this
\nseason. CEO Jamie Kellner defends the network’s focus: “You have to be able
\nto define yourself, like any good brand, so when you see the logo, you can
\ntaste it.” But clearly the network has felt pressure; the teen-alien drama
\nRoswell has upped its focus on science fiction to stand out. “One thing the
\nWB wanted us to do less of,” says creator Jason Katims, “was scenes in the
\nschool, because there are so many shows on the air where you see high school
\nor college hallways.”<\/p>\n“The youth-zeitgeist factor didn’t work for any of these shows,” says J.J.
\nAbrams, creator of Felicity (Wednesday, 9 p.m. E.T.). “There was definitely a
\nglut.” The college comedy-drama, much praised in its debut year, has
\nstruggled as a sophomore, prompting the risible and vaguely sexist criticism
\nthat the ratings dived because star Keri Russell cut her flowing, curly hair.
\n(Would that Billy’s dye job had done the same for Ally McBeal.) “It’s
\nsomething that a girl of that age, having gone through serious changes, would
\nrealistically do,” says Abrams, who blames the drop-off on the cutting of a
\nnarrative strand instead: the co-ed protagonist left a long-term relationship
\nat the start of the season. Whatever the problem, it hasn’t been the
\ndry-witted scripts–including a pitch-perfect Twilight Zone imitation–or the
\ncast, which, with beautiful comic timing and depth of character, is now one
\nof the most charming crack ensembles this side of Friends.<\/p>\nThough the show’s ratings have perked since a time-slot change, it’s still
\nuncertain for renewal, as is Roswell (Monday, 9 p.m. E.T.), which just last
\nfall was riding high on a 22-episode commitment. The triumph of Roswell is
\nthat it takes what sounds like an SNL skit–teen UFO-crash survivors in New
\nMexico–and plays it straight, with an eerie, noir beauty and stately pacing
\nrare on today’s chatty dramas. (Few series do pauses better than Roswell,
\nthanks largely to Jason Behr, who plays alien Max like a junior Duchovny.)
\nIf any of the trio see the fall, they can thank a young fan base with little
\nbetter to do than badger TV execs, abetted by websites, the fanatic’s best
\nfriend. Roswellians sent the WB thousands of bottles of Tabasco sauce, a
\nfavorite condiment of the aliens. (WB flacks reshipped bottles to TV critics
\nnationwide.) Felicityphiles have sent in cassettes like the ones Felicity
\nmails to her friend Sally–and, creepily, locks of their own hair–and
\ncrashed WB servers with e-mail. Meanwhile, Freaks freaks are sending peanuts
\nto networks that may buy the show (a favorite character on the show is
\nallergic) and are taking out a full-page ad in Variety, as have Roswell fans.<\/p>\nOf course, TV execs have other numbers to worry about besides the
\nTabasco-bottle count, and one can imagine the arguments–Freaks is too
\noddball, Felicity has had two years to prove itself, Roswell boasts one set
\ntoo many of pretty teen faces. But consider the series premises they’re
\nchoosing from for next fall: a boy millionaire helps people by means of a
\nwebsite; a rock band contacts the dead with a magic amulet; Bette Midler
\nplays a woman who’s a lot like Bette Midler. Those nuts firing off e-mail
\ncould be the best friends TV bosses, and the rest of us, have. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to Tigger for sending this in! From E Magazine: Save This Show! It was the year youth dramas flunked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40,118],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roswell","tag-article","tag-save-roswell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}