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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
 

Stock Tip


So I got a tip on this stock. I was told about it at $.83 unfortunatly I could only get in at an average of $1.44 (1430 shares). However it's paying off now.

ABAT Stock

Looks like there is plenty of room for growth here too.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007
 

13 TV Shows That Should Never Have Been Cancelled


From:
13 TV Shows That Should Never Have Been Cancelled


I agree with "Dead Like Me", "Freaks and Geeks" and "Andy Richter Controls the Universe". However here are the two that made me post this:

Arrested Development

 

“Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them together…”  That cheesy voiceover is the introduction to Arrested Development, the funniest TV comedy in history.  There’s no debate, no wiggle room, no weasel words.  It is the best.  There is no show that rewards its fans more than Arrested Development, no show that understands pop culture like Arrested Development, and no show that can make incest as funny as Arrested Development.  The cast is superb, the writing outstanding, and the direction impeccable.  Yet, the show was cancelled after just 53 episodes.  Why would a show that was so good get cancelled? 

It may be an oversimplification, but AD was cancelled because of the traits that made it the best.  Because it rewarded its fans, it was alienating to people who didn’t watch it consistently.  The sometimes-viewers had a hard time keeping up with the tempo of the show, the callbacks to previous episodes, and Ron Howard’s brilliant narration.  For example, in one episode, GOB states that he sprained his ankle “playing hoops.”  The scene then cuts to GOB doing a ridiculous chicken dance in front of Buster.  The casual viewer will not know that this chicken dance is a continuing theme throughout the show, and because of that they will think it’s just easy, superfluous physical humor.  The pop culture sensibilities of AD also doomed it.  It referenced/skewered so many television shows, classic movies, political gaffes, and even commercials that it was like a master’s class in pop culture. 

In a scene in the final season of AD, Buster is in the stair car dancing to Mr. Roboto when his hook gets stuck in the dashboard.  This was a reference to a commercial the actor who plays Buster, Tony Hale, did for Volkswagon in 1999.  If the viewer doesn’t have this knowledge, it seems like another superfluous bit of physical comedy.  Finally, making incest funny killed the show.  Of course, I don’t mean merely incest, but any situation that would make the average viewer uncomfortable.  AD was so filled with innuendo, bleeped swearing, and uncomfortable situations that it alienated viewers who weren’t in on the joke.  Instead of playing down George Michael getting to second base with his cousin Maeby, Ron Howard’s narration pushes it further, informing us that he went in “head first, like Pete Rose,” complete with a still of Pete Rose sliding into second base.  Arrested Development is the best comedy in television history, and it died because everyone who wasn’t a diehard fan was too stupid to understand that. 




Sports Night

 

First, the bad: this show had a laugh track. As great a job Aaron “West Wing” Sorkin did on the script, and as greats as the performances were, there was still a goddamn laugh track for no discernible reason.

I can say, almost without a doubt, that the laugh track is the reason this show got cancelled. Despite the fact that the show had a lot of humor, it was, above all things, a drama: Sorkin’s whip-smart, lightning-fast, noun-adjectivedescribingspeed dialogue managed to be funny but not hilarious, clever but not pretentious, and dramatic but not sappy. But the laugh track betrayed it.

It tricked audiences into thinking that they were watching a comedy, which therefore made the show disappointing. The “clever” dialogue was not outright jokey enough to warrant a laugh track, and when audiences didn’t laugh while the laugh track did, things became awkward. There’s no feeling in the world quite like remaining silent while an entire audience of invisible people laugh their asses off.

If they’d just gotten rid of the goddamn laugh track and marketed the show more aggressively, then it would have gotten more than just two seasons.






 


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