Greetings and salutations, folks. Welcome back to Lost & Found – the internet equivalent of that lady who lives in your building with a menagerie of mangy, three-legged cats. The mission of this column is simple: resurrecting and reevaluating the cancelled TV shows of the past. The television landscape is littered with the bodies of the shows that couldn’t, the shows that shouldn’t, the shows that time and humanity have forgotten or reviled or loved – perhaps too much – in numbers which the God Of Nielsen hath declared Unworthy.
Here they get a second chance.
Lost & Found revives and revisits these cancelled shows: the lame and the strong, the justly-interrupted and the unfairly-euthanized. Thus far we’ve watched David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminally-surreal soap-opera-cum-metaphysical-horror-show, Twin Peaks, and we’ve just completed Daniel Knauf’s dusty, Depression-era apocalyptic freakshow, Carnivale.
I’m sensing a pattern here.
While you’ve been patiently awaiting a final, mythology-centric Carnivale column and an interview with show creator Daniel Knauf I’ve been dealing with first-time fatherhood. In short, it kicks ass. It’s also kicking my ass, what with the all the waking-in-the-middle-of-the-night, working-the-day-job, running-around-setting-up-laughably-anemic-college-funds-and-whatnot I’ve been doing lately. I’ve also been chipping away at the final Carnivale column, entitled “Carnivale: Apocrypha,” and it’s morphed into something of a beast in the process.
Since I’ve yet to speak directly with Mr. Knauf (my fault, not his), and since I want very much to include that conversation in the final (sprawling) column before I publish it, I think it’s time to kickstart the next round of voting while I continue to chip away at the “Apocrypha,” and as I line up my interview with Mr. Knauf. My apologies for the delay, but I can promise you that the final product will be worth the wait.
In the meantime, gather ‘round and cast your vote here for the show you’d like me to cover next, and spread the word to your friends and families. If you want to be kept current on the results, as well as on my dangerously-fractured, sleep-deprived psyche you can Follow me on Twitter – where my every inanity is broadcast out to the world at large.
How the voting works:
Pick two shows off the list below and vote for them in the comments section below, or on Chud’s immortal message boards. If there’s a show missing from the list and you’d like it to be added, just email me at whatiswater@gmail.com and I’ll add it on to the rest. The polls will stay open through next Thursday, August 4th, when I’ll tally up the results.
The show with the most votes will be the next show we watch together, two episodes at a time, with Yours Truly providing color commentary each week in the form of long, rambling, digressive columns like the ones linked to above. And every two weeks you’ll have the opportunity to decide whether we’ll collectively Renew the show or Cancel it all over again.
If you’re a fan of Firefly, Deadwood, Better Off Ted, Freaks and Geeks, or any of the other shows listed here and you’d like me to write about it, flex your democratic superpowers and vote. Reach out to your friends and families and get them to vote as well. The more the merrier, and the more likely you are to see your choice picked. Come on back here next Friday where I’ll announce the winning show. You’ll then have a full week to queue it up via Netflix/Hulu/Best Buy/your-black-market-of-choice/whathaveyou before my first column drops on the following Friday.
Thanks, as always, for your readership and your patience. Without further ado, I give you our candidates for resurrection:
• Carnivale
• Twin Peaks
• The Lost Room
• Deadwood
• Profit
• Max Headroom
• American Gothic
• Dead Like Me
• Pushing Daisies
• Invasion
• The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
• Daybreak
• John from Cincinnati
• The Middleman
• Miracles
• Harsh Realm
• The Tick
• Dollhouse
• Threshold
• Wonderfalls
• Swingtown
• Keen Eddie
• Action
• Point Pleasant
• Rome
• Nowhere Man
• Freaks and Geeks
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
• Surface
• Greg the Bunny
• Earth 2
• Firefly
• Undeclared
• Kings
• Veronica Mars
• The Prisoner
• The 4400
• Better Off Ted
• Wiseguy
• Bakersfield PD
• Space: Above and Beyond
• The Riches
• Brimstone
• Better Off Ted
• Jericho
• Blake’s 7
• Millennium
• Dark Skies
• Journeyman
• Fantasy Island (unavailable on Netflix or to purchase)*
• G vs. E (unavailable on Netflix or to purchase)*
• Locke & Key (Pilot only. Unavailable on Netflix or to purchase, but man am I ever champing at the bit to see this thing)*
*I don’t support piracy of commercially-available material nor do I typically seek out bootlegged materials. I genuinely believe that I owe the creators of entertainment my money for said-entertainment in the same way that I owe a restaurant my money for making me a meal. With that said, there are shows out there that I’d like to cover and that aren’t available to me (or anyone else, as far as I’m aware) through normal channels of commerce, so I’ve proposed the following compromise:
If you are personally able to supply me with the full run of a commercially-unavailable series, I will make a donation equal to the approximate value of the hypothetical DVD directly to Amnesty International, a worthy cause no matter your particular political beliefs. I will also return your copies to you once I’m done watching them. If you are able to point me toward someone who is willing to sell the full run of either show to me I will STILL make that donation (albeit a lesser donation, since I’ll also be ponying up for the shows and I ain’t made of money).