Smith and Kidnapped are canned
It’s just too bad about Smith, although I couldn’t care less about Kidnapped. When NBC resorts to ripping off a FOX show, that’s a bad sign. Not that there’s anything wrong with FOX in particular – 24 and House are amazing entertainment, consistently from episode one. But, pardon the unpopular opinion, Prison Break and Vanished have been recycled, manipulative trash. And when NBC tries to reuse that trash (instead of improving on it), it falls flat, as it should. Kidnapped was a turd, I’m glad the network dropped it. However, it’s beyond me why Smith was dropped by CBS.
Ray Liotta, Johnny Lee Miller, Virginia Madsen, Amy Smart, Shohreh Aghdashloo – how can you not love this cast? Not just a bunch of pretty young faces – these are seasoned, experienced actors, able to deliver drama, and not just some lines. I think Smith failed because it was badly positioned, or marketed incorrectly. An arc-based drama about a group of thieves who all have families, and juggle their side business with kids and barbecues, and a subplot about their botched robbery that left enough clues for the detectives to pick up their trail. This is as close as you can get to Heat – made into a TV series. And since Liotta, Miller, and Smart both have crime-related (caper-related) movies in their resumes, it should have been a blast week after week.
What went wrong? Are audiences getting tired of story-based dramas? Lost, 24, Prison Break, and a whole slew of new ones – Heroes, The Nine, Vanished – just to name a few? It’s to be expected that a person can only hold so many ongoing story lines in his head. Some shows should just end at the 42 minute mark, and give us a break for a week. Nothing wrong with that. Why the hell did every network jump into this category of dramas? Because of Lost and 24? Well, maybe if you don’t schedule such shows against each other, you won’t be sacrificing them.
If I am a regular Lost audience, and Smith runs against it, to hell with Smith – as much as I love it – it’s gotta go, or will get taped. It’s a simple decision to make, why did the network execs put such great shows against each other? Smith could have been a lot of fun, now we’ll never know. If things keep going like that, I won’t be surprised to see The Nine and Heroes dumped for the same reason. Not because they performed badly, but simply because they performed worse than the competitor.
Does anyone actually expect a new show to pull the same numbers as Lost or Desperate Housewives? Right off the bat? Based on what flawed logic? Take it from NBC, who have shuffled their shows into Mon and Tue slots to avoid direct competition and to build a loyal viewer base. Don’t go head-to-head with big, established shows – because your newbie show is just going to die, no matter how good it is.
It’s really too bad about Smith – I was enjoying it thoroughly.
