Wonderfalls comes to DVD on december 7th, 2004! (1 Viewer)

[Rutgar]

Well, to deny that the "Friday-Night-Death Slot" doesn't exist, is to totally ignore all historical facts. There have been countless blogs, articles, acknowledgments, and actual data, that supports this. Dating as far back to such notable shows as Star Trek:TOS, and Kung Fu. At one time, I had a list of all the shows that were moved to Fridays from another time slot, and then were canceled the very next season (I'll see if I can find it). Of course, now we can add ST: Enterprise to the list.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Yeah, but you can probably come up with a similar list for Saturdays, Mondays, Wednesdays, etc. You can come up with shows that have moved to Fridays and thrived. And then you have to isolate how much was just the move - for example, you mention Star Trek, but saying it was killed by the timeslot ignores that it had changes in the creative staff between the second and third season, and that the third season is roundly considered the show's weakest. A simple list also doesn't describe why shows were moved to Friday; in many cases, they were already considered somewhat weak and the network wanted to give the show's previous slot to a stronger show.

Correlation doesn't equal causation. I don't deny that Friday night is a tough gig (fewer total viewers), or that Fox is quicker than many networks to cut its losses when they see a show donig poorly. But that editorial ignores any evidence that may contradict its point, making an emotional appeal that falls apart when examined.

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

But they showed the first episode LAST!

 

[Jason Seaver]

Honestly - would you care if you hadn't been told? If you didn't know the whole backstory, and just sat down to watch "The Train Job" cold, would you have been too confused to get into the show.

There were a lot of accusations that Fox doing this led to the audience being confused, but I don't remember anybody actually saying that they tuned into the show and couldn't grasp what was going on.

 

[David Williams]

Yes, but not because I was confused. I tuned in for that first episode and promptly tuned back out, even though I am a good little Whedonphile. That episode was a horrible way to start the series. It was only after hearing how great the show was, etc., did I break down and purchase the set. After watching Serenity, The Train Job flows much better and I am really enjoying the show now.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Thanks to a switched shift yesterday I was able to get through the last episode of the set tonight. I actually only saw the first two episodes when they originally aired, and while I thought it was funny, it didn't really set my world on fire. I was actually at Best Buy picking up Sealab 2021 Season 2 and I almost passed on the Wonderfalls DVDs. Boy am I glad my thrifty side didn't win out. As my credit cards will tell you, it rarely does...

I love the show. I don't know why it didn't hit me like this the first time I saw the show in broadcast, but I was absolutely blown away upon putting in the discs. The nice 16x9 presentation and the much appreciated 5.1 sound mix doesn't hurt, but I really fell in love with the characters and the stories being told. As I went through the last disc I can't believe how stressed out I was getting thinking the show would end with Eric leaving without any resolution!

 

[Citizen87645]

Holy smokes that was fast. I placed my order with Amazon Tuesday and got it today! Free shipping too! Thank you, oh inconsistent USPS!

 

[Rick P]

I'm about 1/2 way thru... and is it just me...

or does anyone think Jaye probably has a cousin named George that was killed by a toilet seat a coupla of years back??

(that is.. you can tell Bryan Fuller's writing style... )

 

[Michael Sliger]

I may just be hypersensitive since I just doubled my TV viewing area yesterday (and gained progressive output to boot), but the overcompression in Disk 3 seems to be showing itself rather strongly to my eyes. The most glaring examples were with the white hospital walls in "Lying Pig" where the MPEG blocking is fierce on both my 30" LCD set and my computer monitor. The scene starting at 18:40 is a great example, especially on the one-shots of Karen Tyler. The scene is poorly lit, so it seems that the resultant visible film grain made the encoding a nightmare. Anyone else having gripes about scenes like that?

 

[TravisR]

I did notice a slight drop in quality on disc 3 but I kinda expected it since they put 5 episodes on that disc and 3 commentaries.

 

[KyleC]

Is the order on the discs the order they aired? I loved the first episode but the second one dropped dramatically. I was a little bored. Hopefully it picks up because I really do like this story. Without spoilers do they ever say why all the stuff started talking to her?

 

[Rick P]

 

[Rutgar]

Yes, it's the correct order, and it does get better. In fact, it develops sort of a series arc. And the best news is that it all pretty much gets resolved by the final episode, which is very unusual for an early canceled series.

 

[Michael Sliger]

Actually, the four episodes aired on FOX are not in broadcast order. "Pink Flamingos" was pulled up to the #2 spot for the disks, pushing "Karma Chameleon" and 'Wound-Up Penguin" to #3 and #4 respectively. IMHO, it works much better this way. Jaye is a little too comfortable with the muses in "Karma Chameleon" and I love the rapid-fire humor of "Pink Flamingos". I think that the show might have pulled better ratings with this episode order.

 

[Rutgar]

Oh, okay. I guess I didn't realize that, since the only two episodes I actually saw aired were "Wax Lion", and "Pink Flamingos", respectively. I must have missed the other two due to Fox moving the show around so much.

Which brings up the question; Why does Fox go through all the bother to put a new show on the air, and then muck with it so much, that even interested viewers, lose interest? Or just simply lose track of it?

 

[BrandonJF]

I don't think whether or not it was confusing is even the issue. Looking at both episodes - "Serenity" and "The Train Job" - which was a better opening for the series? They should have called "The Train Job" "The Rush Job", because as far as introducing the characters, that's what they did. For any fan of Firefly, you just need to point to "Serenity" - Fox thought THAT was slow!

In my opinion, Fox didn't get the show and it really doesn't sound like they supported it (I base that off of the audio commentaries and interviews with Whedon and Minear). If they wanted Firefly to succeed, they did a horrendous job. Did Firefly ever get the kind of chances that Arrested Development and 24 got? Of course not. It was a miracle if they could squeeze a Firefly ad on the air in between Joe Millionaire spots. It really sounds like Fox jumped at the chance to grab Whedon and ended up stuck with a show they didn't like.

I'd say it's the show's fault if you can bring people to it, then viewership dwindles from week to week. Fox didn't get people to the door for Firefly, Fastlane, John Doe, Wonderfalls... I can't even recall marketing campaigns for most of those. If I hadn't been a big Whedon fan, I wouldn't have even known about Firefly. And if I hadn't been a big Firefly fan, I wouldn't have known about Wonderfalls - the main reason I decided to watch it was because I knew Jewel Staite (Kaylee on "Firefly") was doing a few episodes (which I'm finally up to on the DVDs!). It kinda brings to mind "JAG" - there's a show that NBC didn't know what to do with. They had it on in a horrible time slot, nobody watched, they dumped it, and now CBS has been making money off of it for, what, 9 years? Execution counts for something...

Let's not even get into the Tru Calling fiasco...

I'll say this for Fox - they find some great shows. Stuff that probably would've never made it on the air on any other network. They just don't know what to do with them.

 

[Jason Seaver]

I don't know as it's "they don't know what to do with them" as they're not so concerned with individual shows. They develop five quirky shows with the expectation that only one will grab an audience. That one, they ride and ride hard because it attracts a very loyal audience; the others they discard, just the cost of doing business. If they're lucky, they can at least make some DVD money now, if it was produced by Fox-the-studio.

Is it a good strategy? I don't know. It yields a lot of creative, interesting shows, but not a lot of long-running ones. Maybe if Fox programmed three hours a night instead of two, they'd have a little more room to be patient.

 

[BrandonJF]

That's the problem. I really did only see print ads... in comic books... using Buffy to sell the show (what was that line again? Something like "Joss Whedon does for space what he did for vampires"? No... but it was something to that effect)... of course, that's a problem, because had Buffy been on Fox, it would never have finished it's first season. They really needed more than the Buffy viewers to come on over.

I honestly only remember a couple of commericals for "Wonderfalls" and I don't remember those commercials really conveying what the show was even about. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly. I never thought "Wonderfalls" had a shot of being a success (not just blaming Fox - I could never see a show like this reaching a mainstream audience, especially when the mainstream version of the show was airing on CBS on the same night for the first 2 episodes).

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, actually, we don't know that. We know how the show performed with "The Train Job" as its premiere. We've got no evidence to say that the show's performance with "Serenity" would have been better, barring access to a parallel universe.

 

[Eddy-C]

Who write a script(the train job) in 2 days? Fox probably didn't think Whedon and Minear could do it.