The End of an Era


I love TV. I mean, who doesn’t? Think about the concept of a TV for a second. You can sit down, hit one button, and watch virtual reality (as in the stuff you see is not actually happening) right in front of you for as long as you want. You can flip through hundreds of channels and still not find anything worth watching. Unless of course you come across a good fishing show. Have you ever been able to pass one of those and not watch to see what his next catch was going to be? I can watch those shows for hours. And the closer it gets to the end of the hour the closer you know you are to catching the big one. It’s like watching poker on TV. It’s 5:56; guess what the next hand is going to do? I bet you see a winner and millions of dollars tossed around in the next thirty seconds.

But there are certain TV shows that I make a priority to watch. Take Grey’s Anatomy for example. Anyone that has a heart and an ounce of feminine spirit in them loves that show. Now, is the show packed with incredible writing? No, of course not. It is about a whole bunch of doctors that date amongst themselves, fall in love with each other, fight and break up, talk about their feelings, and make up in the end. It is like a grown up Full House.

Then there are shows like Nip Tuck that are so packed with drama you can not help but watch the next episode to see who gets the next boob job or the next tummy tuck. And then throw in the fact that the main characters both slept with the same woman and one is now married to her. And the son that the supposed couple had actually came from the second guy. Yeah, this is a lifetime of drama just waiting to happen.

But then there are shows like Prison Break, the topic of this discussion. Before I get too far into this let me make a few things straight. First, I do not watch TV on TV. I hate commercials. I hate them so much (and don’t you dare say TiVo because TiVo is junk. I still have to fast forward through the commercials. The point is that I do not want to see any form of advertisement while I am falling in love and caring for my characters.) I will distance myself from the sitcoms until they are on DVD. Now, this does two things. One, it makes it impossible to have that water cooler conversation the next day at the office about who kissed who and who killed who for what purpose. The other thing it does is allow me to watch an entire season, and sometimes an entire series depending on the show that I am watching, all at once. I can sit down on a Saturday and watch Season 3 of Gilmore Girls and be caught up in no time.

But with Prison Break, as well as Crash, Dexter, and Weeds, I watch current episodes. I watch current episodes because these are shows that are do damn good I can not put myself through that to wait until the next season. And with Prison Break more so than any other.

Now, with Prison Break, you have to image (for those of you that have not seen it) you know the premise. Guess what? They get out of prison. But you never expect that to happen at the end of the first season. When the end of the first season comes along you think to yourself, “Where can this go from here?” Well, it goes to them now being on the run and the drama that ensues with that. Then there is a fictional company that gets through into the mix and the love that is built between brothers and you are set for another two seasons. Getting ready for their forth season now, Fox decides to pull the plug. Fox has stated that Prison Break has “run it’s course.”

I can not say that I disagree. Like I said I was done after season 1. There was not much more to keep me interested. But, however, there was that added drama and the sudden loss of characters for whatever reason coming at the end of season 2. Then, at the start of season 3 we are back in prison with Scofield being in even worse shape than before. Long story short I was getting bored. (Somehow I kept watching though.)

But the thing that gets to me is that they are replacing Prison Break with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Correct me if I am wrong but was the Terminator not from the mid 1990’s? I have not even seen one of the how ever many Terminator movies there were but I know it was before my movie appreciation time.

Long story short I am upset that they are pulling what was a great concept. I just with they had given it a few more seasons to run its full course. The number of views proves that this show had some clout.

What will I watch next?