R.I.P. Men of a Certain Age. After a meager two seasons of charming us as TNT’s only non-cop show, the network cancelled it, supposedly to make room for Salt Lake City Homicide or Grand Rapids Beat or Gonzo & Nash or some such other stupid ass cop show in a TV landscape swimming in them.
Now I’m not sure exactly why the network thought the adventures of three borderline 50 guys trying to get by wasn’t worth a third season. The ratings were good enough and creatively it’s the only thing that’s ever stepped foot on TNT to be recognized by critics, Emmy voters, and the Golden Globes. At this point I’m not sure TV execs need a reason. They just look at a show and say “Nope, nope, nope, this thing’s not a piece of shit. We can’t have this! Cancel it.”
It really wouldn’t surprise me if something being excellent were the sole factor in not getting another season. I look at AMC–a cable network with a lot better track record of creative success than TNT…for now–and I see how they treated two new dramas recently: Rubicon and The Killing. By almost all accounts Rubicon is a better show than The Killing. Rubicon is a smart, razor sharp, slow burning conspiracy theory that ended in an exciting cliffhanger that begged for a second season. By contrast, The Killing is stupid, sluggish, unsatisfying, and only pretends it’s a quality drama, made all the more clear by a terrible cliffhanger that begged for cancellation. So of course AMC green lit a second season of The Killing (one few fans will show up for since few fans are left) and cancelled Rubicon, even going so far as to deny the show a DVD release.
Then there are shows ending this year like Rescue Me, Entourage, and Desperate Housewives that are in their 7th or 8th season and should have ended about three years ago, as they’ve been creatively running the clock for some time now. You could say the same about a lot of other shows not being put out to pasture this year. Shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, American Idol, and any show on CBS aren’t around because they’ve really got new territory to explore (C.S.I. has covered every possible way to murder a human and might want to do pet homicides from now on), they’re only around because for some reason people still watch them and they make a ton of money.
So it’s unfair that shows like Rubicon, Men of a Certain Age, Arrested Development, Brimstone, Action, and pretty much every show I’ve ever really liked on the broadcast networks get the axe prematurely while just hitting their creative strides. Then other shows languish on for years after they have nothing to say–this could apply to the entire genre of reality TV–and actually make the TV landscape worse by showing that bad shows are more successful, encouraging crappiness. In a way, TV shows are like people: the good die young and the most profitable live forever.