It’s Official: FOX SUCKS MAJOR…

Farewell Kitchen Confidential… what was currently one of FOX’s better shows.

Well, no need to finish that title… I think you get the point.

I’ve been a major supporter of FOX for a very, very long time. They’ve made some shows that while offensive to others has been the jewels of entertainment for others for two decades now. Taking risks on crude comedies like ‘Married… With Children’ and weird shows like ‘The X-Files’ and ‘The Simpsons’ are just a few things that have actually elevated FOX to quality programing they are doing right now. Now while I detest the reality overkill FOX has shamelessly dived into in the last few years, no one can argue that shows like ’24’, ‘House M.D.’ and ‘Arrested Development’ are signs that the network is growing into a major powerhouse and is capable of making some kickass quality programing.

While the shows listed above are good signs that FOX is growing and maturing as a network, the network however is picking up a very bad habits from it’s fellow major networks. This bad habit is killing off a show before it has a chance to grow wings and try to fly. Fox did this a few years ago with Firefly, and now they’re doing it with a great sitcom titled ‘Kitchen Confidental’… a show that I had attempted to watch religiously since it first aired in September.

Created by Darren Starr (Sex In The City), the show was based on Chef Tony Bourdain’s excellent book of the same title. While I was a little iffy about the concept, I tuned in and was taken aback by the quality of the writing and the cast. The show was handled with directorial craftsmanship superb for television viewing. Actors were kept within their boundaries, dialogue is quick but not rushed, and characters are at least likable… which is something you can’t say for many FOX shows on these days. The exposition was presented neatly in the first block and gave sufficient personality to each character. As a whole, I really liked the show and was excited about watching upcoming episodes and seeing how the show progressed. Kitchen Confidential was a well balanced show that could have been be a serious contender for the Primetime viewing audience.

Unfortunately FOX disagreed with me, and have pulled the plug on after airing only four episodes. That’s it, just four measly episodes. How can you expect an audience to gel with a show that quickly? How can you expect a storyline to catch on if you don’t give the audience a chance to digest it and take a moment to judge it? Forgive the pun, but yanking a show of the air that quickly is like taking away someone’s meal after four bites. You never really got a real taste for the meal, and the show was never really given a fair chance.

This isn’t the first time this has happened either, and is just disgusts me that networks have little or no faith in their shows anymore. There used to be a time that executives would give a show at least a year to grow legs before giving the axe. Now show are expected to start drawing in ten million households a night instantly or face the chopping block, and they’re expected to do this in less than three or four episodes. I realize that the war for advertising dollars is intense, but the way to make a good show is to stick to your guns and hope that a show catches on. Instead they’re tossed to the wayside if they don’t perform instantly and I think that’s poor form, and completely without class.

I tuned into FOX last night, eager to check out a new episode of ‘Kitchen Confidential’, only to get a rerun of Arrested Development instead. After surfing the TV sites, I learned that FOX had pulled the plug on what was their best new sitcom of the year. I guess to them it wasn’t since the ratings were shit, so they’d rather keep airing episodes of the highly offensive ‘War At Home’ which on gets better ratings only because of a better timeslot. That’s what distrubs me, bad shows like that will move on despite their severe lack of quality, while smart and witting shows like KC get knocked down the drain.

Will I boycott FOX completely for this horrid mistake? Of course not, there’s a new episode of House on tonight… but I am deeply disappointmented in the network that I thought was making strides in the right direction. Instead of boycotting the station for making what I truely think was a rash decision to pull KC, I will instead continue to support what I think are good shows on the network in the hopes they are kept around a little longer. While FOX has made some major steps to improve the quality of what they air, I truely think ditching Kitchen Confidential in favor of shows like ‘War At Home’, ‘Ameircan Dad’ and ‘Reunion’ is a bad choice.

Just to give you an idea of how dumb TV Execs are these days, let me share with you a real story about a shows that also had slow start. There was one show in the early eighties on NBC that the execs of that time really liked, but for some reason didn’t work for viewers. That year no one tuned in to watch it and it ranked 98th overall when rated. If that happened today, this show would have been yanked instantly and tossed away to never be heard from again. But the person in charge of NBC at that time refused to let it go and insisted that it will catch on, just give it a chance. Much like KC, this show had critical praise and ended up winning a few emmys that year and the next year the show caught on and went on to rake in monster ratings for the next ten years. The name of that show? Cheers.

Just goes to show that four episodes a fair chance does not make… something I really wish today’s TV execs would learn.

Peter