Was Firefly just ahead of its time?

POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Monday, March 21, 2011 18:56
VIEWED: 3129
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GEEZER

Monday, March 21, 2011 3:09 AM

Considering the success of 'Lost", "V", "Fringe", etc. did Firefly just come before the audience for that type of show was ready for it?

I'e been watching the Science Channel's episodes on Sunday night, and it really seems to fit right in with what folk would watch now.

Did it just jump the gun?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

GWEK

Monday, March 21, 2011 3:52 AM

Certainly LOST was a very successful show, but I think grouping it with V or even FRINGE isn't particularly fair. I'm not sure about FRINGE's ratings (the move to the Friday night death slot is not a big show of faith by the network), but V's ratings are questionable enough that's it's constantly on the bubble of not being renewed.

Having said that...

I agree that FIREFLY was ahead of its time... not necessarily in show type, but in audience appeal. It's important to remember that FIREFLY aired about a head after 9/11, and that even had a huge imact on the American viewing audience (and arguably beyond).

Joss himself addresses this in an interview (I wish I could find the source), with an interchange that goes something like this:

FOX: Hey, Joss, we'd love to work with you. Do you have something straightforward, lighthearted, and patriotic?
Joss: Well, I've got this idea about a bunch of morally ambiguous criminal types living at the edge of poverty in the deeps of space.
FOX: Sold!

It's not hard to imagine that the timing was all wrong. In 2002, much of the viewing audience was looking for a very different kind of escapism. If the show aired today (or in recent years), with the economy in shambles and mistrust of "big government" and the establishment at an all time high, it would find a very different audience waiting for it.

I also think that the FOX/Joss interchange shows very clearly the foundation of another serious problem with the show--the creator and the network were not on the same page. While it's very popular to blame FOX for everything, Joss as much as admits that he was peddling a product that the network didn't really want.

Considering those outside factors, the eventual outcome is not, I suppose, a huge surprise despite the high quality of the show.

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

WISHIMAY

Monday, March 21, 2011 4:11 AM

Yes, your mission-should you choose to accept it- Is to go back in time to the day they decided to cancel FF. Steal the Lassiter(ya didn't know it was a timeline weapon too, did ya?) and load it with Higgs singlet particles and point it in the general direction of a Fox exec and you will automatically restore our timeline to the one where Joss is ruler of this planet and has superpowers to protect us from oil spills, tsunamis, earthquakes, mad dictators, evil mortgage companies and the general suckiness of this perverted century....

Now to answer your actual question...No, I don't think FF wasn't ahead of it's time, WE were behind on ours. I don't watch shows that don't make it to season 2 and I'm bettin' I'm not the only one. WE weren't given the time to fully realize Firefly's awesomeness... If it had made it to season 2 she'd still be runnin' today!

BYTEMITE

Monday, March 21, 2011 3:59 PM

Quote:
Certainly LOST was a very successful show, but I think grouping it with V or even FRINGE isn't particularly fair. I'm not sure about FRINGE's ratings (the move to the Friday night death slot is not a big show of faith by the network), but V's ratings are questionable enough that's it's constantly on the bubble of not being renewed.

To be fair to V, ratings are not necessarily an indication of show quality... They are a determination of success, but in a predetermined way. A show isn't going to have high ratings it you take it off air a couple weeks of it's broadcast, whether you see that as causing a viewer hemorrhage or something else. Same is true if it's intentionally put in a trouble slot, when it hasn't had the chance to attract viewers in a regular slot yet.

Frankly, considering how inconsistently Nelson families are chosen and where the rating pools are drawn from, well, I might argue that ratings don't actually mean anything. I might even argue that there's cherry picking and even made up numbers as opposed to actual statistics.

GWEK

Monday, March 21, 2011 4:35 PM

Oh, I definitely agree that ratings are not an indication of quality (in fact, there is very rarely a correlation).

But the original post referred to the "success" of V (grouping in with LOST and FRINGE). Based on everything I know about V, including ratings, the opinions I've heard from others, and (I'll be honest) my own inability to stomach more than a few episodes of it, I'd be hard-pressed to call it a "success" on any scale--and certainly wouldn't group it with LOST, which was a social phenomenon (rightly or not).

It's kinda like calling TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES or DOLLHOUSE "successes" because they were lucky enough to get renewed once.

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

BYTEMITE

Monday, March 21, 2011 4:42 PM

V is a special case for me. After they pulled the vaccine episodes during the swine flu scare, it became hard for me to not support it, regardless of how I felt about individual episodes.

Like a number of people feel about Firefly, so too do I think there might be some authority types who would like to see V dead because of the messages it sends. I know it sounds crazy and conspiracy theory, but I can't shake the feeling.

GWEK

Monday, March 21, 2011 4:45 PM

That DOES sound pretty crazy. :)

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

BYTEMITE

Monday, March 21, 2011 4:50 PM

Well, all I'm saying is, pat-on-head series that say our politicians and security agents are good guys who always get them evil bad guys in the end always seem to pull in the ratings. Whereas series that are socially subversive usually don't. Is it the viewers, are they dumb? Is it the networks and their lowest common denominator demographics? Or is it that society has become more accepting of dumb television and less of smart television because of what's been offered to us and what's shown to be popular in the ratings?

GWEK

Monday, March 21, 2011 4:57 PM

I gotta be honest, I'm gonna go with "most viewers are dumb." :P

Seriously, though, good, insightful fiction often fails (movies, TV, etc) because people are often looking for entertainment and escapism. I think it's no more "conspiracy driven" than that. And I don't think that most networks have a "political" agenda that extends beyond making as much money as possible (which, yes, means appealing to the lowest common denominator... or at least, the lowest common denominator willing to buy products from the advertisers.

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

ZEEK

Monday, March 21, 2011 5:48 PM

Yeah I don't think Firefly was ahead of its time unless there's some time when viewers start craving something deeper from TV.

That being said I do think it could have done well if it was given time. I think most anybody who really gives Firefly a chance can find something they like from it. That would take time and word of mouth to build that type of audience though.

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