When I am abroad I say I am from NY, not the USA. Not that I dislike the USA, but I am proud of where I am from, and identify with being from there first. I wouldn't knock Texans for that either. I also would not be for NY leaving the USA either.
This show felt like so many other shows on American TV in the last decade: somebody had the core of a good idea, but the writers had no idea how to turn that into a show.
The first couple episodes of Jericho were tantalizing. The interesting part was the world and the geopolitical situation, but then so little about that actually changed over the course of the following episodes, it was just a bunch of small town politics and side stories among a few uncompelling characters.
I'll catch hell for this, but Battlestar Galactica was the same way. The mini-series and the first episode of season one are a completely different animal from the rest of the show. The rest of the show was just the writers releasing dribs and drabs of what the Cylons actually were and actually were planning, among a bunch of side stories between characters (okay these were more compelling characters for the most part, though largely unsympathetic).
This phenomenon arises from the way that TV shows are produced. The creators write ~6 episodes to showcase the concept and the funding/production decision is made based on these 6 episodes. So the shows are engineered for maximum drama during these 6 episodes, and the rest of the show’s run is trying to maintain a 100 meter sprint pace for sometimes up to 10 years.
This is particularly bad for “conspiracy” type shows where the protagonist uncovered some massive conspiracy in the first six episodes. The rest of the show usually ends up escalating the conspiracy to the massively absurd. “Oh this goes way above the President... it’s a shadowy cabal with an underground lair in Biarritz that is manipulating the entire world for... reasons.”
Out of all the shows in this vein that I've seen, Person of Interest was the only one that managed to maintain its pacing.
The key seems to be recognizing the season-long and multi-season arcs, making them both satisfying, but never getting to an "Oh, what do we do next?" point.
Well, it and of course Babylon 5.
And maybe Lost. I know it gets nerd hate, but I respect it from a show-running perspective.
> I'll catch hell for this, but Battlestar Galactica was the same way.
I just rewatched the mini-series and first few episodes of Season 1 of BSG. While, I remember thinking the same thing at the time, it was very obvious the second time around that for large arcs, the writers didn't have much of a plan. If I remember correctly though, there was always a lot of uncertainty about how many seasons they show would have, so it was difficult to plan more than a season at a time. It was also SciFi's most expensive show at the time, IIRC. They had a similar problem with Farscape... it was a big (and expensive) show, which stressed the network financially.
BSG is a great premise, but hard to come up with an overarching story arc that makes sense or offers closure. But sometimes you just have to let the writers go with things to see where they end up. There were some really good episodes later in the series, even with the filler.
The pattern seemed to: great story, engaging arc, high viewer ratings, sneak in individual episodes where there is a crisis that is resolved in a single show and the arc doesn't move so we can stretch the overall story. Lastly, I either stop watching or the show ends mid-arc.
Well, the writer's strike was also during the last season. So it was just the producers winging it with no one left who could tell them "no, that's stupid, we need to come up with something for else".
I'm surprised Farscape would've been expensive. I originally didn't watch that series because the production values didn't look much better than Andromeda (which I didn't like). Course Farscape ended up being one of my most favorite shows.
The people with this view are also a big and growing minority: https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/blog/texan-first-american-s...
> Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 40 percent identify as Texans before they identify as Americans, far outpacing any other age group.