Where Have All...

...the good shows gone?

Tonight I just finished watching ABC's Happy Town. It promised to be quite the ride, which I was looking forward to, considering most of television shows are essentially the same, tired formulae they have been for the past decade or so. Most shows nowadays are sitcoms, crime and/or medical dramas or just plain bad. There are times, though, that a show emerges from the basic crap that most networks put out there and is actually rather good, intriguing, exciting, involving and/or unique. Sometimes, you even get all of the above.

Now, Happy Town was a fairly good show, if you approach it as it is. If you go into it expecting everything to be handed to you like most shows are, spoonfeeding its audience the answers, clues and laughs - I'm looking at you, clichéd laughtrack - then you're going to be sorely disappointed.

The premise for this show is that years ago, a someone arrived in a small town called Haplin, nicknamed "Happy Town" by its residents, and began kidnapping people without leaving a trace of where they were. About seven people were taken and then the kidnappings suddenly stopped. This man was nicknamed "the Magic Man" because he had the uncanny ability of making all these people disappear entirely, as if by magic. Along with this main narrative, you are presented with various other, smaller storyline, such as a murder, some teenage romance, the unexpected arrival of a woman from out of town and about a dozen others that I can't think of right now. Essentially what this boils down to is a whole like of questions and not a whole lot of answers, even by the end of the season.

Excuse me, series finale since ABC decided to fucking cancel the show.

So, I'm sitting here, staring in shock at my screen at the fact that they just revealed the identity of the Magic Man, but since there are no more shows, we're not told
a) how he did it
b) why he did it
c) how he chose his victims
d) ABOUT EVERYTHING FUCKING ELSE.

What's with the movie The Blue Door and why does it keep popping up? Why did Peggy Haplin do what she did and why did the Sherriff GO INTO A SELF-HARMING FUCKING RAGE AND CUT OFF HIS OWN DAMNED HAND? How does he know about Chloe? Why does Henley have that tattoo? Why is Henley there? Is she related to ________ ? And, of course, most importantly...

WHAT THE FUCK?


This is like Harper's Island all over again, only in a much crueler way. See, Harper's Island was another show that presented itself in a mystery format, only they wanted to involve the audience in determining who the killer was. Of course, the plot was defined the entire time, the parameters set and the audience should have been well set-up in determining who the killer was.

Then, they apparently decided while writing to fuck the rules that they had been bashing about our heads the entire time, uncap our heads and fuck our brains with a blender.

Seriously? Two killers, one of whom was described as, quite firmly, being dead since the Pilot? I knew the other one from episode three, but come on! Follow your own damned rules or don't fucking play. Seriously. If you're going to have a show like that, don't rabbit punch your audience and then dance around them laughing because they didn't see it coming, only to be surprised as to why the fuck they're pissed off at you.

It's. Not. Fucking. Funny.

All in all, I guess you could say that I'm a bit pissed off at all the television networks right now. They've canceled Heroes, FlashForward, Eastwick and a bunch of other shows that I liked, leaving me with a bunch of questions and no hopes for any answers. It's like the entire television industry decided that it doesn't really need the audience anyway because as long as it has pretty colours, pretty actors and a few funny bits, the general public will gobble it up with a spoon.

And the sad bit is:

THEY'RE RIGHT.