NBC Cancels 'My Own Worst Enemy'

NBC has cancelled the new Christian Slater spy drama My Own Worst Enemy and the returning series Lipstick Jungle, according to Live Feed:

NBC's expectation for the return of Lipstick was modest, but Enemy was considered an important show. A spy thriller with a grown-up budget inspired by the Bourne movies, Enemy received NBC's coveted post-Heroes time period. That valuable Monday hour of scheduling real estate has become less worthwhile in recent weeks, however, as Heroes shed viewers -- weakening the lead-in for Enemy and hastening its decline.

I tried My Own Worst Enemy a few times and thought it was fun to see Slater argue with himself in video voicemail, but the series made some odd decisions, like casting pudgy comic Mike O'Malley as an international superspy. Television's Jonathan Bourne convinced me to put it on my TV Death Pool, where I ranked it the ninth-most likely cancellation.

I tried most of the new shows this TV season, giving up on everything but Fringe and Life on Mars. The latter series is a surreal cop show in which Jason O'Mara plays Sam Tyler, a modern New York police detective thrown back into the '70s, where he works cases old school with Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli and Gretchen Mol. (It appears that Tyler's in either a coma or purgatory -- there are occasional discontinuities, like when he spots a clubgoer wearing a Nirvana T-shirt at a time when Kurt Cobain would've been six years old.) The cast is unbelievably good, and the series keep finding great music in a decade where I thought none could be found.

Here's a sample episode's soundtrack, as described by Drake Lelane, who writes a regular music on TV feature for Film.Com:

"Wild in the Streets," Garland Jeffreys
"Ice Ice Baby," Vanilla Ice
"I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You," Cool Blues
"Come on and Gettit," Marion Black
"He Keeps You," Boscoe
"Anywhere in Glory," The Mighty Indiana Travelers
"Everybody is a Star," Sly & the Family Stone
"Black and White," Three Dog Night

"Ice Ice Baby" snuck into the episode when Det. Tyler used it to impress gun-toting black nationalists who kidnapped him. As Lelane observes, "only in 1973 would laying down the rhymes of Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby' be considered cool."

Television · 2008/11/13 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Details, details, details, this consultants are making a killing while letting so much go by, I see it time and time again. Makes me think and ponder at times.
With many thanks,
Betsy Buchanan

#1 · Betsy Buchanan · 2008/11/13

Hard time have even hit the BIG networks now!

#2 · Tony · 2008/11/14

I was really surprised to hear about those cancellations too!

#3 · Jerry · 2008/11/15

The network executives making these decisions are obviously jaded, greedy, out of touch with the rest of America, pompous jerks who have outlived their usefulness. I would love to tell them that to their faces.

The only new show that I care to watch is the Eleventh Hour. It's not great, but the stories have been interesting in a more academic way than the current CSIs. Plus the CSIs have gone a little too far in their gruesomeness and I don't enjoy slasher movies. I wish they had matured rather than devolved to horror movies. Same thing has happened to Criminal Minds. I don't enjoy them anymore. The situation comedies are so infantile that they aren't funny. The only one that I like is "Big Bang Theory." Not that I am such an intellectual, but I'm not a 14 year junior high school boy, either.

Programming for the networks and most of the cable channels really stinks. If it wasn't for the local news I wouldn't even bother to turn on the TV most days.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Jillian

#4 · Jillian · 2008/11/19

"The Mentalist" is still going strong, aye?!?

They are even re-running shows to fill empty slots they've created!

Still an interesting cast, too ...

#5 · tadowe · 2008/11/24