30 Rock continues to be the new Arrested Development, for better and possibly for worse
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- July
- 23
Do you realize that 30 Rock is still in danger of becoming the next Arrested Development?
It feels like the Funniest Show on Televisionâ„¢ has already had a good long run with lots of gas still in the tank. But really it’s only been two seasons, one of them strike-shortened. And no one is watching!
Well, not no one, but not nearly enough people are tuning in to give diehard fans like myself any confidence that Ben Silverman and the gang at NBC won’t pull the rug out from under Tina Fey and Co. no matter how many awards they pull in or how much praise the suits heap on them. Season 1 averaged an anemic 5.8 million viewers; in Season 2 that jumped to the still-too-low-for-prime-time 6.4 million.
Ratings drive programming, and sit-coms are still an endangered species. Funny just isn’t enough. Ask Will Arnett, the funniest guy on the former title holder of Funniest Show on Televisionâ„¢. (Yeah, that title isn’t really trademarked, but that does make it look more official, no?)
Critics raved about Arrested Development. Its cult following loved it, and so did Emmy (six wins, 15 noms in its three-year run). SAG, TCA and the Golden Globes showed plenty of love too. That didn’t stop trigger-happy Fox from yanking it.
So this is what ran through my mind as I read about 30 Rock’s impressive showing at this years’s TCA’s.
Fey took home the Individual Achievement in Comedy prize, besting, among others, castmate Alec Baldwin (and egregiously no one from The Office). The show itself won the Outstanding Achievement in Comedy award, over a Murderer’s Row of Who’s Funny on TV: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Flight of the Conchords and The Office.
Fey acknowledged the show’s ratings/quality gap in her acceptance speech.
I want to thank everyone involved in the Television Critics Association, not just for this award but for your very very generous support of 30 Rock. Thank you to you guys for making 30 Rock the most successful cable show on broadcast television. Oh, it’s a great time to be on broadcast television, isn’t it? It’s exciting! It’s like being in vaudeville in the ‘60s. We’re thinking of actually changing the name of the show to Ratings-Challenged 30 Rock, just to take some of the power out of it. It’s like taking back the N-word; we’re gonna do it. It might make Elisabeth Hasselbeck cry, but we’re gonna do it.
I bet Arnett and Ron Howard and Jason Bateman gave some pretty funny acceptance speeches back in the day, too.
Anyway, among Fey’s other observations, according to BuddyTV, were citing Tom Hanks’ work on Bosom Buddies as appointment TV for her back in the day (Can you say Season 3 guest star?); saying Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghey makes Mad Men’s womanizer Don Draper “look like half a fruitâ€; and describing co-star Jack McBrayer (Kenneth the NBC page) as a little kid who has a disease that makes him look like a 30-year-old hillbilly.
The bottom line is, people need to start tuning in to 30 Rock if it’s going to last longer than Arrested Development’s three-year run. But if you don’t believe me and every TV critic and awards show going, I don’t know how else to convince you.
Well, there’s this…
And this…
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm by Brian Howard.
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The ratings probably won’t go up because 30 Rock sometimes requires you to think just like Arrested Development did. I hate constantly losing such great shows. I wish they would all just start out on HBO or Showtime. They would be considered hits with the same viewership and last as long as the producers wanted to make them.
I’d like to say you’re just being cynical, but you’re probably right. Mindless shows seem to do better than something like AD or 30 Rock, where it helps to have a rewind button for the bits that go by too fast.
I love the idea of more shows like this launching on premium cable, even if it costs a premium. Weeds and Entourage (less so of late) are great examples. It blows my mind to think where AD could have gone on HBO.