TV-Tastic EPIC FAIL: House Renewed! Lie To Me, Human Target, The Chicago Code, & Breaking In CANCELED!

When we’re wrong we admit it and this was the biggest case of FAIL that we have had since we started this blog.   A few weeks ago we not only predicted that FOX would lose House but we also predicted that out of these three shows, Lie To Me, Human Target, and The Chicago Code at least one would be saved despite mediocre ratings. Well, we were wrong on all counts, but it certainly is a qualified FAIL.

House Stays With FOX For Eighth Season

The New York Daily News has reported that Universal Media Studios the has come to terms with FOX Broadcasting over the price for the show and cast salaries.  Well, to be more accurate NYD reported that NBCUniversal had come to terms with FOX Broadcasting, which is completely inaccurate. Look, Mainstream Lazy-Press, stop calling it NBCUniversal because it sounds cool.  It’s NOT NBCUniversal.  It used to be NBCUniversal Television Studios and NBCUniversal Television Group is the parent company but that’s not who makes the decisions for UMS.  This is the equivalent of calling 20th Century Fox Television Studios, FOX Entertainment Group.

Rant over… moving along.

NOT NBCUniversal

With the deal finally getting sealed for House,  we’re not surprised about the cancellations. We predicted that House wasn’t going to be picked up because of all the deadlines that had gone by, the fact that Universal Media Studios (fka NBCUniversal Television Studio) and FOX could not come to terms on licensing fees and actors salaries and the fact that UMS really wanted this money and would have been glad to take it from NBC who is not only desperate for a scripted drama hit, but it also just had $200 million more dumped into its budget for programming by Comcast. So based on this and the fact that FOX has a lot of question marks this Fall for scripted-drama, we speculated that the loss of House would set off a tidal wave of changes in FOX’s programming decisions, including the ones we mentioned in the beginning of this piece.

So, yes, we failed, but consider the fact that all of those predictions were predicated on House going to NBC.  Regardless of the outcome, there’s certainly no denying the fact that the fate of House on FOX was the key factor in their recent programming decisions so the importance of House for FOX cannot be overstated.  It’s no coincidence that the day the announcement is made about House that FOX also announces that they are canceling five scripted shows (not surprisingly, Traffic Light was also canceled) and picking up a whole bunch of new pilots (story, here).

Canceled? Huh???

That being said, we were very surprised about the cancellation of Breaking In for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s a great show, and it has a strong cast (with the Christian Slater as the lead), put up decent numbers, had great exposure as the lead-out for American Idol and had a lot of potential.  We don’t understand their logic of not giving it a chance to run a complete season next Fall.  The show couldn’t have been particularly expensive to produce and it certainly wasn’t losing money. Was the problem really that it wasn’t retaining enough of AI‘s audience as the lead-out?  How much were they expecting, really?  It’s not entirely the same audience.

But fear not, as it looks like FOX may be reconsidering this rather hasty decision and it is possible that we may see BI in FOX’s 2011 – 2012 schedule after all.  Check out this related post for all the details about all the latest developments for BI.

Folks, don’t forget that the major network up-front media events are on Monday, May 16th.  This is the day that we will find out the fates of all this season’s shows that haven’t already been decided and we’ll also find out what new shows will be on the schedules for the 2011 – 2012 season.  You can find out the schedules for all of the events, here.

Blu-Ray Review: ‘Family Guy: It’s A Trap!’ (‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi’ Parody)

An outrageous “Family Guy”-style remake of Return of the Jedi, this Star Wars spoof finds Chris Skywalker and Princess Lois attempting to rescue Peter Solo from Jabba the Hutt, defeat the mighty Stewie Vader and blow up the second Death Star. This wacky animated parody features off-the-wall Star Trek: The Next Generation guests including Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Michael Dorn as Lieutenant Worf. – Netflix

4 out of 10

This is the third installment of the Family Guy spoofs of the original Star Wars films and it is the worst by far.  In the opening scrolling text sequence in the beginning of It’s a Trap! the writers tell a tale about how they literally put no effort into the writing of this because they were so exhausted after having done Something, Something, Something, Darkside that they just didn’t care… this is not a joke, it is the absolute truth.  It’s even admitted to by Seth McFarlane in the commentary, and it’s apparent from the first joke that they completely phoned it in.

It’s a Trap! is boring and unfunny for the most part and the jokes are generally predictable and nowhere near as good as Blue Harvest or Something, Something, Something Darkside (with Blue Harvest being the best of the three).  There is one truly hilarious scene in the film but that’s it (and unlike some other reviewers, we’re not going to spoil it by telling you what that is.  You deserve to get some enjoyment out of this mess).  The rest is pretty much a waste of time from a comedy standpoint and what’s going to be disappointing is that this is that is going to be this season’s season finale because that’s what they’ve been doing with these direct-to-video movies for the last four years.  It’s really a shame because, It’s a Trap! is going to tarnish what has been the best season of Family Guy since the relaunch.  This episode seems more suited to second or third season post-relaunch Family Guy with the unfunny jokes and jokes that just got dragged on forever than it does for the 2010 -2011 season.  If you need any further proof of how bad this is or how the writers mailed it in, they threw in a Conway Twitty scene… again… but this time they gave him a Darth Vader helmet (no, I’m not kidding).

The only reason it’s getting a four instead of one is because the special features, albeit limited, are pretty decent (the commentary is funnier than the film) and the animation is fantastic.  This is the first of the Family Guy Star Wars spoofs to be produced in 16:9 and it is quite visually stunning and in fact it is the most visually stunning of the three spoofs.  That being said, quality of animation is not why we watch Family Guy, though.

Unless you are a die-hard Family Guy fan and you must have this in your collection, we wouldn’t recommend this.  The only reason we purchased it is because it came in the  trilogy and we needed the Blue Harvest Blu-Ray and the trilogy was just $4.00 more than just the one film. Also, for the record, the Blu-ray not only comes with the Digital Copy but it also comes with the DVD copy as well so at least it’s a bargain.