Friday, April 4, 2008

More seaQuest coming tomorrow or the next day

I just watched another and boy it stank. It's one thing to call ordinary TV mostly melodrama. It is. The good guys win, the bad guys lose. Everything is neatly tied up. Only a few shows get away from that for any length of time and while seaQuest might have been ambitious with its CGI back in the day, its writers didn't go on many adventures. This one coming up is another of those where literally everybody, including the hapless guest stars, gets everything they really wanted in the end.

Also Bridger barely appears and Lucas has a single cameo. If I were feeling charitable, I'd say the writers wanted to pare down the cast for an episode so they could focus on a particular character. But the fact of it is that a lot of episodes this season have been absent multiple main leads. The last one has Bridger in a cameo, no Westphalen in the final cut, and no sign of Ortiz or O'Neil. That's half the principal cast. This one ships Lucas and Bridger off and has no Hitchcock even though she logically should be there. This is looking a bit like everyone put in for a few vacation days at once and the show dealt with it by writing around them.

2 comments:

David said...

I acutally believe, it was cost. One of the biggest expenses for a show is its cast. So during the season, especially as the season nears its end, cash is low.

To save money, actors roles can be pared down or even written out for an episode or two (and stars like old Roy can actually dictate how many episodes they appear in).

And on a show like seaQuest, where ratings were not as good as the network hoped for, that said network can also order shows to trim their budgets.

Midnight Wanderer said...

I will make a post on this episode eventually, maybe later tonight, but I don't think it's getting full frontal mockery out of me. It wasn't just bad, I've actually forgotten most of what happened.

I hadn't considered that writing for fewer of the regular cast could save money, though. Good point.