Every year, there's at least one show. I assume that TV Guide didn't come up with the phrasing "The Best Show You're Not Watching," but the term applies even more with the proliferation of hundreds of cable channels, various legal and illegal outlets on the Internet, DVRs, and Netflix. Back in the 1990s, a show dubbed the best that no one was watching could often get as many as 8 million viewers. The idea that a show that has 8 million people watching live is something that the proverbial "You" are not watching is quaint; frankly, it was even kind of quaint in the mid-1990s. These days, one of the biggest shows on network TV, one of the most frequently talked-about shows on TV, is The Office. On a good day, it gets 8 million viewers.
With each passing year, though, the term is being bandied about more accurately. Last year, in terms of the actual calendar and the TV season, two notable shows that no one seemed to be watching were Dollhouse and Better Off Ted. These shows, by the end, were struggling to get 3 million people watching live. 2010, however, has a new low in viewership for shows people weren't watching. If you haven't gotten tired of me mentioning Terriers, the FX detective drama that just ended its first season last Wednesday, you may take heart that the show was just canceled. Before I get into why the show was so great, and honor it as one of the best shows on TV in 2010, let's get a couple of things clear.
First, while I wish I could be angry at FX in the same way that I was angry at Fox and ABC for letting Dollhouse and Better Off Ted die (why renew shows you have no interest in marketing?), I can't. The ratings for Terriers were embarrassingly low for pretty much any network. The finale got a grand total of 784,000 viewers, in total, and that made it the show's second-highest-rated episode of 13. There is no question that the network had zero justification to bring back the show if the ratings would stay the same. What's more, FX is fast becoming a network that could dominate the cable world. The quality of its shows are pretty much unparalleled. Terriers, Louie, Justified, The Shield, and others are truly great TV shows. If I knew FX was replacing Terriers with crap, I'd get angry. I can't.
But Terriers was a great show; the only solace I can take is that, yeah, the series got 13 episodes to tell a complete story; for those who think it's even more pointless to watch the show now that it's gone, know that the writing staff (including Ted Griffin, Shawn Ryan, and Tim Minear, all fine writers) got the beginning, middle, and ending into the season. While a few threads were left vaguely open, none were frustrating in their conclusions. You can dive into the series when it is released on DVD and Blu-ray. I'd go so far as to say that it's worth buying without having seen a single second, but then, I'm biased. For the uninitiated, Terriers was--and boy, do I hate using the past tense--a show about Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue) and Britt Pollack (Michael Raymond-James), an ex-cop and ex-thief, respectively. Hank and Britt had a tiny private-detective outfit in Ocean Beach, California, a city near San Diego. Mostly, they work small jobs, the smallest you can think of. When one of Hank's old buddies dies, however, the two friends stumble into a huge case, filled with powerful men who protect even more powerful people and a threat to destroy the little city.
Terriers works best because it's both procedural and serial. The show is never as serialized as an episode of Lost, nor is it as much a procedural as an episode of Law and Order. What the show could potentially lack in an overarching story, it makes up for with sometimes disturbing and always compelling weekly stories, and a dynamic duo (yes, I just wrote "dynamic duo") in Logue and Raymond-James. The two men were friends in real life, and the chemistry shows on screen. The banter they have is not only witty, but it's real. More often than not, movies and TV shows that feature excessive banter don't work because the people talking don't actually seem like friends. Not so here. The best part of the show--and pretty much everything works, mind you--is that we're rooting for these two guys, because they're guys we'd want to hang around with, guys we'd want on our side when things are down.
Other elements of the show work better here than they normally would. Hank's got an ex-wife and ex-partner, both of whom try to hate him but just can't, because as self-destructive as he can be, he's charming and honest and bracing in ways that most people just aren't. Britt has a committed girlfriend who knows about his past (whereas in other shows, she'd find out during the season and fall out with him), and kind of gets off on it initially. There are parts of the show that could have been stronger. Hank and Britt have a lawyer on their side, but she's only in a handful of episodes, and serves only slight purposes as a character. That said, Logue and Raymond-James are working alongside a fine cast, all as effortlessly entertaining as the next.
Terriers was a great show, one with nasty villains (an important SoCal lawyer played by character actor Michael Gaston is the oily baddie) we want to see ruined and destroyed, one with weekly cases that manage to duck and weave thanks to the sharp writing, and one with great leads. We can argue until the cows come home if the marketing and title are to blame (though the president of FX would disagree, I'm sorry to tell him that the answer there is probably a big, fat "Yes"), but what matters isn't even that Terriers is gone. I can be sad, as can the other sub-million viewers, but what makes me happy is that another great TV series existed and will live forever, passed on to friends, neighbors, coworkers, so every one of us can cherish another show people caught just when it was too late.
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