Holy christ is Futurama a good show. I got the second season on DVD a couple of weeks ago, and finally got around to watching a few episodes of it tonight. There was this one episode with a plotline revolving around Nixon, which was just fucking brilliant. I laughed my ass of over the last couple of minutes of that one - harder than I've laughed in quite awhile.

Why is it that the good shows almost always get cancelled? Like Newsradio, which was brilliant. Or how about Denis Leary's The Job? God, that show was good. And how could it not have been? Leary plays an asshole NY cop who has a drinking problem, a prescription pill problem, and who's cheating on his wife. How long did this amazingly good concept and incredibly well delivered show last? A handful of episodes. Oh yeah, and Dianne Farr is bloody gorgeous, and she was funny as hell on that show.

I'll admit some culpability when it comes to shows like Futurama. I just never remembered to watch that show when it was on, even though I loved what few episodes I got my shit together to watch. Newsradio was similar, although I won't take the hit on that one. NBC had the best Tuesday night lineup for fall '97, which included Newsradio, Frasier, and Just Shoot Me when it was still good. I actually watched consistently thanks to that setup. So what did NBC do? They broke up the band by shuffling shows around. Thanks to that, I all but stopped watching Newsradio just because I didn't know when it was on anymore (and clearly, I couldn't just check the TV guide). As such, it got cancelled.

Speaking of changing the nights shows are on: sometimes they do that, and even though the show doesn't get cancelled, I forget to watch it all the same. Like Law and Order: Sport Utility Vehicle. Man, that was a good show - all the ideas that were too fucked up for regular Law and Order. But they moved it to Fridays, when even I'm often out doing something. As an added insult, what did they put in SUV's place on Monday night? That awful Third Watch.

So, to conclude, fuck the networks for never leaving good shows in consistent time slots, and fuck all the stupid people for not getting the brilliance of shows like Futurama.