Bee Boy — Thu, 6/7/07 12:32am

So I hear. And the truly destructive legacy of this is now stupid fans will think this is how you save shows. And I'm not disputing plenty of shows get canceled and shouldn't. And of course the Nielsen concept (or, as some Jericho fans I've read have described it, the "Neilsons," the "Nilssons," or the "Nealons") is fucking preposterous. But God, we don't need anyone (networks, producers, or stars) capitulating to this sort of bullshit.

Nor, for that matter, do we need to lay this guilt trip on them every time they try a serialized show and it becomes unfeasible to keep it on the air until it reaches a logical conclusion. (For many shows, that's forever!) Going bonkers every time a Kidnapped peters out without a resolution is going to have a chilling effect on future Kidnappeds and that's bad for everyone. If a show ends abruptly, it's just like those fun ambiguous endings on movies. You get to imagine your own ending!

This, as I recently realized, is the key to the Jericho fan freakout. The show's blockheaded writing appealed to fans too stupid to have followed any other serialized show. They watch the dumb, moronic garbage all idiots watch, so they're unaccustomed to having their shows get canceled. And they're too moronic to imagine their own ending, so they demand one from the network. Seriously, if CBS hadn't thrown the awful writers of Jericho a few table scraps to pen eight more clunky hours of it, you could make a killing online selling forged "unproduced scripts" of the series to shell-shocked viewers seeking comfort from the knowledge of whether the adulterous brother was ever able to rescue his marriage from the brink of collapse, and did Skeet ever get them boys that stole all the horses from his Maw.

The rabid nut-purchasing, mail-server-clogging contingent of Jericho fans is smaller than the number of people who watched it even at its lowest point. Which means the show will flop again and go away again. Which is a blessed thing, because if word got around that you could bully CBS into reviving your show, and that resuscitated the Touched by an Angel campaign... then I'd have to boycott CBS.

It's a TV show, people. Move on. You don't know pain unless you were a Veronica Mars viewer. Nobody owed us a resolution – they just had so much more to tell us. The next morning, I dug my miniature Sojourner Rover out of storage and placed it on the shelf as a memorial. I grieved hard for a day or two. I still get a lump in my throat when I scroll past its folder on the TiVo. But it's a TV show. I moved on.

The world doesn't revolve around your taste in television (especially if your taste runs to really terrible shows). This country is doomed if it doesn't get over this current obsession with "I am special. I matter!" You're just another shlub like the rest of us. Devote your raging civic voice to nationalized health care or shut up. Save your nut money and buy your kids a bus ticket to a town where the IQ is over 80 – at least there's hope in that. The truest laugh I've had at American Dad all year (okay, the only laugh all year) was when Stan feared he'd gotten a contact high from a burning marijuana barn, so he consulted the CIA checklist of indications he might be on drugs:

1. Cottonmouth.
2. Life seems pretty good.
3. Sudden appreciation for Night Ranger.

See that? #2: available by prescription only. Cut Les Moonves some slack already!