TVSquad

Oh gee willikers, Nick.. I mean.. err... reader. Looks like the infamous Angry Lionel has made me his new target:

http://eganfoote.blogspot.com/

Help me dear readers to clear my name!

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I know why it got cancelled... it stink'd!

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That Egan site is crazy. That stuff's not true is it?

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Must be true. I've never known Lionel to lie before.

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This was at best a short story and not a series. Very little "So What?" factor. Cutting up a dramatic hostage situation and dribbling it out over a series didn't work out so well in driving the plot.

The real mystery is that the show was hyped so much when so little was really there. The question shouldn't be, "(With so much publicity)How did this show fail?", the question should be, "How could a show with this little going for it get promoted so well?"

Above average casting, below average concept.
Face facts: Sometimes the "high concept" fails.

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its Obvious. Most people cannot sit through and hour of Lost, racking their brains to figure out whats going on, and then have another hour of a similar mystery type show. It's too much to deal with. Which is why invasion had no ratings also. They need a light type of show to follow, Desperate Housqives style. I cant believe the suits at ABC havent figured this out yet.

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Bring back Invasion!

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I watched it regularly for the first 4 or 5 episodes waiting for the big twist... the big thing that was gonna blow me away and keep me wondering what was going to happen next. It never came and then I quit caring.

Egan was the most interesting character though... a horrible event takes place and it's the best thing to ever happen to him. Everyone else... never really cared what happened to them.

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"They need a light type of show to follow"

There was such a show. It was Eyes, which ABC, in their infinite wisdom, prematurely yanked off the air because of Day Break-style ratings (anyone who misses Eyes can catch it on AOL's InTV). Wednesdays at 10 on ABC has turned into the new Thursdays at 8:30.

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This was a big season for high-concept, continuing mystery storyline shows...and most of them, not surprisingly, have failed.

I thought the pilot for "The Nine" was terrific, one of the best I saw this year, but it just didn't hold my interest after that. One of the reasons I *am* enjoying "Day Break" is the knowledge that it's going to end, that it's going to come to some kind of conclusion after x-number of weeks. You can only sustain high-concept so long before your audience starts to bail. (And a lot of them are going to stay away from the get-go.)

Oh, and "Lost" is really faltering this year -- ratings-wise, if not creatively -- so the benefit of its lead-in is sort of questionable. I thought pairing "The Nine" up with it was a big mistake. Yes, both shows would appeal to the same audience -- but for most of us, it was just overload on one night. When you finish a chapter in an incredibly densely plotted mystery, do you immediately reach for another different mystery? I know I don't.

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People who share extreme experiences, such as a hostage situation, rarely find themselves with enough in common afterward on which to base a relationship. Interaction becomes awkward and uncomfortable, and they shortly drift away from each other. "The Nine" wanted me to believe these people had become bestest buddies just because of their shared experience, and the whole thing never rang true.

That is, of course, only my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

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I never bought into the premise when I read about the Nine, and never caught the show because of it. If the story or idea doesn't sound compelling, or sound like something that I could watch for years, then why spend time with it? The last thing I want to watch is a show that drags on for years, all about an event that happened one day.

At the same time, I really wish something such as Smith were still on the air. Now that's a pretty interesting premise, but there's this whole web of story involving all the characters and their pasts. Personally, I think that sort of show would be best suited to HBO.

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I didn't watch The Nine because the show's hype didn't describe the show at all; it was ALL hype, and no substance. I had absolutely no idea what it was about from the previews, and with serialized shows like this, you really have to be excited about the concept. Just like Daybreak. It might be a great show, but unfortunately on paper it reads like Groundhog Day. Even Lost made this mistake. The show's concept was such a mystery the previews made it look like Lord of the Flies or Robinson Crusoe 2004. It was only after a handful of episodes that people started to get hooked on the concept, and word got out that the show was more of a mystery than a character drama. But at the time it was a novelty so it had time to catch on. Now the market is saturated with serialized dramas and many just end up sounding schtick-y.

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I guess I'd have to echo what others have already said:

Subsequent episodes never lived up to the excellent pilot episode, mainly because it became immediately apparent that the show was going to dribble out the details of those 52 hours. That's a fine idea in theory, but it obviously didn't work in practice.

I also found that I simply didn't care about these characters, for reasons that I can't explain except to say that there really wasn't anything compelling or interesting about any of them.

Those two reasons, combined, add up to, well, a show that really doesn't deserve to survive.

I do disagree with those who believe viewers couldn't handle 2 hours of "heavy", "serious" television. Now, I'm cynical and misanthropic enough to say that there are alot of dumb/vapid people in this world, but c'mon, this is TELEVISION we're talking about, first of all, and secondly, many of us regularly sit through 2 hour movies that are even more serious and heavy than LOST or THE NINE.

Also, as much as I appreciate CRITICISM as a field and an endeavor, it should be noted that critics often don't have the pulse of the general public, and they can be lemmings and bandwagon jumpers as much as the next person. All it takes, sometimes, is for one or two prominent critics to praise something, and suddenly, everyone is. Whatever praise was heaped upon THE NINE simply wasn't justified.

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John Billingsly: Show Killer. The Others. Star Trek Enterprise. The Nine. Need I say more?

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Wow. I guess I was one of the few people in America who watched the Nine and actually liked it. I was interested in the characters, and didn't mind that we only got glimpses of the bank robbery each week. Frankly, I figured the story line would last just the one season, and then maybe next year it would have focused on another case. It didn't really matter to me that it was on after Lost since I always recorded it to watch the next day with my teenage daughter. (She has to go to bed at 10)

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Cause Tim Daily starred in it? Cause it was a snooze? Cause it tried to be Lost but not really succeeding? Even down to the Party of Five alumni as one of the cast members... yeah.

The first episode was fantastic, I really got into it which surprised me cause usually pilots stink. But this was the opposite. They poured all they had into the pilot, nothing was left and you were left with a show with a lot of hype and no substance. Like Smith and all the rest.

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because we wanted to know "What happened in there??" and they concentrated on the aftermath. Which was a poor decision as it went no where. Too many unanswered threads, and bad pacing made the show terrible. I remember watching the pilot and my wife and I were excited about the show. 3 eps in......bust.

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In my home, The Nine was relegated to PVR after I noticed the clock on the bank scenes only advancing a 30 minutes or so each episode.

"52 hours? And we've only seen about 2 hours after 5-6 episodes? On hell no. This is going to last forever. I'm not getting sucked into this, like Lost. Who needs another 5 year commitment, just to understand the show's premise."

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I'll be honest, I just wanted to know what happened in the bank. People probably saw the pilot, got slightly intrigued, then after the second episode realized the show would be 85% post-robbery/15% robbery. Unless there was some twist that one of the 9 was involved in the robbery or something, I don't know how interested in anybody would be in watching a show about a "recovery group"

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