TV Pilot Hell: Bubsy (1993)

NOTE: When I wrote the first draft for this it was nine paragraphs and two-and-a-half pages long!  I did my best to edit it down as much as possible.

 

 

The 90’s was a great decade for animation.  Batman, Animaniacs, Daria… The list goes on and on and honestly, even the laziest, stupidest series from that decade seem to have their fair share of fans.  However, there has always been one medium that has failed to create a real lasting success in animation: Video Games.  Sure, there were moderate successes like The Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Sonic Sat. A.M., but these were mostly short-lived and more reflected the popularity of their source material than any actual objective quality.  So, given the (at best) mediocre standards of video games-to-animation, where does Bubsy fit on that scale?

Well, first, a little backstory: Bubsy was a mascot game created for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis in the early 90’s.  It was an effort by the fledgling studio Accolade to create a lasting series and, surprisingly, it kind of worked.  The few games in the series were spread across the SNES, Genesis, Jaguar and the Playstation and Bubsy 3D, released on Sony’s flagship console, is ranked among the worst video games ever made.  So, in a nutshell, Bubsy was an attempt by a B-studio to put out a game that will be their Mario or Sonic.  Accolade was banking so hard on this that they actually commissioned to have an animation group work on a tie-in for their game.  The company of choice was a small studio called Calico Creations.  Never heard of them?  Well, how couldn’t you!? I mean they are only the masters who brought us the majestic Denver the Last Dinosaur and Widget the World Watcher!  I mean, come on!  (No… Seriously, these guys were bad…. Very bad.)

On paper, there is one promising credit: Rob Paulsen, who did the voice for Bubsy in the games and is back for the TV show.  Paulsen is a tremendously-accomplished voice actor who worked on just about every animated series of note from the past thirty years.  He’s a highly-regarded talent and hearing his voice in this show is like if Peter O’Toole interrupted one of Michael Bay and Ehren Kruger's comic relief moments to give a resounding monologue.  They must have been desperate and paid him a ton in hopes that this series would catch on.  As with most animated tie-ins from its time, Bubsy was an attempt to expand name recognition and popularity.  It didn’t work… at all…

That was a lot of setup to cover and for that, I apologize.  Still, even knowing myself the ill fate of this franchise going in, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  The pilot for Bubsy is entitled “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” (Which was also the title character’s uninspired catch phrase), and follows Bubsy, his friend Arnold (voiced by another talented voice performer in Pat Fraley), and a couple of obnoxious twins as Bubsy volunteers to be the guinea pig for a powerful piece of technology created by doctor Virgil (...ugh) Reality.  The device is a helmet that can harness the imagination of its wearer and conjure it into reality.  So, essentially it’s Anthony from Twilight Zone: The Movie… except more overblown and stupid.  The rest of the episode involves all of the characters, and a team of villains led by a spoiled, fat, female cat, battling for control over the helmet.  It’s all a device to create a bunch of slapstick animated set pieces to sell the show, and boy does it fail.

The problem with Bubsy as a character is, even in the video games, he was essentially a Sonic rip-off with greatly-inferior level design and there simply isn’t much you can do with this premise.  At least with Sonic going in there actual characters and a plot that felt like it could be fleshed out in some way, but Bubsy was never that interesting to begin with.  It would be like making Frogger into an animated series (Oh!  WAIT!!!  They actually DID that!)  A result of this lack of personality is a lead character that is forced and over-confident as to be completely stupid.  This has worked in the past with some characters (Bugs Bunny, for instance) but here, it just feels like Bubsy suffers from some sort of chemical imbalance that leaves him completely incapable of expressing any emotion outside of “Ohhhhh yeaaaah!”.

Now, to talk about the actual quality of the episode.  A common problem with a lot of animated series is the writers and animators go in wanting their show to be for kids and simply try to make it as flashy and noisy as they can to keep their interest, forgetting that even silly shows like Animaniacs had a fair share of quieter character moments.  When the show is just noise and grunting from start to finish “exhausting” doesn’t even begin to describe it.  There is not one moment for the audience to breathe here.  Either Bubsy is fast-talking and spouting out his catch phrase for the tenth time or Arnold is grunting and growling after every line.  Every character has one joke that is driven in over and over for the entire episode and the animation is lackluster and lazy, with most scenes just showing the characters in one frame posing or falling on a moving background.  This show is scene-to-scene just noise and flashing lights.  It has no substance and not even one joke lands, it’s all wrong.

I find it interesting that Obvious Villain Cat character (I can’t be bothered to look her up name again) uses nails on a chalkboard to torture her minions because this show felt like someone was doing that for twenty minutes.  It’s loud, stupid, unfunny and really just boring.  As bad as this is, and as shocked as I was watching it, I will likely not even remember seeing this before too long.  It just was not interesting enough to care about and it doesn’t surprise me that it wasn’t picked up to series.  It was further proof that a show that is clumsily thrown together as an advertisement for a brand most people were already indifferent about just doesn’t work.  Still, that hasn’t kept studios from trying over and over again.

TV Pilot (Heaven!) - Northern Exposure (1992)

Northern Exposure (1990-1995; CBS)

Creators: Joshua Brand and Joe Falsey

Starring: Rob Morrow, Barry Corbin, Janie Turner

When I was a kid, there was a lot of hype surrounding Northern Exposure.  It aired as a mid-season replacement on CBS in the Summer of 1990.  After CBS’s 10pm timeslot opened up with that Spring’s finale of the beloved Newhart and the failure of The Dave Thomas Comedy Show, this little series came out of nowhere and become a winning and beloved titan in the eyes of millions.  

Rob Morrow plays Joel Fleischman, a New York doctor who is given an opportunity to work in lovely Anchorage, Alaska, but his big greeting to the city hospital does not go as planned.  He is informed his position was full and was redirected to the small, fictional town of Cicely, Alaska where he is greeted by a shrewd former astronaut who is consumed by his desire to turn his small hole-in-the-wall town into a booming resort.  Trapped in this strange place due to a legal contract, the breaking of which could result in a prison sentence, Joel opens a small practice with only the help of the awkward Marilyn.  Joel interacts with the locals, including a tomboyish pilot and a friendly young leather-clad bro-dude, and it all seems he has to make the best of it while he waits for his wife (who is still in the big city) to finally arrive in town.

Northern Exposure had a lot going for it; a funny premise, a smart and talented cast and a great team of writers, but the show had a troubled history behind the scenes.  After the first few seasons were extremely successful, CBS inexplicably cut the show mid-season to air new test programming during Sweeps.  This killed any momentum the show had for that running season.  Other issues, including actors demanding more pay and a failed list of new characters being introduced drive viewers away, resulting the in the show’s ultimate cancellation.  A lot of this could be traced back to some of its stars (Morrow in-particular), moving into film.  Morrow landed a major role in the critical darling Quiz Show, and as a result he began to seek either more compensation from CBS, or better film roles.  Sadly, his film career never really took off.  He’s a charismatic performer, good looking and was adaptable, able to play different types of characters, but ultimately his career landed him back in TV on the quality crime thriller Numb3rs after a decade of movie flops.

This is an example of how a very simple premise, a likeable cast and a smart team of writers can create something special under very strenuous circumstances.  A midseason replacement always has a few things going against it.  First, it moves in to fill a time slot for a show that people just did not watch.  Reason then dictates they were watching something else.  DVR was not a thing, and while you could record a different channel on the VCR at the same time, it was still a toss-up battling two other networks’ existing programming (Fox did not have a slot past 10pm).  Secondly, there is the risk of the network experimenting with other new programming for the Fall season.  This is what happened in Northern Exposure in its last year, with CBS breaking the season up to test other new shows in its slot.  The final major obstacle for this series was the fact that it ran on Monday nights, meaning for several months out of the year it was competing with ABC’s Monday Night Football.  

All-in-all, Northern Exposure tenaciously triumphed over great adversity thanks to a devoted fanbase and the chops that come from being a multi-year Emmy and Golden Globe nominee.  The final season’s cast and crew changes did it in, but that happens all of the time with TV, and the fact that this show lasted for four seasons is quite the accomplishment because most shows do not make it that far, even some really good ones.  It’s a funny, well-written show with a lot of warmth (in spite of the climate) and lastly, I’m willing to bet the mooseburger is actually quite delicious.

TV Pilot Hell - Turner & Hooch (1990)

The dreaded one-joke premise.  It’s a nearly guaranteed show-killer and here, we have an absolutely braindead TV sitcom based on a pretty bad police comedy.  Quality TV series based on movie franchises are extremely rare and this is an example of how to take a movie that was already pretty unfunny and drive its single joke right into the ground.  The first ten minutes of this TV series seems like an hour, and it doesn’t get any better.

In 1990, Tom Hanks was already too hot a commodity to appear in low-grade crap like this, so instead we get B-list actor Thomas F. Wilson as Det. Scott Turner, who most probably remember best as Biff Tannen from the Back to the Future movies, or as Coach Fredricks from Freaks & Geeks.  He’s not a bad performer when he’s playing off of better actors, but here he is just awful.  He is not leading-man-material, and he spends every scene struggling through his lines.  However, as much as I complain about Wilson’s performance, the supporting cast is far worse.  This film even goes so far as to add an obnoxious delinquent kid to the mix, making what is already a really lazy and dull comedy into something that is nothing short of unwatchable.  He is far, far worse than Kid from Dick Tracy, another legendarily bad child performance from around that time, and like Hooch, he has one character trait: He gets into trouble!  Oh… how zany…  To top it all off, this show ends with a pillow fight between the kid and Turner complete with period-appropriate sax solo and a freeze frame on Hooch.  I wish I were making this up…

The rest of the supporting cast includes Wendee Pratt as Mrs. Turner.  She had a few roles after this but is mostly known for her brief run on the soap opera One Life to Live.  The rest of the characters just show up then disappear, having no real effect on the show, existing only to set up the next scene.  Comic Relief Cop (his name is ‘Boney’... Because he’s fat..?) appears to tell Det. Turner what the next act of the show is and sends him on his way, and the show has a brief appearance by a lively chef who knows Turner, and I am assuming he is meant to be a recurring character but here he only exists to facilitate the introduction of that damn kid.

This show is written in cliches.  This is common in sitcoms, but here everything has been done over and over again and Turner & Hooch goes the extra mile by taking those cliches and just replaying them ad-nauseum during its 23 minute run.  The kid is a runaway thief who ends up in the care of the unwilling cop.  The wife is a goody-goody who wants to help the “misunderstood” kid, only existing in the entire show to make sure Turner is stuck with Hooch and an aggravating child actor (Det. Turner really needs to get a divorce).  There are no other cops of consequence and imagine my surprise when the titular cop wasn’t called in to get chewed out by his tightly-wound and heavily-caffeinated chief.

All of those complaints aside, the episode is just a mess.  Scenes bounce between each other so fast it is actually a little disorienting and I have a sinking feeling this was meant to be a one-hour block but was cut in half after producers saw the finished product.  I make that assumption based on the fact that it feels like chunks of the show are missing.  Character introductions are fast and short and never really establish any sort of relationship.  The marriage between Det. Turner and his wife feels more like the relationship between a homeowner and a maid.  The kid in the show is bad, sure, but he seems like he was born ready to wind up in the care of a cop, never showing any resistance or surprise about anything.  Ultimately, nothing comes together.  There are sections of the story that feel lost and there is zero, ZERO character development.  The only thing we get is Hooch running into things, knocking people over and simply just causing a ruckus so we can get a zany jazz solo followed by a soul-crushingly-bad reaction shot from Thomas Wilson, who acted like he just didn’t want to be there at all.

Turner & Hooch aired on NBC in the Summer of 1990.  A Summer premiere (especially pre-2000) is usually a bad sign anyway, but hoooo-boy!  1990 was a bad, BAAAAD year for television.  To give you an idea of how awful this year was, Turner & Hooch, as stillborn and bland as it is, is not the worst cop-with-a-dog comedy series of that Summer!  The problem with Turner & Hooch is it’s just boring and lazy.  Outside of some of the performances, there isn’t really anything painful about it, and I can honestly see myself forgetting this show even exists.  At least with famously bad shows like Small Wonder you remember why it was bad.  Less than an hour after sitting through this snore-fest I was only thinking about what I wanted for lunch.

TV Pilot Hell - Perception (2012)

Cartoon by Christopher McElfresh

Whoa, boy! The worst thing about what I'm about to say is that it probably will not mean anything. So, just consider this the rantings of an angry pop-culture geek over a stupid, pointless, copy/paste show that was laughable from start to finish. There are a lot of shows that are essentially amalgamations of other popular shows designed to cash in on those titles' successes. The problem with this lame wannabes is that they never, EVER seem to hold up. Judging by the pilot, Perception just may be the single worst offender in this category I've seen since Rizzoli and Isles.

Perception follows a neurology professor named Daniel Pierce who suffers from schizophrenia and often holds two-sided conversations with hallucinations, oh yeah, and he solves crimes! You see, Pierce is a human lie detector. He can instantaneously tell if someone is not telling the truth because of the inflection in their voice. So he is given a babysitter in the form of a sexy female agent (boy, does THAT sound familiar?) and they team up to track down the person responsible for a murder a pharmaceutical company.

The plot of this episode is pretty paint-by-numbers so I'm not going to dig too deep into it, but the overall plot of the show... I HAVE to talk about this. When the case begins, the doctor sees a hallucination who tells him things about his case. He constantly shows up when the plot needs him to point something out to the doctor (the audience) then disappears once the case is solved. Sort of like unlocking an achievement. It's a really, REALLY stupid plot device and it makes what was already a bad show even worse.

That one stupid plot element aside, this show as a whole is pretty dumb. It falls into the “Quirky or weird male crime solving genius babysat by a sexy female agent” sub-plot that's been around for years but has been at its worse lately with lame shows like Castle and the Mentalist. This show, however, is all about extremes. The male lead is EXTREMELY nuts and EXTREMELY annoying. While characters like Gregory House M.D. use one-liners, passive aggression and meanness to hide an actual character with emotion and conflict, this character's hidden trait is spelled out for us from the get-go and is about as predictable as one could imagine. This is the type of character concept that is played out in daytime soap operas, what makes any idiotic studio executive think it will hold water in prime time?

TV Pilot Hell - An Introduction

Cartoon by Christopher McElfresh

It seems to be par for the course these days. We get a heavily-promoted TV premiere and it just turns out to be derivative, boring or just bad. This is really bad from my perspective since I prefer well-written drama (or comedy/drama) and despise reality television and seeing how the latter is the only thing on anymore, I've more or less given up on TV. Still, I do check out many of the pilots as they air to see if there is anything else worth watching this coming season. So far, for 2012, the answer is a resounding “no”.

TV Pilot Hell is my journey through these dreadful pilots and an explanation of why they, and television as a whole, generally blows. So, I will open with a pilot that is still very new, and if you actually watched it, fairly fresh on your mind. TNT has become the home for drama (I guess...) and the occasional decent show, like Leverage, is cut between a stupid new reality show and a number of bad cookie-cutter cop shows. One such run-of-the-mill fail fest is Perception, a new show for 2012 that promises to be TNT's latest “quirky cop show”. Yeah, and I'm not a judgmental prick with too much time on my hands!