THE TELEPHEMERA YEARS: 2007, part 1

Written By:

Alan Boon

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

2007-08

Reality TV was king of the small screen in 2007, with the top five slots in the ratings filled by American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, but drama of the scripted kind was still making an impact as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes, House, and Lost were all still pulling in big viewing figures across the four main networks. Both Jericho and The Wire were entering their final seasons, after which one of them at least would enter the annals of TV classics, but it was a bad time for fans of animated genre fare, with The Batman, Ben 10, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast all beginning their final runs.

There were tons of new arrivals, of course, with Breaking Bad making drug dealing fun again, while Chuck, Gossip Girl, Pushing Daisies, and Reaper all debuted. The geeks of The Big Bang Theory made their bow, and it became cool to laugh at people getting hurt again when Wipeout hit our screens, but those were the shows that everyone remembers – what about the ones that didn’t stick around long enough to gain the following they did/didn’t (delete where applicable) deserve? This is the story of some of 2007’s lesser lights…

Kid Nation (CBS): What if you could televise Lord of the Flies? That’s the elevator pitch behind Kid Nation, a 2007 reality show from the people who brought you Big Brother. Filmed over a month at the Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch, built on the ruins of old west town Bonanza City in New Mexico, the show brought forty children, aged eight to fifteen, to establish their own society, free from the limitations (wise or otherwise) of adult imagination.

Adults were present throughout filming but limited their interactions with the children as little as possible, and children were free to leave at any time. Three eventually did. The population was split into four districts, labelled by colour, with each district electing a representative to the town council, which would have final oversight.

Arguments arose over whether to kill the town’s chickens for food, the imposition of a curfew to ensure sweet-fuelled exuberance didn’t affect the next day’s activities, attendance at a mandatory faith service, and the aftermath of losing an election, no doubt engineered and portrayed dramatically by the producers but fascinating nonetheless for viewers at home. Kid Nation wasn’t without its share of controversy, mostly born out of pearl clutching, which did cost it some advertisers, although the one genuine incident on set – a burn from a cooking oil splash – was found to be not the fault of the producers.

The final episode of the show gave viewers a taste of what they probably wanted all along when the kids – freed from the responsibility of their “jobs” – ransacked the town, but ultimately came back together to repair the damage they’d done. In this, they were probably better than their elders. In 2020, The Av club spoke to several of the participants, who noted that while they didn’t consider the show to be in any way exploitative at the time, watching it as adults made them feel uncomfortable. In the end, the negative publicity attracted by Kid Nation outweighed its value to the network and the experiment has never been repeated, although Channel 4 in the UK did air a similar show, Boys and Girl Alone, in 2009.

Journeyman (NBC): Created by Kevin Falls, a writer-producer whose first big break came on sports agency drama Arli$$ before going on to work on Sports Night and The West Wing, Journeyman told the story of Dan Vasser, a newspaper who is pulled through time to help his target solve a problem. Obviously taking its inspiration from Quantum Leap, where the shows differed was in Vasser’s anchorage to his “home” time, to where he’d always return at the end of his adventure and where he had a wife and child.

Scottish actor Kevin McKidd had appeared in Trainspotting and The Acid House before John Milius cast him as veteran centurion Lucius Vorenus in Rome, opening the door to this starring role as Vasser. McKidd is backed up by Gretchen Eglof as wife Katie, Reed Diamond as Dan’s brother Jack, a police detective who becomes suspicious of Dan’s activities, and Moon Bloodgod as Livia, Dan’s ex-girlfriend who was presumed killed in a plane crash ten years before.

Livia, though, is also a time traveller, one who jumped back to her home time of 1948 when the plane crash, her extended stay in Dan’s time possibly a mission to ensure he and Katie – who he met in the aftermath of the tragedy – get together. Livia often jumps to the same time as Dan, imparting advice and giving aid, and is pivotal in bringing Jack on side. Added to all this is another time traveller, Evan, whose linear timeline death occurs before Dan is thrust into his position but whom the two occasionally encounter.

Heady stuff, then, and probably a little too much for the average 2007 NBC viewer, even if Lost on ABC had softened the TV audience up for non-linear plotlines. Thirteen episodes of Journeyman were ordered, airing from September to December 2007, and while the writers’ strike initially put paid to a second half of the season, hopes were high that at least another nine episodes would be commissioned to finish the season. However, despite a fan campaign that saw fans inundate the network with boxes of Rice-a-Roni, the show was cancelled for good in April 2008.

Anchorwoman (Fox): No doubt named for – and with an aesthetic definitely borrowed from – the 2004 Will Ferrell film Anchorman, Anchorwoman was another offbeat, scripted reality show, the likes of which were proliferating the schedules in the mid-2000s. Starring Lauren Jones, a former model who had enjoyed stints as a “Barker Beauty” on The Price is Right and as a “Diva” for WWE, the show asked the question, “would you trust a bikini model to deliver the news?”

The setting for the show was Tyler, Texas, a small city one-hundred miles east of Dallas, where KYTX – the local CBS affiliate – were willing to give a chance to an aspiring newsreader. KYTX was a CBS affiliate and, as Anchorwoman was a Fox production, all CBS logos had to be edited out of the final footage, the local Fox affiliate presumably unwilling to risk the credibility of Fox News by hiring a newcomer.

Jones was in the job for a thirty-day period, which was filmed for six half-hour episodes, the first and second of which were aired back-to-back as an hour-long premiere. What could have been an interesting concept was undercut by the scripted direction of the show, leaning heavily into comedy to try and create a real-life version of The Office.

Unfortunately, Anchorwoman had neither scriptwriters nor performers on the level of Greg Daniels and Steve Carrell, and the premiere aired to very low ratings. So low, in fact, that Fox declined to air the remaining four episodes, any chance of lessons being learned from what happens to men when a beautiful woman walks into the room lost forever. I mean, the answer is obvious, but it’s nice to be remined how dumb a species we are from time to time…

Cavemen (ABC): In 2004, car insurance company GEICO began airing a series of commercials that featured a group of Neanderthals using the company’s website with the tag line, “so easy, a caveman could do it!” The skits were the brainchild of Joe Lawson and Noel Ritter of The Martin Agency, one of the US’s top advertising firms, inspired by “Pastoralia,” a short story by George Saunders.

Just as had happened with Martin the GEICO gecko, a Cockney lizard introduced in 1999, the American public loved the GEICO cavemen, who were developed into broader characters who enjoyed modern life. Seeking to cash in on the popularity of the throwbacks, ABC commissioned a script form Lawson in March 2007 and pleased with the results, put the show into production two months later.

None of the original actors from the commercials reprised their roles for TV, although Jeff Daniel Phillips did make several guest appearances as a friend of the cavemen. The parts instead went to, Bill English, Sam Huntingdon, and Nick Kroll, their trio of extant Cro-Magnons (although their features more resembled those of Neanderthal man) trying to make a life for themselves in modern day Atlanta, negotiating the pitfalls of race politics between the “Sapes” and the “Maggers.”

Lawson – and co-creators Josh Gordon and Will Speck (who were also working on Will Ferrell flick Blades of Glory at the time) – intended Cavemen to be a “unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on its head,” but a very negative reaction to the an airing of the pilot in test markets resulted in some considerable retooling, including moving the setting to San Diego (although the “locals” weirdly retained southern accents throughout the series). The first episode aired on October 2^nd 2007 as part of a double-bill with Carpoolers, the only sitcoms in their timeslot, and earned over nine million viewers.

By week five, however, they had slipped to number eighty-three in the weekly ratings and the writing was on the wall. Just two more episodes were aired before ABC cancelled the show, replacing it with hidden camera comedy show Just for Laughs. As a postscript, GEICO aired a commercial during the 2008 Superbowl which featured the ad cavemen discussing the show’s failure.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox): In 1998, Carolco founders Andrew Vajna and Mario Miller formed C2 Pictures with the express aim of resurrecting the Terminator franchise, which had lain dormant since 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Five years later, they delivered on their aim and produced Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, fondly regarded by fans and creators alike, but missing a vital ingredient from the first two movies.

The original concept for the threequel involved Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton’s battleworn warrior mother, but Hamilton bowed out of Terminator 3 in 2000, claiming the script did not do anything new or interesting with her character. When T3 arrived, Connor had died offscreen from leukaemia, which was an obvious problem when it was announced in 2005 that C2 were making a TV spin-off based on the character. Rather than using time travel or alternate timelines (as was eventually done in Terminator Genisys in 2015), Vajna and Miller opted to ignore the events of T3 and instead present terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a direct sequel to T2, even if they were unable to persuade Hamilton to reprise her role for TV.

Stepping into her boots was English actress Lena Headey, whose first attempt to break the US TV market in Ultra in 2005 got no further than the pilot stage. Her Connor was every bit as badass as the original, even if the lower budget necessitated fewer and less spectacular action scenes, and she was joined by Thomas Dekker and son John, a moody teenager confused over his feelings for Summer Glau’s Cameron, a very lifelike Terminator (model unknown).

The 2007 writers’ strike reduced the original series order from thirteen episodes to nine, still ample time to establish the concept of the Connors and their allies trying to prevent the creation of Skynet, both aided and opposed by various Terminators seeded throughout human society. Debuting in January 2008, it did well enough in the ratings on Tuesday nights that a second, full season was commissioned for September 2008, but viewership tumbled to almost half of the figures they had gotten for season one.

This led to Fox cancelling the show, despite plans for a third season that involved alternate timelines and Glau playing another character who would vie for John’s interest with Cameron. Fan campaigns tried to keep the flame burning, with hopes of alternate funding through crowdsourcing or another network picking up the show, but by 2013 creator Josh Friedman admitted defeat, especially as C2 no longer had the rights to the Terminator franchise. Friedman later returned to the world of the Terminators by scripting 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, which again ignored the events of subsequent movies and instead presented itself as a sequel to T2.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: More of 2007’s misses, including bionic women, lovely vampires, and Japanese game shows!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)