Ask Matt

Matt Roush: If anything, the TCA Awards exist as a what-if correction to the Emmy nominations, although there will undoubtedly be overlap this year, especially where a new breakthrough like Mad Men is concerned. Still, I doubt anyone seriously believes Breaking Bad, however worthy, will get much Emmy love this year, and if history is an indicator, The Wire could also come up regrettably short. Something as offbeat as Conchords (which I think, beyond its inspired musical sequences, tends to be a bit overrated) is also probably a long shot for the Emmys, so even if I didn't vote for it myself, I'm not unhappy to see it in the running. (Although would it have killed us to nominate a single traditional sitcom? Possibly, I suppose.) Where The Daily Show and Colbert are concerned, they aren't conventional comedies, either, but they make more sense in comedy than in the "news and information" category where Daily Show often appeared in past ballots. I tend to think of the TCAs in the same light as the Peabodys and the AFI Awards in regarding a show's current critical merit over its past reputation and popularity. As for the Emmys, read on.

Matt Roush: Any show that aired last summer is eligible, which means all of the shows you mentioned still qualify for nominations (save for The Sopranos, which won't be a factor despite bleeding over a few episodes into early June last year). The fact that some of these are not currently airing, and in many cases haven't aired for a while, won't keep them out of the race, but may make some of them longer shots than usual. But will losing The Sopranos and 24, to name the most prominent no-shows, give underdogs like The Wire and Friday Night Lights more of a chance? I'd like to think so, but as always with the Emmys, even as I hope for the best, I prepare for the worst.

Matt Roush: The changeable nature of long-running TV shows is what makes the job of a TV critic so exciting and exacting. (For the record, I checked in on Criminal Minds several times last season after Joe Mantegna joined, and watched again later in the season to check out Nicholas Brendon's recurring role, and whatever improvements there have been aren't enough to change my opinion of what I still feel to be a wooden ensemble churning through offensively exploitative plots. But couldn't agree with you more about the decline of the now-laughable CSI: Miami.) As for shows I changed my mind on, I'll name just a few, and I'm sure there are many more: NBC's The Office, which improved greatly once they stopped aping the original and began expanding the visibility of the ensemble at large; The X-Files, which took me a few episodes to realize wasn't going to be merely a UFO-of-the-week show; even Heroes to some extent, although I still find it woefully uneven and self-destructively unfocused. And then there are ongoing rollercoasters like Nip/Tuck, which as recently as last season convinced me to write positively about it again during the first few Hollywood episodes, reversing a long decline. And then shortly after my positive review ran, the show fell apart again. It happens.

Matt Roush: Feel better now? I agree that with few exceptions — and I obviously like In Plain Sight (especially Mary McCormack and Frederick Weller) a lot more than you — this has been a dismal June, made even more painful by the late starts of some cable shows like The Closer, which in a non-strike year would have started running new episodes by now. (The Closer is back July 14, so mark your calendars.) But not to despair. As I've noted before, July is almost here, and many of our summer faves — but not our HBO regulars, or our FX faves for that matter — will be among them this year. Bummer indeed. As for repeats: I wish the networks would do more to showcase some of the returning shows for next fall over the summer, but evidence has shown that repeats in the summer generally do even worse than the low-rent reality crud they're shoving down our throats on a weekly basis. As for Fox replaying The X-Files classics as a promotion for the movie: That would be fun and is an excellent idea, but given that the show is currently licensed to TNT and Sci Fi, that might be tricky.

Matt Roush: It really isn't up to me to tell fans to give up the ghost, although I'm also not in the business of feeding false hope or spreading insubstantial rumors. As best I can, I tend to steer clear of these campaigns, even when I strongly empathize (as in the case of any efforts to keep Friday Night Lights going). The fact is that situations like the temporary resurrection of Jericho are awfully rare. Cross-network rescues are equally rare, and almost never happen for purely altruistic reasons. So realistically, to address your way of looking at things, the way it tends to work is that most of us bitch and moan when shows are snuffed out too soon and we eventually move on, settling in for the next round of intriguing and challenging shows, hoping against hope they'll flourish instead of flounder. I just hope we're not having this same conversation a year from now about shows like Fringe and Dollhouse.

Matt Roush: I'm not getting in the middle of all of that DirecTV hoohah, which according to the trades didn't pan out either. No real surprise there. I have no real opinion on what's been posted on fan sites and blogs about these latest twists in the story. I'm just sharing my mail to once again reveal how heated things can get when you stir up fan passions. I admit, I laughed when I read the Hollywood Reporter's recent eulogy, which read in part: "So yes, dearest Moonlight fans, for a while there, you kept the dream of Moonlight alive. And the dream really appreciates your time together. It learned so much and wouldn't trade those months for anything. But now the dream is looking for opportunities elsewhere and talking about you in the past tense. The dream has moved on, changed its Facebook relationship status to 'single' and is politely yet firmly asking you to quit calling." Many fans, of course, were not amused by this whimsical break-up spin on the story.

Just like many readers were not thrilled or swayed by Rick's recent get-a-grip missive that I posted. Here's a reaction from Melissa: "He suggested that watching Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer would relieve the need for Moonlight. I have been a huge fan of the Buffyverse for a long time, and although I admit that Moonlight shared some obvious similarities with Angel, it was a different show. The story lines were very different, especially towards the end of the series. Also, Moonlight's view of vampire rules was quite divergent from Whedon's vampire rules. In addition, Moonlight created a new world of characters that I know myself, as well as others, have fallen in love with. Watching another show that is actually disparate from Moonlight is not going to fill the void left behind. Moonlight was holding up very well on its own, and I believe if it was given a chance, it really would have been great and people would have been able to see that it really does not have as strong a tie to Angel as people believe."

Matt Roush: Oh, I think Fox has already changed the landscape to where it qualifies as part of the "Big Four," even without that third hour of weeknight prime time. And don't hold your breath for that ever to happen. Fox lacks several elements that define old-school networks. No evening news show (though it does have its own cable news and business networks, something that CBS and ABC lack). No weeknight late-night presence, although it has long sought to get back into that game (Chevy Chase need not apply). And while Fox has had great success in sports and prime time, with Idol and House and 24 the most prominent tentpoles, many of the network's affiliates also do great business with their 10/9c local newscasts, and given the current or even long-term business climate, it simply doesn't fit Fox's economic model to invest in these extra hours of prime time across the board, when it's still struggling to keep the lights on on Thursdays and Fridays.

Matt Roush: The CW and its corporate parents continue to insist the network isn't going under anytime soon, but it's kind of hard to argue that it has made much of a name for itself since the merger. With the exception of Gossip Girl and the new and as-yet-unseen 90210, guilty pleasures that tap into our Peter Pan desire to always be part of the Clearasil generation, the network still pretty much leans on the aging WB and UPN franchises (Tyra Banks' reality empire and the devoted cult followings of Smallville and Supernatural) to generate buzz. The fact that CW has pretty much turned away from comedy altogether, shutting down that entire division while banishing its few remaining African-American sitcoms to Fridays — so much for diversity — just makes it seem that much smaller. But not as small as MyNetwork TV, which came into being primarily to fill the dead air left behind on whatever UPN and WB affiliates didn't join the CW fold. From what I can tell, a test pattern would be preferable.

Matt Roush: Ratings don't always tell the entire story, clearly, and the point of your observations appears to be that buzz doesn't always correlate to ratings. Nothing new in that. Bionic Woman's overall ratings average may appear higher than many because it opened strongly, but it almost immediately began to fade, while creatively it cratered. NBC ditching that show and not trying to revive it after the strike was one of the network's wisest decisions of the past year. Gossip Girl may not draw big numbers, but it's one of those shows, like The Office, which has found considerable success online and in downloads and in the media at large, which love to write about it and spotlight its attractive cast. So its value as a signature show for the CW goes beyond the number who watch it in real time on its first run. Plus, it's all about who's watching, and if a show like GG attracts the right concentration of young female viewers, it's still a success, much like cable shows targeting a specific niche can be called a hit if they draw a decent audience — although they would often look like a failure on a broadcast network. As for a long-running show like ER, there's still a loyal core audience that tunes in, never having kicked the habit. That's why it's still around, even in its diminished creative state. It only looks like a failure if you compare it to the show's peak years, when it was an incontestable hit and still made stars of its cast (kind of the way Grey's Anatomy does now), once generating the kind of buzz that NBC's hipper comedies now attract, despite doing only middling business.

Matt Roush: You may be on to something, sad to say. When even TV Land gets into the reality business, although skewing its shows to boomers for the most part, you can't help but notice that the challenge for all of these networks in an ever-expanding cable and Internet universe is how to make noise and attract attention. And it's probably not going to happen with a menu of nothing but classic repeats, even if that was the channel's original mandate. Even those seeking safe havens in cable's fringes are bound to discover that nothing stays the same forever.