Dead Show Walking: Prison Break

After four seasons, Fox is finally sending Prison Break to death row. "It just got down to the point where a lot of stories have been told," the network's entertainment president, Kevin Reilly, told the assembled TV critics and bloggers at the Television Critics Association press tour.

No kidding. Michael Scofield and his degenerate band of escaped convicts, fallen lawmen, turncoat assassins, drug addicts, murders and rapists have been in and out of prison, double and triple-crossed, shot and maimed more times than I can remember and yet they are still trying to finish "just one more thing."

The show was great in the beginning as Scofield (Wentworh Miller), a brilliant engineer got himself arrested to break his framed, lowlife brother Lincoln Burrows out of jail, with an elaborate body tattoo to guide his way. Scofield was a force of good thrown into the lion's den, but, over the course of four seasons, broke so many laws and crossed so many boundaries that he became no better than those he brought with him, drained of his morale authority.

The cast of Prison Break was the most depraved, unlikable group of characters assembled on TV since Oz, and I say this as a person who watched every episode. This season, I've just been watching with a morbid desire to see them all get killed. Reilly said the decision to cancel allows the series to end on a high creative note. I can only hope the writers follow though on the trajectory of the show and leaves all the characters dead in unmarked graves. Any happy ending would be a disappointment.

That being I will miss there being someone named T-Bag on network television. I can't believe they got away with that one. There was more good news too — it looks like Fringe will continue and has a coveted slot after American Idol. Wow, usually Fox just destroys everything I love.

One Critic to Ruin Them All

It was the critics' fault. The Canadian dollar is too high. U.S. tourists are too afraid to travel. Gas costs too much. People don’t understand British theatre. It was SARS. Our audiences were all drunken idiots. Ok, I made up the last one, but it was the only thing theatre producer Kevin Wallace didn’t blame the failure of the Toronto production of The Lord of the Rings on.

But it was the Gollum-like theatre critics that took the brunt of the blame for dooming the $28-million adaptation of Tolkien’s trilogy.

"I would not discount the role of the critics," Wallace said. "We were given a rough ride here in North America, and we struggled with a mixed message. In the Toronto press, the vote was three to one (against the show). That became an issue… If the critics don’t think they have power, believe me they do."

At the same news conference where Wallace heaped criticism on the critics for being critical, he barely acknowledged their complaints: it was too long, had no heart, didn’t have enough music, it was confusing and didn’t connect with audiences, who subsequently didn’t shell out $125 bucks for a ticket.

Clearly, Wallace doesn’t understand the role of critics – they are not community boosters, despite what he may believe. And if any show should have been critic proof, Rings was it. Millions have read the books and seen the movies, so it’s not like people didn’t know what the show was about. But perhaps it was the over familiarity that put off fans, who didn’t feel the need to see Frodo again so soon.

I haven’t seen the show myself, but I did (and still do) plan to, despite the critical attention, because I’m interested. I’ve had friends who went and enjoyed it, and that’s more important to me. It was the same way when we saw Avenue Q in New York – on the advice of a friend. We went to see Wicked last year and I never read a single review, we were interested in the story.

Critics don’t sink shows – if they had that power, Mamma Mia would never have lasted. They can help inform opinion, but a show will sink or swim on its own merits.

Thumbs Down For Critics

Do movie critics really matter? The studios obviously believe they do, but by keeping them away from their movies they have a funny way of showing it.

Critics have not had advance screenings for 11 films so far this year, a practice often used to sneak stinkers into theatres. The most recent is the upcoming Benchwarmers, which stars both Rob Schnieder and David Spade, so the theory will likely hold. Reviewers were also denied an early look at Doogal before its release, a film that Jon Stewart (the voice of one of the main characters) couldn’t describe to critic Roger Ebert without laughing in embarrassment.

I don’t know why the studios bother. Most people know the no-review-equals-bad equation, but the majority of the embargoed films are review proof, i.e. attended by people who don’t read reviews or see a poor review as a badge of honour.

Says Ebert himself: "The target audience didn't care that we hated those movies because they just expected us to hate them. If we reviewed them and showed clips and said they're stupid and awful and violent, that's a selling review for that audience."

So are critics relevant? I don’t tend to read reviews of films that I know I am going to see, but I do like comparing my thoughts afterwards. I also have learned to understand individual critics tastes, finding one in particular whose negative reviews almost guaranteed that I would enjoy the movie in question.

What it exposes (again) is the role of reviewers as a studio marketing tools instead of cultural critics and tastemakers.