TV Winners & Losers: Bum Deals

As the season went on and long-lived, big-ticket items like ER and NYPD began to disappoint (The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are significant exceptions here — solid stuff all the way), I found myself rummaging around prime time for glints of novelty — places where the media spotlight had faded. I was looking for shows doing odd, quirky things. Thus I found Fox's Millennium and ABC's Vengeance Unlimited up to some sly tricks, presenting stories that didn't follow conventional dramatic arcs and were willing to make main characters seem obsessive and morally ambiguous. Of course, they're both gone now.

In these pages, I dumped on one show, NBC's Providence, that became the season's one totally unexpected hit. I don't retract my criticism of its marshmallowy consistency, but I will say that I'd rather see a series like that, which tries to explore the inner lives of a multigenerational cast, than effluvium like Family Guy, which has nothing new to contribute, even to the current trend in non sequitur vulgarity.

In short, good riddance to the season just past, and good luck to us all — audience, networks, creators — for the season to come, because we'll need it.