So I picked this up on dvd last week as i loved watching this when i was younger on "Live & Kicking" on a Saturday morning, however being young i never knew why it got cancelled. I mean re watching it now at 26, ok it had its flaws however i wouldnt say it was necessarily "bad", id happily watch this than sit through Smallville (that was basically Dawsons Creek meets Superman)
shareI've been wondering the same thing... I liked this when I was younger and it was new and I liked it on reruns to remember it. It looked like a standard season finale with the "Lois and Clark, here's your baby", but then it just didn't have another episode. Anyone know the real answer it was cancelled?
shareWould have to be ratings. ABC will show anything if it has ratings.
Shows like this, once the guy and the girl really get married, the ratings start to drop. Never fails.
You can probably find a video on Youtube.com where Dean Cain said in a convention panel that it was a combo of ratings decline,and also Teri Hatcher's pregnancy+showrunners not wanting her to take a leave of absence. It seemed implied to me that ABC thought Teri's absence would cause additional decline of ratings.
The crappy thing is that the majority of the last season was pretty campy/bad, including the series finale IMO. Not a great way to go out.
Watched the last episode yesterday really wish they pushed towards the 100th episode. Deathstroke, Tempus, Lex Luther's second son & Dr. Klaus Mensa were some of the better villians Superman had to face on this fourth season.
You gotta stay in your seats until the Sulaco reaches the terminal!
Its been a long minute since I've seen the show and I'm glad its on HUB so I can catch up. I always wondered why the show was cancelled myself.
shareonce the guy and the girl really get married, the ratings start to drop.
As someone who watched the show as it was originally being aired I can tell you that it is the exact opposite reason that the show dropped in the ratings and ended up getting cancelled. The show's runners kept making it look like they were going to get together then having some utterly ridiculous reason that they didn't. One time they even did get married...except it wasn't real. That's when the show died. People got mad and stopped watching it by the millions. The show runners tried to slap together a real marriage episode early the next season, but it was too late by then...too many people had gotten pissed off and abandoned the show. That turned out to be the last season.
"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."
i didnt watch it live so i guess your word holds more weight than my opinion. As far as watching the show online/reruns the main issues i see with the show is the same plot being reused over and over. Then there is the Clark and Lois get together officially.
I agree with the above poster that says shows begin to lose viewers once the couple gets together and stays together. I mean the bulk of these type of shows are will they or wont they. That keeps the viewers coming back. I remember the writer behind Saved by The Bell said they had to break up zack and kelly every once in a while to keep things interesting. The same applies to most shows like Smallville with the constant love triangles.
Yes, the excuses to keep them apart got more and more preposterous until I almost didn't care anymore. Clark married a frog-eating clone?!
shareAs has been stated, it went through a big ratings decline. It was always struggling (it was up against Seaquest, produced by Spielberg and that show got a lot more press and promotion. Not too mention it got a lot of the teen demographic because of the late Jonathan Brandis. I know, as a Superman fan--back in the days before DVRing and watching online--I had to choose whether to watch L&C or Seaquest. I went with Seaquest--mostly because of JBrandis, I admit).
It also got some negative press in that many people thought Dean Cain looked 'too Asian' to play Clark Kent/Superman. I still remember when the first stills and promos came out. There was an outcry about Dean having gotten the role. Some people never watched it for that reason.
Hope your apple pie is freakin' worth it!
It also got some negative press in that many people thought Dean Cain looked 'too Asian' to play Clark Kent/Superman. I still remember when the first stills and promos came out. There was an outcry about Dean having gotten the role. Some people never watched it for that reason.
The show got cancelled because Teri Hatcher was pregnant and didn't want to do the show any longer. She got her doctor to say it was too stressful for her to continue.
Superman is what I can do...Clark is who I amshare
It also got some negative press in that many people thought Dean Cain looked 'too Asian' to play Clark Kent/Superman. I still remember when the first stills and promos came out. There was an outcry about Dean having gotten the role. Some people never watched it for that reason.
As an adult, it's obvious to me that he has Asian or Polynesian ancestry but, as a kid, I didn't know the difference. I just knew he was hot; lol.
shareI don't remember it been on Live and Kicking and I am only 28, I watched that show every Saturdaty with Zoe and Jamie. But I remember it been on BBC2 on the evening me and my family watched it, big fans of the show.
On season 1 ep 1 there is talk about not doing season 5 but I don't think there went into details.
Terri was pregnant when she was filming James Bond thoug.
Get use to my spelling I've dyslexia. Deal with it.
I think it was on either just before Live & Kicking if i remember correctly, i remember when John Barrowman used to be on there lol
shareThe reason this show was cancelled was low ratings. I saw this on the first run and enjoyed watching re-runs when I could catch them. I've been a fan of Superman for 26 years now. I can see why they dipped some of my favourite things were seen what excuse Clark would come up with when he had to dash of and be Superman. When Lois finally sussed out who he was in the final episode of season 2, that element was gone. It lost a lot of the humour and it became very much about trying to hid Clark's identity from other people but Lois knew! I think that is what happened with the secret identity a total secret so that only the audience know was fun but the minute that was gone the show took a nose-dive.
If I can't save you, I swear to God, I am gonna stop you!
i don't think they could have continued to sustain lois not knowing superman's identity, especially once they became romantically involved. i guess people preferred it when the sexual tension was still there, but i rather liked seeing them building their lives as a married couple. if the plots had been stronger, maybe the outcome could have been different. i felt there was a definite drop in quality after season 3 imo.
before we get started, does anyone want to get out?
Lois learning Clark's identity and getting married happened too soon, the show's creator Deborah Joy LeVine was trying not to have them get together, fear was once they got together the show was gonna take a turn for the worst, people were writing in and the network were all going when are they gonna get together, there was a huge demand from the network and viewers to get them together, when Levine left the new creative team gave people too much of what they wanted, once they gave people what they were no longer interested.
shareThey say it was ratings and I don't know what anyone else's reasons were for watching, but I can tell you why my spouse and I weren't watching:
We never knew when it was going to be on! And when we did, it was pre-empted for some local station programming, like sports and such.
The whole second half of the last season, it kept getting shifted around so much that I actually complained to my local network.
They actually answered me that they couldn't do anything about when the national network aired the show, but if it coincided with a local special it would be pre-empted.
I don't even remember if they ever aired the finale here. I know we didn't get to see it until ten years later when the DVD box sets came out.
We've watched the DVDs many times and it's one of our favorite shows. They should have kept Deborah Joy Levine.
Same here, musical time slots and I don't think they showed the finale in our city either. Still have yet to see it.
shareYou really should pick up the DVD box sets. They're great to watch and there are a few featurettes with interviews, plus two eps have commentary: the pilot and "Seasons Greedings". That's the one Dean Cain wrote which featured "George and Weezy" selling the Atomic Space Rat. (I love that ep; it's hilarious.)
sharelois is in trouble, lois is in trouble...!
CLARK JEROME KENT! I NEVER SPANKED YOU! I NEVER HAD TO. BUT RIGHT NOW, I'D LIKE TO DROP YOUR BRITCHES AND TAN YOUR HIDE LIKE CHEAP LEATHER!!!!
Reading the paper can really be depressing. Mr. Dithers fired Dagwood again.
I think it was a combination of Narrative Decline in season 3 & 4 and the correlation in Ratings along with it...
Had they maintained Season 1 (& 2) Quality throughout the show could have easily broken 100 episodes if not 6 Seasons... but with Cable growing by leaps and bounds at the time, and First Run syndication being as strong as it was at the time, the old "must reach 100 Episodes" to sell it into syndication was no longer as important as it had been.
I thought Smallville blew this away.
I just got done watching the pilot vs Smallville's pilot and this had horrible special FX. The fact they thought they could make a Superman show like this blows my mind. At least Smallville used some decent FX. This had literally the worst FX... I would not have greenlit that pilot.
I did watch this show when I was in my 20's.... but it did NOT hold up.
It's FX weren't even as good as the film in the late 70's.
http://www.youtube.com/user/alphazoom
https://soundcloud.com/#carjet-penhorn
Well you are talking about different times for effects. Smallville benefited from the digital age where L&C had to use optical compositing.
shareDuring season the network was going when are we gonna get them together but the original producer didn't want them to get them together until like the fifth season, when the season 1 writers were dismissed it took a different direction.
During the fourth season, ABC had announced a fifth season of the show; its producers and writers were unprepared when ABC later decided that no new episodes would be produced. The series had weakened in its Sunday 8:00 pm timeslot and had been shifted to 7:00 pm in January, and was moved to Saturdays in the spring. The ratings dropped even further, and the show finished its last season at 104th place. It was removed from the schedule in May 1997. ABC made up for its commitment to Warner Bros. by ordering thirteen episodes of a Debra Messing drama called Prey. In November 2013 fans named Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain as the best Lois and Clark combination ever covering both TV and Superman films.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_%26_Clark:_The_New_Adventures_of_Superman#Season_Four
In the end, lazy TV analysts, or those who don't care to do their homework, will blame the demise of Lois and Clark The New Adventures of Superman on the marriage.
It's certainly much simpler than tracing the true history of the series, its ratings, competition and long-standing interference from the network. Who would believe, after all, that the true beginning of the downfall occurred by not having a wedding?
Coming to this thread late but better late than never, I suppose. I watched L&C when it originally aired, starting from some point in the 2nd season til the series finale.
I was a HUGE fan - taped every episode, had a scrapbook of magazine clippings etc. (I started watching at 11 or 12) Like another poster said, the fake wedding is what killed the show for me too. I actually likes the 3rd season (not as much as the second)but still thought there was substantial quality there. But after the fake wedding eps, I lost a significant amount of enthusiasm. I still watched the 4th season, but the wedding ep in that one was a case of too little too late.
Also, by the 4th season the chemistry of the cast changed. Justin Whalen & Lane Smith went from having supporting roles to almost extras in the background.
Teri Hatcher basically phoned it in. She always looked bored & had such a dour expression on her face. All the humor & quirks Lois once had were all but gone.
Had the wedding a few seasons too soon, the original producer didn't want Lois and Clark to get together and married until at least the fifth and final season, but when she left anything changed.
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