WTF


It is so sad to say that tonight 6/14/06 was the first time I ever heard of the show, let alone watched an episode. I thought it was very funny. Freddie Prinze Jr. was surprisingly funny. I never knew he had it in him. After the show, I decided to come to imdb to find out more info on the show since I had never heard of it, all to find out that it had been aired for a whole season already and had been cancelled. WHAT?!! I can't believe this. It was a really good show in my opinion and deserved a second season. Maybe I am one-sided because I only saw one episode. Maybe the rest of the season wasn't good but I can't see that. I dont think it got high ratings because it didnt get the publicity is should have gotten. That is ridiculous. I think they should rethink the whole cancellation.

The sad part is that these networks keep horrible shows on and even create more horrors while releasing good shows. It has to stop. I don't know about you all but I personally loved the show Related and couldn't wait til the new season to start. Just today I found out that this show too was cancelled due to the merging of the WB and UPN. What an outrage! These stations are too different and should have never been combined. The worst part about it all is that almost all the GOOD shows were cancelled. This is going to be a disaster and I fear that even CBS will be a better station than CW (the new station name). They deserve it.

Thanks for listening.

reply

he ONLY reason I'm on here is because:

1) I'm upset that there are so few shows with minorities on them that are actually WELL WRITTEN.

2) I'm upset that of ALL OF the talented Latino and Chicano actors/actresses there are out there...they picked FREDDIE PRINZE JR. to build a show around!...one with a terrible premise, mind you.

3) I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Grandma (Jenny Gago) spoke in nothing but Spanish ala Grandma from "¿Que Pasa, USA?"...but without the cornball subtitles...do they air the subtitles on screens for the studio audience? How do the non Spanish speaking fans laugh if she flubs a line?

4) I was confused why Allison (Madchen Amick) lived with the family and who EXACTLY was she related to?...I found out by reading the thread with the rundown from the pilot episode.

5) How dare they waste the talents of some of my favorite actresses (I typed right!) by sticking them on this doomed piece of crap and sticking them behind George Lopez with the false image of making back to back authentic Latino themed shows!

6) Freddie Prinze Jr. is NOT someone I would base a Latin themed show around...he's 1/4th Puerto Rican and he didn't even speak Spanish growing up! There are SO MANY deserving Latino/Chicano actors and actresses that are suffering thanks to this "TV Brownout" in which shows like Summerland, One Tree Hill, Falcon Beach, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, etc. shows with NO MINORITIES (yes, I know who Keiko Agena is!) on them are being pushed by networks. Since UPN and WB merged, MOST of the shows that were rated highly in Black and Latino homes were cancelled in one fell swoop. It's sad that Freddie sucked, it's sadder that it's being cancelled. It's sad that I don't know when another Latin themed sitcom will be greenlighted by a major network.

Why hasn't there been a show that has people of different races interacting on it like they do in real life unless it's a Black themed show that the network asked for characters of different ethnicities to appeal to everyone? It SCARES me that everyone on shows like "Friends", "Seinfeld", "The O.C." or "One Tree Hill" are ALL WHITE...I don't see how it doesn't send up a red flag given that these are the MOST POPULAR SHOWS by two different demographics.

If I see a show and I don't see representation of myself...or any indication that I'd even be WELCOME there if it were a real place...I'm not watching it. That's why I didn't see an episode of "Seinfeld" until it went into syndication and I didn't watch "Friends" regularly until IT was syndicated. There was always a show that another segment of the population watched when those shows were on...I have friends that never saw an episode of "Martin" until it was in syndication because they watched "Seinfeld" and had NO idea it (Martin) was on at all.

Thanks for letting me vent...they shouldn't have cancelled "Ressurection Blvd.", either. One.

reply

that's kinda funny what you said:
this was like 8 or so years back but still:
on my track team i was the only white guy there, and I remember talking to someone about Seinfeld and it was an ep from years ago, (i think it was the master of your domain ep which was from 92 i think? now bear in mind this story is from '98 and he just it the first time the other day on tv, and i brought up the whole hey you;ve never seen that before? its been on a number of times, (the show itself's been in reruns since 95) so the show's been in reruns for a couple years now as well.

His response "oh i never watched these shows until there was nothing else on that I wanted to watch. they;re actually much better then i thought they would be, but they just seemed too white to me." its too true, I at leasted watched Martin when it was on though cause it followed The Simpsons (favorite show both back in the day and now quite frankly because i'm too much a die hard fan to ever think about not watching it, i hope the movie is godly. yes i said godly.)
and becuase it was on Fox and because it was all the rage in my school--my elementry school but still. (ditto In Living Color) but you know I never thought about white guy watching show with black people or black guy watching show with white people until just then, cause he was right--and once again when Friends and Frasier went off, this time I was working as an usher at a movie theater with a mostly black staff of college kids, once again, none of them could care less that they were goin off, (of course this won;t stop anyone from potentially watching em on tbs or in syndication sometime in the future--it came as a near shock that this guy i knew who was overly concerned with appearing macho to put it mildly was saying something to me about an old will and grace rerun, and when i finally woke up and figured out what he was talking about, i was like you like will and grace? well i never saw it till ch 11 started playing em at midnight, but they;re pretty funny, for a show about... i'm gonna choose to leave out the word he used but i thjink you can imagine what.

what i;m saying is that its funny how that works, a lot of shows don't get sampled by a wide assortment of people until syndication anyways, the way its always been where a middling rated sitcom gets enough years and makes it way to syndication where it finds an audience and a somewhat renewed poularity (for me it was newsradio--oh did i love discovering that show!) and 3rd rock from the sun hit some people i know like that. Oh a good current example would be King of Queens, a very funny sitcom, wel lfunnnier then i ever would have predicted it to be based solely on commercials, that i had zero interest in before ch 9 started showing the reruns (I think this might be the new married with children, i say that becuase that was the gold standard of reruns that ch 9 used to show constantly and now they have the same format with king of queens reruns) Its funny how many non whites ignored and bemoaned the popularity of friends or fraiser or even seinfeld becuase of the love they were constantly getting from white people, only to see them on reruns and sorta like 'em.

its just too bad that networks stopped programming the shows the way they did in the 70's when they had sitcoms with (gasp) different colored people, and assumed that white America would have no problem watching and relating. (a la Good Times and The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son.)
its even worse that the nets have stopped being patient with sitcoms, and only renewing the incredible performers or critically buzzed ones, and canning ones that could potentially be discovered in syndication... Freddie from what i understand was an able performer, and held on to George Lopez's aud, so i did not understand abc's claim for cancellation. (ratings didn't prevent it from axing hope and faith a year ago when it had a steep decline even though it has been canned since.)you know? what's up with lack of patience from the nets and the half hours shows. fox could[ve kept bernie mac limping along for another year, its not like what they have replaced it with (nanny 911) is gonna make any difference ratings wise, and at least they could have sold themselves the new bernie mac eps for syndication and made some money off that. (stupid tenth of a ratings point) likewise, nbc could've kept joey limpin along or something else limpin along. The only net that gets slack Cbs becuase they actually don't have too many time periods where they afford to be slack. too bad though.

reply

WHy does everything have to be about race?

reply

I understand y u ask this question cuz i find myself asking the same thing. However, in this case it is definitely relavent because of the fact that television is all politics. Minority shows have a tougher time making it in the world of television. Just wait til September comes...when u look at the lineups for all of the stations, ur gonna ask urself...what happened to all those black and hispanic shows? Its sad to say but race definitely plays a part in television still.

reply

perhaps the reason that there are more shows featuring a white cast in america is predominately based upon the fact that there are more white people in america than anything else. it makes sense to me.

and, hey, why does it only seem that asians are the ones who complain that they're completely under-represented in american television? i'm trying to remember the last time i heard a black person complain about the fact that there were not enough asians on television, but i think it was, hmm, never.

so why is it wrong that white people mainly focus on premiering shows with their own race, but it's okay for black and hispanic people to not seem to give a crap about asians or middle-easterners or anyone else who's a minority as well when it comes to television?

not only that, but shows with a white cast are actually more likely to have other races represented than a show with a black cast or a hispanic cast. i don't think i've ever seen an asian character in all the black sitcoms i've seen (except for the bill cosby show), but then, in gilmore girls (which was previously mentioned but discarded), there is not only an asian character, but a middle-easterner as well. in the o.c., there are countless mentions to seth's jewish background (and if you are going to call jewish people "just another white person and they don't count", say that to a jewish person; i have a jewish friend who would probably punch you in the face), veronica mars has both a hispanic character as well as two black characters, smallville's main character is part-chinese--i really don't think i need to continue.

personally, i think the "race issue" is made a thousand times worse when people constantly freak out about the fact that there's not enough "black sitcoms" or "hispanic sitcoms", because that still singles people even further. how about promoting, oh, i don't know, sitcoms that have multiple races included--much like, you know, real life? in fact, when you think of it, "freddie" was pretty realistic in that sense.

reply

there may be more white people in the middle of the country...but here in nyc or out in cali there are many many many non white people..and to have shows set in major cities and not have any non white people at least in it its kind of a slap in the face to all the people who actually live in the city! this is not a new argument Friends had to put up with this for years. I get that the characters on the shows would be insulated amongst each other and so there wouldn't be too many people on the shows who wouldn't natrually fit in with the core characters. they were characters who hung out with each other, and not at work, ok i get that. but its just you take a look at the prime time lineup today and you compare it to the one they had just 20, maybe 30 years ago and you see there were a lot more fair representations--you know The Jeffersons and Good Times might not have been exactly true to life, but at least the two shows maintainted an audience featuring a predominantly black cast...are the nets fearful that there are no shows that could do that today??? with Bernie Mac gone the only show is Everybody Hates Chris...and Girlfriends that's it! its unthinkable that we've actually gone backwards as a country in terms of race on tv,.... there's this whole outrage that there will be less gay people on tv this year...gee you think that's because will and grace went off the air??? that's nothing, 20, 30 years ago there weren;t representations of gay people on tv, but there were of black people (and jews too thank you very much) 20- 30 years ago, and now...nada..what's up with that???

Freddie was hispanic yes, and following George Lopez was only the fourth hispanic lead in a sitcom Ricky Ricardo being no 1--that's all well and good, and i'm not on of these people that's saying we should have crappy sitcoms on as long as they're done by people who aren't white--hispanics, asians, etc,but i think we should be asking how come we don't have as many crappy sitcoms on the air being done by people who aren't white? does it have anything to do with the fact that the sitcom genre is ailing all around and these days even white people are having trouble keeping sitcoms on the air??? its all pretty pointless when the show is actually funny! My Name Is Earl, The Office, Scrubs, all are funny and all have white people working alongside non-white people like in the real world, is that so much to ask? race should have has nothing to do with it, it should be about how funny the show is...and luckily all 3 of them are good shows...but its just crazy how the shows that are on today are tryin to appeal to everyone by appealing to narrow groups of people...because that's how tv is watched today, not by a general public but by fragmented groups of people...i get it, but still it sucks is all

and jews are white! I know I am one and i've always been seen as white first by many of the non-white people livin here that i know. (not so with other white people though ironically. i guess that makes me off white. you can't win either way man.) and me being jewish should I be mad that seth cohen is the only representation you see of us on tv? not really... its an all right one, we really are a dying race though. it sucks but its true, we're less than 2 percent of the nation's make-up. at least we had Mr. Kotter!

reply

also my initial reaction to Freddie is that it was all right enough of a sitcom--i never understood why ABC canned it, from what I understood it held on to nearly all of George's Lopez's audience, it might not have been that good of a sitcom, but it wasn't baaaad, i was content with its all rightness.

too many good mediocre sitcoms are getting canned today...we need these sitcoms as time fillers, its ridculous to have to have reruns of law and orders and csi and american idol as constant time filler when the periods could be filled by original programs...that's why the nets are going down hill, they realize that they can get ratings by putting on the same episode of a popular show again in place of wasting money on a show that would get mediocre ratings, that certainly makes sense from a business stand-point, but years from now reruns are still gonna be rerunning shows from the 70's and 80's and not shows from today, becuase they were all canceled before they could get into rerun heaven!
would it have killed fox to have shelled out for one more season of bernie mac when nanny 911 (its replacement) scores merely a tenth of a rating point higher ratings wise??? apparently so...

and that in a nutshell is one of the things that's killed minority representation in sitcoms today--errrr i think.

on the brighter side, many of the shows surviving happen to be good for the most part. so that helps. ehhh you can't win. you just can't. there'll always be something to complain about. its the way of tv!

reply

Freddie Prinze Jr. is NOT someone I would base a Latin themed show around...he's 1/4th Puerto Rican and he didn't even speak Spanish growing up!

So with what you're saying, only being 1/4th Puerto Rican, he has no right to be proud of his heritage? What about J.Lo? She's Puerto Rican but was born in the Bronx, so should she be calling herself of New York decent? I don't know spanish and am 100% Puerto Rican, both parents and grandparents... but I was born in Chicago... like Freddie... can I still call myself a Puerto Rican? Is a person with two parents of different races aloud to be proud of one or both? I'm trying to understand what side of the fence your yelling from.

reply


I agree with the last comment - I too am 100% Puerto Rican and I am really tired of ignorant comments like the ones made by poisonousdart75 . Being latino isn't about speaking spanish and tattooing the flag on your ass. I wish our people would stop being so narrow minded. And if poisonousdart would have seen more than one episode, then he/she would have noticed that the show isn't only latino based. There was plenty of interaction of all races. I enjoyed Freddie and felt that it was actually realistic that he didn't speak spanish. I do not speak spanish either though both my parents do. The reason why Freddie was a great show is because it broke many of the latino stereotypes that we always have to suffer through on television. If it is indeed cancelled, that is a shame.

reply

You go girl/guy whatever you are.. I agree even if I'm not Portorican.I'm greek and I live in Italy since I was 2 so I don't speek Greek even if my parents do!So once again.. You go girl/guy/whatever u are

reply

Oh, I'm sorry... I thought this was America.

reply

moron

reply

George Lopez grew up idolizing the great Freddie Prize, the star of Chico and the man. He approached Freddie Prize Junior because George wanted to develop a show for the son of the comic he adored growing up. Freddie Jr is Hispanic and speaks Spanish. However regardless of that; to many people who adored his father, he represents a legacy since his dad had one of the greatest shows in the 70s. I wish ABC had given the show a chance

reply