After watching the first episode I determined the show sucked. They took a guy who is cheating on his wife and conning people, and tried to justify it by giving that kid in the gas station a 50 dollar bill. If your gonna be a bad guy be all bad. Show is garbage and deserved to be cancelled. If I had to produce this show again, I would replace the con guy with Kevin Spacey and make him all bad. It just bothers me they took a good plot and screwed it up so badly.
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Hi MidnightTeaParty,
I agree it was an interesting show but with a morally ambigious protagonist. A large part of the network audience wasn't interested. It truly should have been on cable as a 12 part series, one cliff-hanger after another. It would have found an audience and still allowed the principles to do other projects - It's gone now, I don't think we'll see a nuanced series like this one on a major network in the future
diva,
I think the problems went deeper. On another board someone wrote that he liked the show but the wife didn't because of the cheating aspect. He said he reminded his wife that she like Dexter which is about a much more morally reprehensible character.
To me, though, the difference is that everyone in one way or another has been touched by cheating significant others, whether directly personally or through divorce or through friends. There isn't much fascination, if any, in the character, IMO.
But Dexter is different. I've never met a serial killer; sure hope to never do so. But to see the character through the safety of the small screen offers an opportunity I won't have in real life. It holds more interest for me. The same with a show like the Sopranos or Rome.
Lone Star was, at least as advertised, about a cheater who was also a con man (also a rancid concept at this point in time) who had daddy issues.
It didn't, and still doesn't, sound interesting to me.
Hi physics101,
You very well may be onto something. Perhaps the cheating aspect, which certainly is the basis of most blues and country music, was unpalatable for viewers; however, the show runners bet the farm on James Wolk's talent and charm and lost.
I know a number of the posters on this board never watched the show or disliked what they saw. I certainly won't quibble with personal taste but my opinion, episode 2 was absolutely riveting and frightening. It showed how easy it is for a conniving sociopath to dupe nice people.
The show had horrid writers. While some of the premise was there, it started to fall flat fast. Technically the main character is not even married, he is a con man, both women he married under false names for a con on each. Then the con man who grew up as a con starts to have an identity crisis and wants to lead a normal life, so he is offered a job and takes it, but then considers making a con, a rob peter to pay paul scenerio.
"God's not supposed to be a hack horror writer." - In The Mouth Of Madness
That's probably why the show failed on a network. Mainstream audiences want characters that they can instantly recognise as good or bad, so they know who to root for and who to hate. If you tune in to a network TV show, preferrably one you never watched before, and mute the sound, it takes you all of 1 second of screen time to decide whether a character is one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. Having a character that has a "realistic" psyche, in terms of he's trying best as he can, but he doesn't always make the right decisions, forces viewers to put themselves in that character's shoes and try to understand him. Many people like that and have no problem with it. Many more do, and if you want to compete with the reality shows and whatnot, you have to include them too.
shareI remember when the promotional ad's were on tv. I knew it was a fail from then on. The main guy didn't even look like a good actor. He was smiling most of the time and the story was rubbish too. Thank God it didn't get to be continued.
FF - Lightning: Mind your own business. I don't need concern from my enemy.