The End of Kings

I watched the last episode of Kings last night, viewing what is likely the best drama series this season (perhaps for several seasons, honestly), a series that took more money to make than most and had abysmal ratings from the very beginning. I've blogged about it before, so my regular readers will not be surprised. Watching what I knew to be the last episode, though, was pretty depressing.

Eight episodes of Kings. That's all I got! And while glorified soap operas, predictably trumped-up reality TV, equally predictable (and not funny) sit-coms, and even vacuous shows about vacuous housewives with too much time on their hands receive huge ratings, my beloved show--featuring perhaps the most compelling story I've seen in a while, presented by phenomenal actors through a magnificently written script--never grabbed the attention of most viewers. Most people never even tuned in. Those who did, and there were only a few, likely found the dialogue too advanced for their comprehension. So the series failed. 

This is not like my eye-candy beefcake series of last season. This is no Crusoe, consisting of two harmlessly buff bodies involved in various pirate-caused adventures that have nothing to do with the original book. I never said that show was great film making. I just loved it despite my knowledge that it wouldn't last and didn't have much more than visual appeal to offer. But Kings had everything: suspense, drama, beefcake (there was a pretty girl in it, too--just ask my hubby), romance, mythic parallelism, depth, intriguing characters, politics... the list goes on.

More than anything, it had a great script. I would love some day to write a script like that one, or even half as good. Yet the series failed. Why, oh why, doesn't someone start the Smart Channel, a TV channel just for actually intelligent people who don't find reality series (or fictional series) about petty people with petty lives, petty ideas, and petty differences appealing, but who gravitate to films and shows which actually use a little brain matter?

Maybe that's it. There isn't such a channel. Perhaps that's why I watch so little TV in the first place... the "boob tube" is for boobs. 

Can you tell I'm bitter? I can't wait for the DVD of the eight episodes to come out. I'm buying it.