LIFE will have another series premiere, sort of
It’s no mystery that the last episode of LIFE seen on NBC happened back in 2007, and with the second season premiere not planned before October this year, it will be awful long time between two episodes. I know this, you know this, and that’s why we want reruns!
Of course, with the recent announcement that NBC will air LIFE twice a week for two weeks at first, including on Monday nights right after hit-drama HEROES, there’s hope NBC is aware of it too and plans on making sure everyone knows about LIFE and remembers to tune in.
As for the creative mind behind the show, creator Rand Ravich had already said season 2 would be accessible to new viewers, that they wouldn’t feel as if they were missing out on important things required to understand everything - even though they obviously will.
And in a recent piece called “Sepinwall on TV: The re-freshman class of ‘08” Alan Sepinwall looked at this unusual situation for most freshmen series returning for their sophomore season without having a full first season, and such a long break between the two. Among the people he talked to was our very own Rand Ravich :
Because of the writers strike, there won’t be a lot of new shows on TV this fall. Instead, the strike has forced several of last year’s newbies to repeat their freshman year.
When the strike ended, five rookie series were renewed for another season at the same time their networks said they wouldn’t be back until the fall: NBC’s action/comedy CHUCK and cop drama LIFE, plus ABC’s Wednesday lineup of quirky supernatural dramedy PUSHING DAISIES, GREY’S ANATOMY spin-off PRIVATE PRACTICE and soap opera DIRTY SEXY MONEY.
The thinking at each network was that these shows might get lost in the shuffle of all the series returning post-strike and would do better with a big promotional push in the fall. But all aired between 9 and 13 episodes, and all but CHUCK ran their last original episode in early December. (CHUCK had a couple of leftover pre-strike episodes that ran in late January.)
By the time each series returns in September, they’ll have been off the air or in repeats for nine months or more. While TV fans have shown a willingness to wait that long, or longer, for established, popular shows like LOST or THE SOPRANOS, none of these re-freshman had reached that level of loyalty with their audience, and the creative teams behind each show are aware that they’re basically starting from scratch.
“We are re-launching the show,” says LIFE creator Rand Ravich. “Our episode one this season is a sort of pilot. If you have never seen the show before, you can come to this episode one and be thrown into the world and not be left behind and be instantly up to date with everything that’s happening.”
(…)
Even in a dozen episodes or less, each show established enough of an ongoing storyline that the creators are taking extra care to explain things for newcomers and/or to refresh the memories of people who watched the abbreviated first seasons. Ravich has joked that the first “Previously, on LIFE” will take up the entire season premiere.
In the making-lemonade-out-of-lemons school of thought, the re-freshman producers are all looking at the extended hiatus as something of a blessing. Sure, they’d all prefer to have made a complete first season - and to have been paid for one - but all took advantage of the extended time off to examine what was and wasn’t working about their shows.
(…)
Befitting his main character, Zen koan-spouting LAPD detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis), LIFE creator Ravich describes the lessons of season one in philosophical terms.
“I found out that you really need to trust the character. You cannot force the character into situations where you think it would play. You cannot force the character into something where you go, ‘Oh, this will be a morality tale or whatever.’ You need to let the character grow. You need to be on Charlie Crews’ side. ‘Oh, I’m just out of prison, I’m unsprung, I’ve got all this money, I can say anything to anyone that I want, I’ve got this ex-wife.’ You need to let those circumstances drive the character and not force him into jerry-rigged circumstances that you or the studio or the network think would be fun. You need to let him drive the show.”
Several of the series have undergone cast changes between seasons. (..) Donal Logue joins the cast of LIFE as Crews’ new boss in an attempt to lighten Lewis’ workload (Robin Weigert, who had been playing the boss, will appear from time to time in a new capacity).
No one knows how much of the previous audience will return come September, or whether they can attract new viewers who weren’t there last season, but everyone’s trying to look for the silver lining in this scenario.
[ Source: NJ.com ]