Goodbye, Billie Jean.

I can think of no more appropriate topic (unless you want a rant about how Bush is destroying everything this country was founded on and should resign immediately) for the 4th of July than fandom nostalgia.

With the upcoming release of both the Order of the Phoenix movie and HP book 7, I find myself thinking more and more about what gets people to stop reading or stop watching a source canon. You see, I’m not really excited at all about either. I’m looking forward to a surge of academic discussion and analysis of the books and fans following the releases but I think I’m more excited because I think I should be excited as a fan, not because I actually am.

So I wondered what else makes my (and presumably other people’s) interest wane. Long breaks, obviously, can wear a fan down. This seems more applicable to books than visual canons, I think, but the longer times between books the more time fans have to find something that suits them better and actually updates more regularly. Though you may see this happen in visual fandoms too. Some summer shows may be prone to this; there’s a year between when you last show an episode and when a new one airs.

Rapid and sudden casting changes can be a turn off too, I suppose. The Dead Zone, the USA show that airs Sunday nights, just came back two? three? weeks ago with two missing cast members. My favorite two cast members and the show’s sole minority regular. I don’t think I’ll be watching it much this season, except for the bits and pieces I catch after The 4400 is over and I’m getting ready to go to work. Losing a beloved character can destroy a show, even if there are legitimate story-telling reasons within the canon (as opposed to corporate ones at the production level) to kill/incapacitate/make them leave. Some shows can get away with this, of course. Law and Order (the original) has been through how many cast changes? Off the top of my head: Cragen, Stone, Briscoe, Branch, Logan, Green, Southerlyn, Curtis, Carmichael, Robinette, Kincaid, Ross, Lewin, and Schiff. Law and Order’s designed to be plug and play when it comes to their characters. Obviously, we all have favorites (mine are Briscoe and Logan and McCoy and Kincaid) but for the most part, with Law and Order no one blinks an eye if a character leaves and another one enters. They’re stock characters with very little background and substance.

Bad writing or plotting is another huge canon killer for me. This one’s a little hard to judge objectively, I think, because one person’s show-killer is another person’s dream. For me, S3 of Veronica Mars was excruciating because it became less about plucky and sarcastic detective Veronica Mars and more about The Veronica and Logan Relationship Hour (see also focus shift). I didn’t like what being with Logan made Veronica and I really hated what Logan would do while he was with her. I thought the relationship and how it was portrayed warped the show and because of it, I still haven’t (and probably won’t) seen the last five episodes of S3. It was just really badly written and handled. But S3 was a dream for a lot of other fans because they loved the Veronica/Logan relationship and it drove the show. S3 of the new Battlestar Galactica was the same way for me. I hated the story lines they put up and quit watching four episodes in.

This may be a smaller concern, along with cast changes, but shows that don’t give me faces I want to see end up on the ‘eh, I’ll find something else in that time slot’ list too. Shows with conspicuous lack of female characters, minority characters, lower class (as opposed to the much more common middle/upper class) characters all ping my radar. I don’t necessarily stop watching but shows like this are always on notice for me. Even worse are the ones who add the female/minority/etc character and it just comes off as completely token. Sometimes, like Bruce in The Dead Zone, they even reference it as token or unusual. That’s always a huge turnoff for me.

Time changes! Urgh, these are the worst for shows. One of my favorite shows freshman year of high school was Earth 2. It was on Sundays, if I remember correctly, and aired right before seaQuest DSV. Or it was supposed to, since the network (NBC, as I recall, but please correct me if I’m wrong) couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether or not to air episodes. Sometimes it was pre-empted for sports, sometimes they aired it a different night completely, episodes were aired out of order and I’m pretty sure they never aired the last one or two episodes of the season. I’m still not entirely sure I’ve seen the entire series (one day that DVD set will be mine. Yes. It will be mine.). So it comes as no surprise the show had no ratings and was eventually canceled. Except possibly to the network executives who scratched their heads and went ‘huh, why’d we spend so much money on a genre show like this anyway?’

A canon’s focus shifting can turn people off too. I know a lot people absolutely despise the HP movies, saying that “these aren’t about Harry Potter, they’re about Hermione Granger.” You can take that complaint or leave it but it’s a legitimate opinion. People get invested in canons for any number of reasons, though I’d argue that the characters are the number one reason overall, and when fans start smelling a change in the winds, there’s going to be blood in the water and a ratings drop. When a focus shift happens, such as going from mostly drama to comedy, fans usually hate it. Sorcerer Stabber Orphen, an anime, did this exact same thing in its second season and completely bombed. Viewers were annoyed by the lack of seriousness in what had been a drama laced with mild comedy and how it changed the characters to make them funnier. Orphen S2 only lasted a few episodes, thanks to the response.

Then there’s the canons we just outgrow. I’m sure I’d enjoy rereading the Baby-Sitter’s Club, because I enjoy a good dose of nostalgia now and then, but I stopped reading those books when I was about nine or ten. I found other authors I could relate to better. What we enjoy as children is rarely what we enjoy as adults, sadly.

And of course, there’s the shows that somehow manage to do some or all of these things and you just can’t quit them. For me personally, House is one of them. I watched every episode this season even though they generally disgusted and annoyed me (barring one or two good ones). Why do I keep watching? It’s because I like the character Chase. That’s the only reason. So, I also kind of wonder what redeems a show for people; what makes them cling to something even though they know it’s bad.

Or what makes people go back to the basics, the beginnings, and why we see resurgences periodically of fandoms like Baby-Sitter’s Club. Can you ever find those books anymore in stores?

What kills shows for you? What makes you cling in hope it’ll get better next episode or next season?