LJ Idol Season 9 Week 3 : Another Castle

Let me tell you the tale of two TV Shows on the same network with basically the same formula and the same creative team. One is considered a roaring success and the other an abject failure that has been cancelled never to glean the networks schedule again. And how the abject failure was created not made by some really bad decisions on both the creative team and networks part.

One caveat, this is my theory based on things that can be found on the web and in various forms of print media and a couple of conversations with some people who would be deemed “insiders”. I am not naming any names nor am I giving whole cloth what I was told due to some Non-disclosure agreements.

The successful show was a bit of lighting in a bottle. It hit at the right point with a good creative team that could tell a story. From the creators of LOST came the ABC hit series “Once Upon a Time”. Taking familiar fairytale characters and put them into our own world without any memories of their previous lives with the exception of the Mayor who is also the Evil Queen Regina who enacted a cure which brought them to Storybrooke, Maine. Ah, but like any good fairy tale there is a way out of the curse in the form of a savior named Emma Swan who is a very practical person not prone to flights of fantasy.

The failure was the not really a sequel nor a prequel was “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland” that mashed the characters of Alice’ adventures in Wonderland and Aladdin together with other characters as needed. It followed an adult Alice in Victorian England as she is about to agree to a medical procedure to get rid of the strange unladylike thoughts in her head when the Knave of Hearts and the White Rabbit come to bring her back to Wonderland because her true love a genie named Cyrus. Oh and the Knave of Hearts was originally Robin Hood’s Will Scarlett and the current Queen of Hearts was Will’s girlfriend back in Sherwood. Mix in Jafar who has some major scheme to change the rules of magic or majik depending on what you believe. It was a bit of a mish mash.

Originally (and what the creators wanted to do) “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland” was going to fill the gap between the two parts of the “Once Upon a Time” season on Sunday at 8 pm. It was going to be a short season and finish up the week before “Once Upon A Time” the second half started. But somewhere along the way someone decided that they wanted to put it on as a series at the same time that Once Upon a Time was running. Why not? It worked for CSI: (fill in the blank) for so many years. And two hit shows are better than one right? The fans would follow it right? Well they might have if it hadn’t been scheduled against another geek power-house being “The Big Bang Theory”. Thursday at 8 pm was possibly the worst spot they could have put this show and the ratings do reflect that. I honestly think that if they had stuck to the original plan, the show would not have been cancelled.

I had an interesting discussion with a number of people at some convention about why Wonderland had not drawn them in the way that OUAT had. They couldn’t put their finger on it but Wonderland seemed more unreal/artificial. Peter and I talked about it on the way back and we think we figured it out. OUTA started in our world and is grounded in Storybrooke, which is a mythical town in Maine. A lot of the buildings and places in the Enchanted Forest are mostly CGI but we also had the town that had sets and locations that were not CGI. Wonderland is mostly CGI and, no matter how good it is, CGI sets look a little artificial. Since Wonderland took place in a mostly CGI world, it had an artificial feel that never quite went away since we rarely went to the real world unless we were in the woods then it was shot in the woods. So there was a veneer of the artificial which was a bit off putting.

The other complain that came out of the discussion was that everyone had very little idea where Wonderland was going.

In the first season of OUTA, there was the through line of Emma being the Savior and it was played out at a reasonable pace. We learned the stories of the fairy tale counter parts along with the story of the town folk. Granny’s behavior towards Ruby makes a heck of a lot more sense once you add the fact that it is a rather clever retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Mr. Gold’s position of power and the fear that the town citizens’ feel towards him is explained by the deal he made with Regina and the fact that he was one of the most powerful black magicians in the Enchanted Forest.

We were presented with the Knave coming to get Alice because there has been a sighting of her true love Cyrus in Wonderland and we go from there adding a lot of characters who all want something relating to Alice or things that they think Alice knows. Since this all took place in Wonderland when we bounce between past and present, we are a little unsure about where we are in the story. There were a couple of episodes that I could only tell which point we were in the narration by the clothing the characters were wearing. The uncovering of back stories was rather muddy too as they were jumping around in the timeline a lot. I would say that since the show came back from hiatus, it has been much more understandable than it had been. Also it got interesting. People’s actions now made sense. For me the series improved by leaps and bounds once Jafar (Naveen Andrews) showed up.

Two castles created by the same creative team and based on the same concept but one castle still stands and another castle falls for many reasons.

I would have liked for Wonderland a little more time to find its footing because just when it got really interesting, it was no more. I will continue to enjoy Once Upon A Time for as long as it runs.

This is my entry this week for the Live Journal Idol. I hope that you enjoyed it and will vote for me when the time comes. Also who wants to give Rumple a lot of hugs right now? Poor crazy thing.