We have always said, “TV Club giveth, and TV Club taketh away.” (Seriously, we have it hanging on a wall in the TV Club home office, right next to the TV Club Twitter robot.) And it is with heavy heart that we come to you to tell you that coverage for two of the shows we cover will be no more, after this week. You probably won’t even notice, what with the return of The Americans and Hannibal and some of your other favorite shiny baubles, but we felt we would bring you the news anyway, in extra-Biblical form, because that is how we roll.
The first messenger comes to you, ashen of face and stricken of conscience. “Oh, gentle readers,” he says, “your fascination with James Spader was enough to keep things rolling for a while, but eventually, you just stopped caring about The Blacklist. After tonight’s review, TV Club will no longer cover the show. And I alone have escaped to tell you.”
You might react with terror and gasping of breath. “Curse TV Club and die!” says your wife, but you are not yet ready.
The second messenger, this time in the form of one of the boring characters killed off in the first season, comes to you, covered in blood and soot, yet miraculously alive. “You read about it last year,” she says, “but the move to Wednesdays killed TV Club coverage of Revolution as surely as it cut the ratings back significantly. Even though the show was better this season, no one was interested.” She bows her head, weeping greatly. “And I alone have escaped to tell you.”
You might stagger backward, struck by the weight of all that has happened. “Curse TV Club and die!” your wife whispers seductively in your ear. “Find some Revolution fan blog!”
There is a third messenger, still clutching his Oscar nomination certificate, as if that gives him legitimacy. Weirdly, he’s very clean and has a very nice smile. It must be Greg Kinnear! “Sorry, fuckos,” he says, “but it looks like Rake just couldn’t cut muster for your viewing enthusiasm. What was the rest of my line?”
“And I alone have escaped to tell you,” you fill in. Your wife can’t work up too much interest in this, because it’s just Rake, and nobody could.
But you! You are stalwart! Until you see the final messenger, cut in half by the blast of some terrible bomb, pulling himself across the landscape with the one arm he has left. “Oh, readers!” he says. “It was horrible! They put a show with Michael J. Fox in it on the air, and nobody cared! And now TV Club isn’t covering it anymore! And I alone…”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it,” says your wife. “Curse TV Club and die!”
“Begone, woman!” you say to her, because it turns out the book of Job is kind of sexist, when you sit down and think about it, but it’s also really beautiful, and seriously, read it sometime. “NBC has already pretty much taken care of that for TV Club!” And she howls, cursing, into the darkness.
Also, you might realize, we are no longer covering White Collar, except you probably won’t, because we cut coverage of that between seasons, and none of you were reading about it in the first place.
Too long, found the notion of TV Club equating itself even vaguely with God blasphemous version: We are no longer covering The Blacklist, Revolution, Rake, The Michael J. Fox Show, or White Collar after this week. We may drop in on interesting episodes of any of the above, but regular coverage has ceased to be.
On high alert: If you’re a devoted reader of our coverage of any of the below shows, you might want to tell your friends to read our reviews, because they’re in danger of going away. The best thing you can do is share things on Facebook and Twitter. You could also e-mail links to others. You could probably call them and read the URL to them over the phone, but why would you do that? The shows are: Cougar Town, Once Upon A Time, The Originals, Raising Hope, Regular Show, Reign, Switched At Birth.
Stay tuned: We’ll have lots of great TV Club news in the next few weeks, including the announcement of TV Club Classic’s spring schedule! Todd VanDerWerff will be covering every episode of The Wuzzles six times, each review from the perspective of a different Wuzzle! Magical!