(originally written for the Save Lost & Found website and also posted on the NBC boards)
According to
TVWeek if a show in development was not already announced it won't be on in the fall, but there is still a chance that it may get picked up for midseason. This was specifically discussed in reference to the David E Kelly's "Legally Mad" but for those of us hoping "Lost & Found" finds a home at NBC, the dream lives on! While following the news on NBC's infronts and specifically "Lost & Found," I've seen a lot of commentary about these two shows. My conclusion is that "Lost & Found" is a better pick for NBC for a number of reasons.
I won't preface this with a caveat about how my opinion is biased, because as part of the viewing audience, our opinions and my biases are relevant. I want to see Lost & Found make the airwaves more than almost any other show because I can't wait to see Katee Sackhoff in just about anything. This is my first big point - the stars of the shows. All but one of the articles I have read mention Katee, of Battlestar Galactica fame, as an important aspect to L&F, while some but not all of these same articles mention Kristin Chenoweth for LM. The one
article that did not mention Katee did not mention either of the series' leading ladies. But another article in
The Chicago Tribune even refers to Lost & Found as "Katee Sackhoff's Dick Wolf project" giving her top billing over Dick Wolf, while never mentioning Chenoweth in relation to David E Kelley's Legally Mad. Now, I have nothing against Kristin Chenoweth and enjoyed her while she was in West Wing, but I don't think she brings the same benefits to NBC that Katee Sackhoff does.
TV Squad said that they were looking forward to Lost & Found and a show that NBC has now officially picked up because "the stars - Chase and Sackhoff - might make them worth watching" and
THR.com calls Katee Sackhoff "promotable."
It is my contention that Katee is far more than just "promotable." She can definitely be promoted to a new audience that is unfamiliar with her previous performances but even more, I believe (and you guys are totally evidence of this!) that Katee Sackhoff fans are a special kind of obsessive, and will watch virtually ANYTHING so long as she is in it. If they made The Last Sentinel into a TV series, many of us would suffer through the bad writing, poor conception and crummy acting by her co-stars just to see Katee on a regular basis. Surely Lost & Found can't be worse than a Last Sentinel series?! In contrast, Ms. Chenoweth is a well known and well loved actress whose name could certainly bring people to a project to "give it a try" but I think ultimately the shows quality will determine whether or not they keep watching. It boils down to this: If Katee starred in a moderately bad series and Kristin starred in a mediocre series, I think the Sackhoff show would still easily hold a much higher audience week after week.
That being said, I don't think Lost and Found would be a "moderately bad" show so lets talk about the shows themselves. Legally Mad is the brain child of the ever popular David E Kelley and Lost & Found is the newest crime solving evolution from Dick Wolf written by Chris Levinson. On this point let's call it a draw. I mean really can we say that David E Kelley's shows (like Ally Mc Beal, Chicago Hope, Boston Legal or The Practice) are any better or worse than Dick Wolf's many incarnations of Law & Order? How many L&O spin-offs do we have now anyway? And they all maintain a strong following and pull in big money for NBC. As far as big name show creators go,
these two are both giants.
So as a given with Wolf and Kelley at the respective helms, both shows are probably well written and well produced but I'm a bit concerned about the basic premise. First up... Legally Mad. Legally Mad is "a legal drama about Skippy Pylon, who is a very intelligent lawyer who joins her father's law firm. The only problem is that she also happens to be psychologically damaged, manic and has flashes of psychosis where she acts more like a teenager than a lawyer." according to
TV Overmind. In my daily life I spend considerable energy to avoid grown adults who act like petulant teens so I am certainly not going to spend my entertainment time watching these annoying and all too frequently encountered nuisances on TV. That's a HUGE strike against Legally Mad in my opinion. However, if you discount this personality quirk, as this
STLtoday.com article did, then it's just a show about a girl who joins Daddy's law firm. How original.
As for Lost and Found, TV Overmind says we get "an ‘offbeat' detective at the LAPD who ruffles too many feathers and gets sent into the bowels of the police station to work on John Doe cases." Ok, so it's not a brilliant shining light of originality either but nothing about that screams annoying and the shows it mimics have been successful. Its gives me a feel of Crossing Jordan meets Bones and as I love both of those shows I'm fine with slightly unoriginal. Besides, if the worst thing about L&F is that its unoriginal, did I not mention Katee Sackhoff fans would follow her to the ends of the Earth and back through a torrential hail storm and come out drenched but happy? Katee has the kind of star power and devotion you don't generally see on the small screen.
Lastly, I thought I should mention that the same TV Overmind article claims Lost & Found would be cheaper to make than Legally Mad. Rumor also has it the fewer spots available in Primetime NBC is because it is cheap to make unscripted shows and thus NBC is opting to put Leno on primetime five nights a week. So if the new season is about cutting primetime costs, go for the less expensive legal drama too! All in all, of these two legal shows from big name creators, you have an inexpensive show with a good if possibly unoriginal premise about criminal cases involving anonymous victims starring Katee Sackhoff, who brings a very devoted fan base ... or you can sign a more expensive either unoriginal or insanely annoying show about a lawyer who joins her dad's law firm played by Kristin Chenoweth who brings fans most of whom will turn the show off if it proves to be only mediocre. Don't forget, fans = advertisers = money so Lost & Found is cheap to make and will definitely have a consistent and large audience bringing in lots of advertiser money while Legally Mad is expensive to make and will have a less dependable fan base and is therefore a bigger risk for advertisers (i.e. potentially less money for NBC pockets). I see this as a no-brainer, but I'm not an NBC exec so what do I know.
