[Spoilers] Birds of Prey

Personally, it should stay on for a full season, rearrange the program schedule so that Smallville and Birds of Prey air back-to-back.

I have to agree with this. Switch it and Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls probably has a lot more crossover with Dawson's Creek then Birds of Prey. It would put two shows of the same genre on back to back on two different nights instead of the mismatch they have right now.
 

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well... that was... meh...

Television News
WB stuffs BIRDS OF PREY
Show set to run out the month
Dateline: Tuesday, November 19, 2002
By: MIKE WHYBARK
By: News Editor
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER covers the WB Network's Monday decision to end the run of the superheroine series BIRDS OF PREY. The Batman-mythos series focused on a troika of young ladies keeping Gotham safe in tights.
The network will run the show though the end of the month. The series failure was laid to declining ratings following a strong start.
 

Why did this series fail?

I have some thoughts on this. First, "bad girl" shows seem to be on the decline, much like the "bad girl" comics that faded away years ago. Dark Angel is gone. Buffy is on the decline; no one even wanted the animated series. Xena is gone. These shows all offered sexy female stars who were also bad ass, superhuman, butt kicking action heroes.

But Buffy and Xena, and to a lesser degree, Dark Angel, had much stronger, more evocative settings. New Gotham didn't have a great deal of atmosphere. Buffy, Xena, and Dark Angel all offered a great degree of originality. They were very distinct from one another, despite many superficial similarities.

Birds of Prey had the potential for this, but for some reason it just didn't happen. One of the strengths of the comic is a strong and interesting relationship between Oracle and Black Canary. This didn't seem to get translated well into the show; maybe the actresses didn't click, or maybe it just wasn't in the scripts.

The show had high production values, and a comparatively big budget for special effects. But you know, it seemed wasted. Take a show like Star Trek, throw in money for special effects, and that helped promote the story, bringing the setting to life. The show probably would have been more successful without wasting all that money.

The action scenes weren't terribly interesting. That's really not good, for an action show. Buffy and Xena both succeeded in doing good action, in very different ways; Birds of Prey did not.

Better scheduling may have helped, as noted by some of the posters above. Emphasizing the Batman connection as much as they did probably didn't help them much. They're not Batman, and they aren't even similar to him. If you were watching a segment of the show, and didn't know any of the back story, nothing about it would say "Batman" to you.

It's a shame the show won't be given a chance to be re-tooled. There's potential there. The scary part is they may be replacing it with another super-hero series called "the Black Sash." I don't know anything more about this replacement, but hopefully it will offer something more than all the failed super-hero shows that precede it.
 


Chun-tzu said:
Why did this series fail?
First, I'd like to say you made some very valid points. Now, I shall rant ... :)

As for myself, I had high hopes for this show (see earlier in the thread). After seeing the most recent eps I found it way too campy and badly written. The plots were fairly uninspired and I've definately seen better action scenes on other shows (see Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Alias, etc.).

I've seen every ep, but with the exception of the premiere I haven't looked forward to the show on a weekly basis. I'm huge on entertainment value and this show is simply not entertaining nor bringing anything remotely new to the table. Maybe it was my high expectations, maybe it hasn't gotten enough time to get comfy. Either way, stay or go I will not miss the show....
 
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