After only one season Spike is canceling the series The Mist. Pourquoi? It was only in June on the week of the series premiere that Spike was crowing about the series ratings. The first original scripted series of the Network.
Premiering on Thursday, June 22 at 10pm ET/PT, “The Mist” delivered significant increases in Adults 18-49 (+98%) and total viewers (+137%) in its timeslot compared to the previous 4-week average.
Overall, “The Mist” drew 1.3 million viewers with 0.6 Adults 18-49. (Ratings include DVR +3 numbers)
This scenario was short lived however, according to tvbythenumbers the series limped to the end of the season with a paltry 0.14 rating in adults 18-49 and 462,000 viewers per episode.
The Mist, a series which was based on the 2007 film of the same name, which was itself based on the Stephen King novella, currently has an IMDb score of 5.4.
That’s a bad sign by any metric one wants to use.
Let’s see what the people thought…
Some folks were turned off by the first episode.
“The pilot is an emotional roller-coaster. At first you are amused with how bad the writing is, but then you get angry at how bad the writing is. And then it’s funny again because you realize it must be a parody. In case the title was not self-evident, this show is about a mist. The mist is coming and it will kill you with the most absurd amalgam of bad acting, bad writing and a tasteless soup of sociopolitical stereotypes.”
So was this person…
“I really love the movie and the short story. What a back story there is to explore, not to mention the horror of what we know is in the mist.
When I heard that a TV show was being made I got excited, they could not go wrong, the work had be done by the movie to set it up to be scary, exciting adventure and I really want to know more about Arrowhead.
What i just watched had absolutely nothing in common with the book or movie, it was a terrible…and I do mean terrible, production with poor acting, poor script, unlovable and uninteresting characters and they spent most of the first episode ticking boxes. Weird, make up wearing teenage boy who is gay / not gay, football jocks, rape, sex education gone wrong, racism etc…
Those things have a place but it’s not in a show about monsters in the mist.
I don’t know if i can go through another episode, I probably will, it cant be any worse than the pilot.”
‘They could not go wrong’ they say. This individual severely underestimates Hollywood’s capacity to butcher an original property, so naive.
What about someone who has made it through the whole series…
…okay I couldn’t find a negative review of someone who stuck around for the whole series, I guess that’s what they mean by rating’s drop.
Did anyone like this thing?
“First off, I am appalled at how many negative reviews are from triggered right wings who can’t handle the sight of a homosexual, a sex education teacher, and an environmentalist. Very closed-minded.
Spoiler Below: Why is this better than the Walking Dead? Resources and ammo are more limited. Access and movement are more restricted. However, the Walking Dead does have better CGI.
Like in any apocalypse, the monsters are not the only antagonists, fellow survivors are as well. This is the same drama you would find in Walking Dead. I don’t understand why people are complaining about the lack of monsters when there are plenty among the survivors. At least this show does not milk the heck out of an antagonist (Negan). There is no infinite ammo and bad aim.”
Talk about strawmanning, and ‘Better than the walking dead’….right-o, pal. And Cell, 2016 is a modern masterpiece.
How about another “fan”
“Unlike many of the knee-jerk reactions, I gave this series a chance before laying down punches and came out at the end pleasantly surprised. Although inwardly recoiling at what some have quite rightly termed “SJW” plot points early on, expectations were subverted in due course as is the case in most good horror. Indeed, I was left with the same warm satisfaction as with most adaptations of Kings work. The Mist stands up to previous efforts to convert his particular tone for the TV audience but predictably, and at this point with strange reassurance, never aims to succeed at exceeding the water mark set by past endeavours. In the end, a comfy seven out of ten and a recommendation for Stephen King fans to stay the course”
A rather lukewarm recommendation.
Here’s my take
When I first heard they were going to do this series my first thought was that milking ‘the mist’ event for more than one season seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Felt the same way about another Stephen King adaptation made into a series “Under the Dome”. The primary reason why this is a bad idea is this: when you stretch an original story like this out you have to fill it with something else. And so help me, the things that Hollywood uses as filler is usually pure, unadulterated crapola.
This can happen to the best of concepts. Peter Jackson proved this when he all but lobotomized The Hobbit by turning it into three movies. This is the reason I left Game of Thrones a few season back, and from what I’m starting to hear from once fans of the series, the theory stands for that as well.
As a purist, it’s one of the reasons that I insist adaptations stick as closely to the source material as possible. Because when you veer away from it you more often than not swerve into stinksville.
Sure, the reverse of said theory can also be true, filling the void of an extended property with great ideas can enhance it, even make it more enjoyable than it previously was. But let’s be frank, this is an ability that has largely been lost in Hollywood, which has devolved into an ouroboros that incessantly feeds on the work of those from the past to sustain its creatively bankrupt residents of the present.
So what happened to Hollywood?
I have a theory.
Over the years Hollywood has shifted more and more towards a regressive ideology that tolerates no dissenting viewpoints. Anyone who doubts this needs only talk with someone who works in Hollywood who holds conservative views…that is if you can find one. This has led to a far leftist echo chamber where the same stale ideas are rehashed and creativity has been replaced with superficial tokenism. Where false diversity, appearances, have replaced true diversity, that of thought. When everyone around you regardless of their appearance thinks the same way the writing gene pool is just as barren of creativity as a shallow biological gene pool would be of variation.
Could it be that pandering to a diseased ideology that fetishizes the exterior at the expense of the interior isn’t the best model for creative and engaging storytelling?
I think we have our answer in abundance.
