At the conclusion of each television season, there comes a time to mourn those -- usually plentiful -- genre series that have posed their last mystery, resolved their last sexual tension and hung their last cliff. It can be a time of great sadness or of mass rejoicing; one of relief, or anger, or even disgust at typical network misguidedness.

Here, we see off the good, the bad, the venerable and the merely forgettable entries that populated our 2010-2011 TV schedules -- and will perhaps never be heard from again…

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CAPRICA
Created by Ronald D. Moore
18 Episodes (1 Season)
Aired January 22, 2010 – November 30, 2010 (Space)
Highest Rating: “Pilot” (01.01), 1.602 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: “Things We Lock Away” (01.12), 718, 000 US viewers
Syfy

Ah, prequels. What can one say about them? For every good one (The Hobbit, X-Men: First Class… wait, there must be more) there are a dozen simply awful attempts, and this one falls squarely into the latter camp. Of course, Battlestar Galactica’s final, fucked up season should have already convinced us that creator Ronald D. Moore -- also known for running the Star Trek franchise into the ground -- was suffering from some form of undiagnosed psychosis, but if it had not, then surely his planet-bound, deathly-dull and aggressively-metaphorical dynastical drama detailing the already-established rise of the Cylons did the trick.

Despite a quality cast and an existing, quite devoted, fan base, Caprica just never really got going, and the final episode of the truncated series saw the Cylons integrated into human society while surreptitiously being taught religion and told of a prophecy that will see them overthrow their creators. (Wow! Did anyone see that stunning development coming? Just… staggering.) Meanwhile, a two-hour pilot for a bridging series, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, set to take place during the First Cylon War, has been greenlit by Syfy and is already in production. Caprica actually premiered not on TV but on DVD, with its two-hour pilot available for purchase in April of 2009, months before the series proper began. Can we assume that BSG: BaC will follow suit?

Oh, joy.

VERDICT: Even the presence of the ever-delightful Eric Stoltz couldn’t save this one from utter tedium… and its cancelation freed him up to direct episodes of Glee.

DVD RELEASE: It’s Syfy, so… natch. Caprica, Seasons 1.0 and 1.5 both came out last year; no sign yet of a Caprica: The Complete Series, but it is surely only a matter of time.

CHAOS
Created by Tom Spezialy
13 Episodes
Aired April 1, 2011 – July 16, 2011
Highest Rating (so far): “Pilot” (01.01), 6.53 million US viewers
Lowest Rating (so far): “Eaten by Wolves” (01.06), 3.12 million US viewers
CBS

The three of you who watched, or are still watching, this show will know that it deals with CIA novice Rick Martinez (Freddy Rodriguez), an earnest youngster and Internal Affairs mole sent in to audit the elite operatives of the Office of Disruptive Services. Bright spots were provided here by the eternally handsome Eric Close and laddish Scotsman , but from the get-go no one was very likeable, the situation was untenable, and it was all just kind of cringe-worthy. Basically, an unfunny version of The Office, but with spies.

VERDICT: Yeah, this one pretty much sucked from the outset.

DVD RELEASE: None forthcoming.

HUMAN TARGET
Created by Jonathan E. Steinberg
25 Episodes (2 Seasons)
Aired January 15, 2010 – February 9, 2011
Highest Rating: “Rewind” (01.02), 10.46 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: “Imbroglio” (02.09), 4.69 million US viewers
FOX

This series of Human Target is the second of the same name, both based on the cult DC comic character. In print form, our hero, Christopher Chance is a bodyguard so dedicated and so adept at disguise than he not only protects his clients, he becomes them. Here, the handsome face, winning smile and twinkling eyes (not to mention great hair) of star Mark Valley are not put through such rigorous paces; instead, this iteration of Chance guards those all-important bodies by somehow inveigling himself into their lives.

Okay, look, it’s kind of a silly premise, and the first season stretched believability to its very limits, but it was also a hell of a lot of fun, offered up some of the best damn fight sequences anywhere on TV, and it made some interesting choices, character-wise, in having a very testosterone heavy cast with nary a love interest in sight. Season 2 tried to balance out this gender bias and this remained a largely entertaining and often kickass show -- despite its cancelation, a late ratings resurgence saw the boys pulling in almost 9 million viewers for the series finale, coming so close to their debut figures that it surely gave the FOX brains trust (if such there is) pause.

VERDICT: A solid show featuring some terrific performances and some outlandish plots… and vice versa. It never lit the world on fire, but it was always a fun time and will be missed.

DVD RELEASE: Season 1 is available, though Season 2 has yet to be announced.

MEDIUM
Created by Glenn Gordon Caron
129 episodes (7 Seasons)
Aired January 3, 2005 – January 21, 2011
Highest Rating: ''Pilot'' (01.01), 16.13 million viewers.
Lowest Rating: Around the 7 million mark during its final season, not too shabby.
NBC (Seasons 1-5), CBS (Seasons 6 and 7)

Medium has always been a rather successful series that has struggled to catch the attention of Sci-Fi/Fantasy geeks. Perhaps it had something to do with the network constantly shuffling the series around while it was finding its footing (and, indeed, its core audience); or perhaps it had more to do with its central familial premise, deterring thrill seekers looking for more fireworks and obvious supernatural obstacles to face off against. It's a pity, because there's plenty of supernatural spookiness on offer, excellent writing, and terrific acting from the entire main cast.

Patricia Arquette stars as Allison DuBois, a mother of three little darlings, and wife to hubby Joe DuBois (Jake Weber, always hilarious), who discovers that she has the ability to interact with spirits, see past and future events through her dreams and read people's minds. She soon finds herself working for the District Attorney solving crimes as a consultant, while dealing with a skeptical husband and three very demanding little ones.

This show could have easily fallen into familiar syrupy trappings, a la The Ghost Whisperer, but Medium quickly expanded into some wildly entertaining territories and made full use of its storytelling opportunities, from a supernatural standpoint and as a criminal procedural. And when the series aimed for dark, it was as creepy as they come.

Spanning seven impressive seasons, Medium somehow always managed to stay fresh. Even after it jumped from NBC to CBS, the show rarely faltered, and the books of real-life psychic Allison Dubois, upon whose exploits the show was based, are now widely read... and even, it seems, respected.

VERDICT: Give this show a chance if you happened to skip over it. It's got the smarts and the spooks to keep you glued.

DVD RELEASE: Oh, yes. Medium: The Final Season came out in June, as did a Medium: Complete the Vision seven season value pack.

-- Mark Ritchie

NO ORDINARY FAMILY
Created by Greg Berlanti and Jon Harmon Feldman
20 Episodes (1 Season)
Aired September 28, 2010 – April 5, 2011
Highest Rating: “No Ordinary Pilot” (01.01), 10.69 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: “No Ordinary Future” (01.19) 3.52 million US viewers

No Ordinary Family suffered mainly from its truly puzzling casting. Burly Michael Chikliss, late of The Shield, was married here to petite, piping-voiced Julie Benz, of Buffy, Angel and Dexter. They played the Powells, whose family vacation joy flight ended in a crash that, not incidentally, gave them all superpowers. Patriarch Jim ended up with indestructibility; Mom Stephanie got really, really fast; pouty teen girl Daphne (Kay Panabaker) became a telepath; and young screw-up son JJ (Jimmy Bennett) became a Math whiz. (As superpowers go, that one’s pretty lame. Not Aquaman lame, but still.)

At its inception, this was a fairly clever and engaging dramedy, and it certainly had its moments going forward. Highlights included Panabaker’s flawless sulkiness, Christina Chang as perky lab tech Katie, the arrival of Xena’s Lucy Lawless as a crisp-accented sociopath, and an action-packed series finale that ended with the Powells recruited by the NSA to aid in tracking down eighty newly-super criminals… a development that almost made a Season 2 desirable. But all in all, an ambitious conspiracy plotline, some truly tedious outings (“No Ordinary Valentine”, for example) and an abrupt lack of the funny led this series to an unceremonious cancelation that could hardly be wondered at.

VERDICT: After a promising beginning, it just all got very… ordinary.

DVD RELEASE: No Ordinary Family: Season One is due out on September 6. But don’t they mean No Ordinary Family: The Complete Series? Clearly someone had already printed the DVD covers before the show’s ratings tanked and made a Season 2 impossible.

SMALLVILLE
Created by Alfred Geoff and Miles Miller
218 episodes (10 Seasons)
Aired October 16, 2001 – May 13, 2011
Highest Rating: ''Vortex'' (02.01), 8.40 millions viewers.
Lowest Rating: Season 9 averaged about 2.50 million viewers.
CW

After ten long years, Smallville finally hangs up its cape. It surely has been a topsy turvy ride with Clark and co., with plenty of ups, and many many downs. The most surprising thing to note is that the series found its footing again in later seasons, after faltering during a lag period (otherwise referred to as Seasons 6 and 7) and embraced its superhero origins, despite a considerably reduced budget.

Smallville followed Clark Kent on his journey from Boy Scout to the Blur, and eventually to The Man of Steel. We encountered many familiar faces from the DC Universe -- some more faithful adaptations than others -- and it was genuinely thrilling, upon the show's initial release, to watch Clark fumble through his teen-hood and then fully embrace the hero he was destined to become.

Critical to the show's success was the equal amount of screen-time allowed for Lex Luthor and his budding relationship with Clark, a unique spin on a well worn dynamic that definitely energized the first 3 seasons.

While the series never had the best writing, or enough backbone to truly take its DC license and really run with it, it boasted some spectacular set-pieces at times, and was a mindless, harmless way to spend an hour of your evening. And, at the end of the day, during its final moments, Smallville went out in true superhero fashion, and gave fans that had been waiting ten years an ending that was, well, super.

VERDICT: It often played out like a daytime soap opera with superpowers, but especially during its final stretch, the show hit the geek meter more often than it missed.

DVD RELEASE: And how! There’ll be the Season 10 release, of course. Then there’ll be the 10 Season Smallville Complete Box Set. Plus there’ll be a Season 10 Episode Guide and Script Book, and a Complete Episode Guide, and some kind of Behind the Scenes Pictorial Tour or some such, and way more besides. Never let it be said that The CW doesn’t know how to milk their pretty people for all they’re worth.

-- Mark Ritchie

Read Mark’s Smallville reviews here!

STARGATE UNIVERSE
Created by Brad Wright and Robert C Cooper
40 Episodes (2 Seasons)
Aired October 2009 – May 2011
Highest Rating: “Air Part 3” (01.03), 2.4 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: "Alliances" (02.13) 0.8 million US viewers
Syfy

Heralded as a new kind of Stargate, with more focus on character and less on plot-driven action, Stargate Universe was the third TV serial incarnation from the franchise that gave us Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. It was darker, grittier, sexier and really not quite so much fun as its predecessors. It was very slow to get going, gaining a lot of criticism in its early days for lack of focus on female characters, being slow, being dark, showing sex, for being Stargate 90210 and Stargate Galactica (see Rachel Hyland's Why I Hate SGU). And there's no doubt that some of the criticisms were valid, but in its second season SGU began to address these issues and was emerging as a clever, thought-provoking and entertaining show just as Syfy wielded the axe and cancelled it, blaming the lack of achievement on ratings targets.

The best of SG are really the time travel episodes "Time" (1.08) in season one and "Twin Destinies" (2.12) in season two. "Time" in particular is everything the new Stargate was trying to be: good character development and exploration on one hand married to a very clever sci-fi story on the other. The worst of SGU is undoubtedly the Earth-based episodes that focused too much on character and seemed to forget the plot, the aptly named "Earth" (1.07) comes to mind. But even the worst episodes have fantastic production quality and the cast of SGUem>SGU were excellent throughout.

There are lots of theories for why SGU didn't achieve the success of its predecessors -- the change in viewing slot, the splitting up of the seasons into two parts and thus losing momentum, some Stargate fans badmouthing the show on the internet, but ultimately it simply failed to be a hit with viewers.

VERDICT: Stargate Universe tried to be a different kind of Stargate, which for many was a mistake.

DVD RELEASE: Season 1 is already out on DVD and Blu-ray. The Season 2 DVD has been released in Region 1 and is due for its Region 2 DVD release, and a Blu-ray release in July.

-- Rachel Day

Read Rachel’s Stargate Universe reviews here!

THE CAPE
Created by Tom Wheeler
10 Episodes (1 Season)
Aired January 8, 2011 – March 11, 2011
Highest Rating: 8.45 million US viewers (pilot)
Lowest Rating: 4.07 million US viewers (“The Lich, Part 1”, 01.07)
NBC

This show was so universally unpopular that the final episode was only broadcast on the NBC website, to little or no complaint from the viewing public. And what of that final episode? It was an anti-climactic muddle featuring a whole lot of Summer Glau looking very, very hot, and being all kinds of cryptic. In the show, geek goddess Glau plays the psychologically-fragile (typecast much?) blogger Orwell, a kind of sidekick to disgraced police officer Vince Faraday, AKA The Cape (David Lyons), who is a man on a mission to restore his good name, return to his family and see champion evildoer of the fictional Palm City, Peter Fleming, AKA Chess (James Frain), brought to justice.

Nothing about this show was ever very good; from the tiresome wronged do-gooder storyline to the relentlessly over-the-top villain (seriously, even the Green Goblin at his most histrionic would have told this guy to chill the fuck out), to the seemingly magical powers possessed by the hero’s titular fashion accessory, it was a continuing mystery how this nonsense ever got made, and its passing can only be accounted a blessing.

VERDICT: One might suggest that the Curse of Summer Glau has struck again, but this time the series truly did deserve the boot (unlike, say, Firefly, Sarah Connor and Dollhouse).

DVD RELEASE: Yes, for some reason. The Cape, The Complete Series is due out July 5.

THE EVENT
Created by Nick Wauters
22 Episodes (1 Season)
Aired: September 20, 2010 – May 23, 2011
Highest Rating: “I Haven’t Told You Everything” (01.01), 10.88 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: “Cut off the Head” (01.17) and “One Will Live, One Will Die” (01.20), both 3.85 million US viewers
ABC

This show was told in a series of flashbacks interspersed with a conspiracy-laden narrative that took us from the White House to a cruise ship to many, many prisons. We met a succession of intriguing, ultimately inter-connected characters; there were heavy-handed hints of a major mystery; a missing girlfriend; a bunch of suspected terrorist activity; and some shadowy government powerbrokers of the Cigarette Smoking Man school. Recognizable faces abounded, from Jason Ritter and Blair Underwood to Laura Innes and Luke from Gilmore Girls. As things progressed, we came to learn more about The eponymous Event, and still more questions emerged. There were aliens, and a bunch of innocent-man-accused stuff, plus inscrutable motivations, annoyingly skeptical law enforcement types, exhilarating chases and gunfights… and yet more aliens. The dead rose. It was a whole big thing.

Also, communal milk jugs were tampered with far too easily for any Starbucks customer’s peace of mind.

In the end, inconsistency killed this show. The performances remained strong but the characterization became shoddy at best, and when it all went very V on us--having our vaguely disquieting and yet generally well-meaning extra-terrestrial visitors suddenly turn genocidal--it was just too much to take. The final episode concluded with the arrival of an invasion force of seemingly hostile intent, and the President’s insignificant but hot wife revealed to us as an alien. But by that point, the thrill had very much gone.

VERDICT: Perhaps the world just wasn’t ready for an X-Files/V/FlashForward hybrid.

DVD RELEASE: Surely inevitable, but as yet unannounced.

TOWER PREP
Created by Paul Dini
12 Episodes (1 Season)
Aired October 2010 – December 2010
Highest Rating: “New Kid” (01.01), 1.323 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: All other episodes hovered around the million viewer mark
Cartoon Network

Look, it hasn’t been officially canceled, but since its first twelve-episode season came to an end in December of 2010 and it has still not been heard from on any of the advance schedules for 2011, one has to assume that this teen superhero conspiracy series is no more.

And that is a crying shame.

Tower Prep had a lot going for it. Attractive teens with remarkable abilities. In uniform. At a boarding school. So far, so Hogwartsian, but there was way going on here. Way more. Indeed, if the show is reminiscent of any book series, it is Mark Walden’s H. I. V. E. books (it stands for Higher Institute of Villainous Education), except that at least the students forced to attend that secretive and sinister campus knew what they were doing there: learning villainy. At Tower Prep, not a one of them knew what was really going on; and neither, at any point, did we.

After twelve episodes of intrigue, the Season 1 finale left us with shocks, revelations, child abuse and lingering questions aplenty—like, for example, exactly what special significance did our rebellious hero Ian (Drew Van Acker – kind of a young Jensen Ackles) have to Tower Prep’s founder?

Perhaps we’ll never know. And doesn’t that just suck?

VERDICT: Tower Prep was a live action show and yet was being broadcast on, of all things, Cartoon Network. That may have been the issue.

DVD RELEASE: Not so far. Bummer.

UNDERCOVERS
Created by J.J. Abrams and Josh Reims
11 Episodes, 2 unaired (1 Season)
Aired September 2010 – December 2010
Highest Rating: "Pilot," 8.57 million viewers
Lowest Rating: "Funny Money," 4.21 million viewers (which is a shame, because that episode lived up to its name. Hilarious! Unintentionally so, but still)
NBC

Undercovers was an amazing show. If only we'd been able to watch that show instead of the crap they actually aired. The premise was amazing. CREATED BY JJ ABRAMSandanotherdude. Sorry, how did that get in there? Anyway, two former spies fell in love and got married, choosing their relationship over their CREATOR OF ALIAS AND LOST AND FRINGE! damn it, sorry. They chose their relationship over their careers and started a catering business. Then one day they were reactivated and teamed up to find a missing agent named Leo that they both had a history with. PILOT WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JJ ABRAMS! Action and sexpionage were sure to ensue as they reconnected with their pasts and each other.

This show had a ton going for it. Beautiful leads, JJ Abrams (did you know he was involved? NBC really didn't advertise that angle for some reason), spies, drama, it had everything! Plus it had two African American leads on a major network, and that wasn't a big deal. It's just that they happened not to be white.

The pilot was great fun. It was funny, sexy, action-packed... and then crash and burn. The second episode struggled to find its feet, and then the third episode was basically a Mad Libs version of the second episode's script. "A (noun) is kidnapped and used as leverage to make a (profession) use his/her research to (something terrorist-esque)." Add to that the insane reluctance of the show to tell us anything, their reliance on characters who either had nothing to do or no reason to be there, and boilerplate plots that could have been lifted from any number of spy movies, and the show's ratings decline became sadly inevitable. From about the third episode, this show was on a suicide watch.

Not to mention the constant reminders that the Blooms' catering business was almost bankrupt followed by shots of their palatial home and insanely James Bond-type car (which they never even used on missions. Seriously, they used it to go to and from work and that's IT).

VERDICT: This show could have been a throwback to Get Smart and I Spy. It could have been a fun and sexy spy romp. But poor planning and even poorer writing meant that their attempts to save themselves (writing out Lizzie) came too little, too late.

DVD RELEASE: Extraordinarily doubtful.

-- Geonn Cannon

Read Geonn’s Undercovers reviews here!

V
Created by Kenneth Johnson
22 Episodes (2 Seasons)
Aired November 2009 – March 2011
Highest Rating: “Pilot” (01.01), 14.3 million US viewers
Lowest Rating: “Heretic’s Fork” (01.09), 4.87 million US viewers
ABC

V should have been an instant classic. It had a compelling premise, an accomplished cast, and the whole nostalgia thing going for it, as fans of the 1983 original were eager to see what a new generation of creative talent would do with this timeless tale of friendly aliens with a sinister hidden agenda and the ragtag band of freedom fighters who opposed them.

But after a respectable premiere, ratings plummeted…and to be honest, the show kind of deserved that. V had a lot of problems, the most obvious of which was the writing, which was (let us be kind) uneven at best. There was also an odd and inexplicable emphasis on the domestic angst of the protagonist, FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell, who deserved better), and her dimwitted son, Tyler (Logan Huffman, who really didn’t). Viewers never warmed up to Tyler -- his gory demise in the series finale was widely and enthusiastically celebrated even as it was decried as too little, too late -- and over the course of two seasons we watched in helpless frustration as Erica, who should have been kicking ass and taking names all over town, became That Shrill Chick who spent most of her time shrieking “I will do anything it takes to SAVE MY SON!!!!!!!!!!!! -- oh, and the rest of the world too, I guess, whatever.”

The show was not without its charms. A few individual episodes were standouts (“Red Sky,” the Season 1 finale, in particular), and several actors earned our respect the hard way; everyone expected Elizabeth Mitchell and Morena Baccarin, our villain, to be solid (and they largely were), but who knew that Scott Wolf or Laura Vandervoort had that in them? And be on the lookout for Mark Hildreth and Christopher Shyer in -- hopefully -- better shows in the future.

V V ended with a bloodbath and several major cliffhangers, including the arrival of an alarmingly sizable invasion fleet. Can Agent Erica save the world? Will Anna’s hubris be her downfall? Will Joshua and Lisa sail off into the stars together? Does John May really still live? Alas, for the answers to these and other interesting questions, we will need to turn not to our television sets but to the wonderful world of fanfic. Which will undoubtedly be better than the show was.

VERDICT: V had its moments, but overall, it represented a tragic waste of potential.
DVD RELEASE: Season 1 is available on DVD and iTunes. Season 2 is said to be coming, but ABC doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to get it out there.

-- Kate Nagy

Read Kate’s V reviews here!

When one door closes, another one opens... or a window does... or something to that effect, anyway.

Say hello to the new and returning shows of the 2011 TV Summer Season in Hello, Summer!

-- Rachel Hyland (with Rachel Day, Geonn Cannon, Kate Nagy and Mark Ritchie)

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