Girlfriends and Las Vegas Walk Into the Sunset

There are series that run for years with widespread popular and critical acclaim, and that end their tenures amidst major fanfare and speculation as to how cherished plot lines will be wrapped up. The Wire, which reaches the end of five sterling seasons on HBO Sunday, is such a series.

And then there are series that even though successful on some level, seem to live out their entire lifespans in utter obscurity. They don't make critics' "Ten Best" lists; their stars don't get nominated for Emmys; there's no fan fiction devoted to their characters; no one you know has ever even seen one episode. Call them Walker shows, after the epitome of this type of series, Walker, Texas Ranger.

Still Standing, which lasted for four years on CBS and got less attention in that time than Britney Spears gets for one run to Taco Bell, was a classic Walker sitcom. Boy Meets World was another (a good rule of thumb is that any series that runs for years on a Friday or Saturday can be considered Walkery). Boston Legal has a lot of Walker qualities -- I'm convinced no one at ABC even realizes it's still on the air -- but its stars are too well-known and they keep giving James Spader Emmys, so it can't qualify. The same goes for According to Jim, which has become so famous for being obscure that it has managed to transcend its essential Walkerness.

I began thinking about Walker shows because of the recent announcements that two fine examples of the genre have been canceled: Las Vegas, canned by NBC after five seasons, and Girlfriends, which is leaving the CW after eight seasons (it started out on UPN). If these cancellations come as news to you, or if reading this has made you aware for the first time that NBC had a show called Las Vegas, then my point is made. But these series employed a lot of people, and yes, had fans that really loved them. As Quarterlife has recently proven, no series runs for more than a week these days without identifiable viewers.

So here's a tribute to both shows:

As a UPN-turned-CW series without attractive young white people in its cast (like Gossip Girl) or particular critical attention (like Everybody Hates Chris), Girlfriends was fated to be a Walker show. However, a good many African-American women identified with it and regarded the series as no less worthy of praise than Sex and The City. It had its ephemeral elements, but as with most sitcoms that start out being about singles, the characters went through relationships, marriages, babies, and career ups and downs. And the show likewise explored issues of special interest to its primary audience. Girlfriends likely would have ended after this season anyway, but the writers' strike deprived the show of the chance to wrap up storylines and give the ladies a true send-off.

Las Vegas had two big selling points when it debuted in 2003: its setting, always popular in television and even more so after the success of CSI, and the fact that it was James Caan's first foray into series television, as he got to make the trip to Sin City that eluded Sonny Corleone. Set at a glitzy hotel/casino, Las Vegas never seemed to know what sort of show it wanted to be. The drama and the cast were fairly lightweight, making the show the sort of thing that would have fit in better with the prime time scene of 30 years ago, when Robert Urich was the king of fictional Vegas. The bad guys weren't too scary, and filthy rich folks losing their shirts is, if anything, the stuff of black comedy. Attractive cast members such as Josh Duhamel, Nikki Cox, and Molly Sims provided opportunities for good soapy fun, but the series didn't fully embrace that side either.

Like all Walker shows, Las Vegas was never strong enough to anchor a night on its own, and thus it fell victim to two of the leading causes of death for veteran series: time slot changes and cast changes. The series did fairly well on Mondays but was moved to Fridays in 2006, not something that's done with a program that a network has faith in. And both Caan and Cox exited the show at the end of the fourth season last spring (Cox's departure was reportedly due to cost-cutting ordered by NBC, another sign of a lack of confidence). Tom Selleck came on board as the new male lead and did his usual reliable thing, but it only staved off the inevitable. Las Vegas was able to shoot nearly an entire season's worth of episodes, but instead of restarting production on the doomed series to tie up the last few loose ends, the network pulled the plug two weeks ago.

Ironically, Las Vegas made more news after its cancellation than it ever did while it still aired. A watchdog group claimed that the episode that wound up being the series finale featured visibly naked women streaking through the casino (it appeared that the sequence was edited to give the illusion that people saw more than they actually did see), and it filed a complaint with the FCC. Being attacked by pressure groups means you're no longer under any sort of radar, so it's a good thing Las Vegas was canceled when it was, or else it would have lost its hard-earned Walker status.

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