The Best Years Season 2 - wtf The-N? WTF Fans!?!

The elusive show has returned! (A few months ago, but still...) The Best Years kicked ass in Season 1 and after 2 years we finally get a Season 2. Chances are if you've seen any of it, you've noticed the differences.

The-N has probably screwed themselves over with this one. They wanted to reach out to younger viewers, They dropped their funding for The Best Years, they gain more younger viewers from airing crappy reruns, now the show is back with a new tone that pisses off old fans and new younger fans has issues with grasping the content. People want the dark drama back, but apparently The-N thought younger viewers might not latch on to another season like that.

I think younger viewers understand the drama perfectly, they just tend to have more immature of what the characters should do (ex. "Sam shoulda stay wit Trent cuz he's SOOO0OO Hawt!!!") Granted, parents might not think of a dark college drama as being a show tweens would watch, but isn't the desire to wach things/wear things/listen to things meant for teenagers considered "cool" when you're that age? (How much money do you think Seventeen, the CW, MTV, Hollister, Hot Topic, and American Idol make off of tweens? How many of them are totally and completely marketed towards tweens?) And since when do tweens share their parents' taste in TV? (Or even follow their rules about TV? Is Nickelodon really trying streach their "Parental Approved-ness" to their teen oriented channel? Isn't that an Oxymoron?)

However, the general fan response has pissed me off a little. From what I've seen, very few people actually followed the renewal process, and everyone is totally clueless as to why actors didn't return etc.

Seriously guys? Is it that hard to google the show, maybe read the wikipedia page? The explanations are out there, and not that hard to find. If you're really still posting stuff on the message boards about 'Where'd Trent go?' 'What's up with this season?' you're just plain lazy. Take 10 minutes to read some other posts where people have explained this repetitively. Is that not something we all learned in grade school? "See if your question has already been answered somewhere else?" You want to complain about the show, fine, just know what they hell you're talking about.

A common complain in the same realm; "They totally changed season 2!!!" "It's not the saaammme shooow!!!"

Duh.

It was canceled for being too dark and dramatic for The-N's new vision. Expecting the second season to be just as dark and dramatic is pretty moronic. Clearly The-N wasn't going to have an Afterschool-special-on-crack season 2. There's no reason to expect it.

So after we've accepted this fact, let's think about alternatives that'd be OK. Our crazy rocker friend didn't get their visa renewed so they were deported, stop complaining that all your other friends just don't measure up to the level of insanity and entertainment of your deported friend. That gets no one anywhere. Unfortunately a pretty good amount of the fan feedback I've seen is along these lines. I don't know if it's a result of lack of research or the influx of younger teens/tweens to The-N (most of who tend to bring pretty good amounts of immaturity with them.) Either way, season 2 is open to question on many levels, but until people are actually knowlegeavble about the basics, a discussion can't truely be started.

Helpful Links:
The Best Years page on The-N
The Official Best Years Site
Dose.ca Article on the 2nd Season (Where Randal Edwards talks about how you can't expect last season's show to thell this season's story, and a producer mentions the cancellation/renewal process of Season 1)