So FOX and I are definitely through, because now they've cancelled Reunion.

Reunion is/was a terrible show. Just terrible. But at the same time, pretty compelling in its terribleness. The plot was that one member of a six-member group of friends was murdered in 2005, and each episode was a flashback to a past year (counting up from I think 1986, high school graduation year) showing clues and "the way they were then," mixed with "present-day" scenes of the investigation. The past scenes were awesome potpourris of every trend and cliche you could think of for that year, or sometimes the years adjacent to the target year (the background research was often not the best). Very "If it's1990 it must be time for plaid flannel shirts and a scene set in Seattle!"

Because they had to cram a whole year's exposition into each one-hour episode (minus the present-day footage) that only ever covered a few days, you had a crazy amount of plot developments each week. Lovely melodramatic stereotypical plot developments like: Character A slept with Character B's best friend (Character C) while broken up with Character B and now she's pregnant with Character C's baby and getting an abortion, then keeping the baby, then unable to tell Character C because he's busy going to jail for pretending to have been the one driving the car during a vehicular manslaughter (really Character B was driving...drunk!) so she goes to London and puts the baby up for adoption, then has complications and can never have children, so her best friend (Character D) becomes the adoptive parents' nanny to keep an eye on the kid, while Character A goes to med school, finally marries Character B (after Character C makes a last ditch plea for her to choose him...then goes to fight in Desert Storm), miraculously has a baby with him, and then gets hooked on speed to cope with her unhappiness over his unfaithfulness after he finds out about her other child when the abusive adoptive father comes looking for it after the adoptive mother and child make a run for it with the help of Character D...but Character B still doesn't know his best friend, Character C, fathered the baby she had. Plus the Character C is a priest in the current day scenes. AndCharacter B is paralyzed and in a wheelchair in the current scenes, only we just found out he can walk. And the detective investigating the case is the pissed-off son of the guy killed in the vehicular manslaughter that sent Character C to prison. That's just one plot line, and keep in mind that there are also Characters E and F running around.

So basically it's crap, just pure crap. But the fact that it was so over-the-top awful combined with the creators' obvious conviction that they were making the most amazing, innovative show since Lost to produce pure comedy gold. The acting was bad, the aging make-up for the present day scenes even worse, and the dialogue the worst of all. But at times it was hilarious. As a poster at TWoP described one unintentionally funny moment from the vehicular manslaughter plotline in the pilot episode: "Rich!Sleazy!Dad's "well, what're you gonna do?" shrug when the plea bargain went off the rails."

It would have been nice to find out who the murderer was, but it sounds like the last episode will air 2/2, and that will only take us up to the mid-90s, and apparently the producers have said they can't wrap the mystery up in that short amount of time (because there are important people we haven't even met yet, or something).

Before I couldn't quite say good-bye to FOX because this was my guilty pleasure--my very guilty pleasure, although if the DVR wasn't automatically recording it for me, I probably wouldn't have kept up with it--but if/when this and Arrested Development are both gone, we're through.

I mean, they even showed the video for "Take on Me" as part of the 1986 episode. What more could you want from tv?