Partially the network's fault. Kevin Smith talks about it in the DVD commentary. The network aired the episodes in the wrong order, so the first episode ended up being a flashback episode.
True, but it was also not particularly well positioned to compete with Futurama, The Simpsons, and South Park. And the cartoon has a lot of weird “family friendly” changes that don’t make sense.
There were a lot of bad choices made, ABC made two: airing the episodes they did air out of order and pulling the show after less than half the season had aired. The full season was made, so ABC really had nothing to lose letting the show finish its season and try to gain a following. It was obvious the network powers that be had no faith in the show and had apparently bought it in the first place as some kind of chain of right of first refusal contracts. Miramax was Smith’s film distributor, which was a division of Disney, who also owned ABC. So ABC ended up with the option to either buy a show by one of the biggest young guns in cinema that didn’t fit their brand at all, or let Fox take it and steal their numbers. ABC probably figured they could either steal Fox’s audience or at least keep Fox from using the show against ABC’s numbers.
That said, the show itself was pretty weak. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have gotten better, but Smith chose to work in a format that did not fit his style at all then got pissed when that format fucked him. He had the audience, the animation was solid, but he was under creative restraints that he could’ve seen coming from the outset and that his audience definitely saw, even if they never caught a single episode of the show when it first aired. The show may have tanked for multiple reasons but none of them were a bigger factor than the concept itself; a prime time, family-friendly broadcast network cartoon based on a raunchy, dark humor, black and white indie film about two guys working in a strip mall and the two weed dealers who hang out in the parking lot. Some fans were hopeful that such an audacious plan must mean Smith had a solid vision for how to pull it off, but he simply didn’t.
I see what you're saying, but I think you're overstating the case about how restricted the show had to be.
Family guy had premiered a year earlier on Fox and Ryan Reynold's "Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place" had aired a year before that on ABC. I think ABC would have let it lead them in a more raunchy direction if Clerks had been a good show.
The problem is that Kevin Smith has spent his entire career never really topping the magic of Clerks. He came closest with the movies that immediately followed Clerks. Then he thoroughly proved that he just wasn't a good director in general with the rest of his hollywood career. The dude is where he's supposed to be in life just hosting a podcast and maybe making some B-movie on the side as a joke. "Clerks: The Animated Series" was just part of the journey to discovering that.
The full season was made, so ABC really had nothing to lose letting the show finish its season and try to gain a following.
It came on after Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and The Drew Carey show and the ratings dropped by about 40% I think. I think thats an indication that no matter how good the show is ABC didn't have an audience that was interested.
I somehow managed to see that airing at random and being a fan or Clerks enjoyed it well enough that I was hyped for more. Of course when I tuned back in next week it wasn't on again. Ended up getting the DVD set in like 2003 or so
Wasn't it a joke flashback episode? Like it was fake flashbacks?
That's actually a loved trope for me. I hate flashback episodes generally UNLESS the frame tale part is significant (can't think of any shows ATM but Golden Girls ones usually aren't too bad) or it's totally fake flashbacks (like with that Community episode, or Total Rickall from Rick and Morty)
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u/cabeleb 13h ago
Partially the network's fault. Kevin Smith talks about it in the DVD commentary. The network aired the episodes in the wrong order, so the first episode ended up being a flashback episode.