jPOD

I'm a little surprised that it's taken me this long to blog exclusively about jPOD. I really thought that I would have run out of Cancon much faster and watched it all much sooner. I've been watching it off and on recently and am only reminded of how much I love it.

Part of the reason I haven't blogged about it is because it does make my heart weep when I talk about it. It truly is one of my favourite shows based on a book by my favourite author. But what makes jPOD so important in this context is that it is pretty much the reason I got interested in Canadian television at all. Or seriously at least. Yes I had watched Canadian Idol because it was my patriotic duty but it was never something to base my life on.

But then there was jPOD. A show that I really loved and got treated like shit. First of all, it got bumped from it's Tuesday night slot to Friday night which was pretty much the beginning of the end. The audience for this show was a much younger target than CBC traditionally goes for. Which is why is makes even less sense to put it on Friday nights when they are presumbly all out having a life. Which is why they cancelled it. Next, they aired episode 12 before episode 11. This was a pretty big deal since a main character dies at the end of episode 11. It just seemed disrespectful since they had already decided not to order a second season but to make a mistake like that just made it feel like the whole show had been written off as nothing. Lastly, for those of us who are fans of the show, we went out and bought the DVDs (or got them for Christmas) only to find out that there was a problem with one of the discs and episode 8 stopped halfway through. I really couldn't believe it.

I was very upset with how jPOD was handled pretty much from beginning to end. Frankly, it's embarassing. This is what led me to wanting to take over the CBC, to make sure nothing like this ever happened again. And it ignited my desire to see good Canadian productions and for them to get the respect they deserve. jPOD deserved much more than what it was given.

And who knows? If things had gone differently with jPOD, I might not have been here write now typing this. Chances are, I would be working on a spec script for the next season!