Written by Musgo Del Jefe
I've always kept the FX Network at arms-length. It seems that every time I committed to them, they went and changed their hairstyle, clothing, and accent so that I could barely recognize them. I first fell in love with the upstart fX (attracted by their clever smaller-case "f"), which promised me "TV Made Fresh Daily" through the mid-‘90s with their live shows centered around an apartment somewhere in New York City. I spent mornings with their unique news show that “Robin & Co.” is still copying today. Towards the end of the ‘90s, they changed their name to FX, cancelled all the quirky live shows that had attracted me in the first place, and quickly became a dumping ground for recent and then current Fox shows.
I adapted and found it sweet that they were the only channel airing M*A*S*H and X-Files repeats. When Major League Baseball playoff games overlapped, FX was there to help out. This move, later copied by MTV/Viacom when they turned The Nashville Network to The National Network and then to Spike, proved initially popular with young men. But as that initial attraction was dying, FX hit on the ideal mix when they took a chance on a graphic original program, The Shield in 2002. I found this little number by accident and fell in love with the network all over again. I was addicted and would forgive them hours of Married With Children repeats for an hour of this brilliance.
FX followed this lightning in a bottle with two other successes in 2003, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me. Neither made my Tivo, but I respect the quality of these offerings. In June of 2005, they ventured into the world of documentary series (a leap considering the formula for their previous successes in original programming) with the brilliant 30 Days from Morgan Spurlock.
In August of 2005, they would take another leap and try original comedy, calling their two shows "The Dark Side Of Comedy." Both Starved and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia debuted on August 4, 2005. My Tivo was so full that I felt I could only add one of the two. I bet on red (Starved) and the wheel came up black (Philadelphia). Starved wasn't "The Dark Side;" it was just plain offensive, three men and a woman with eating disorders, and even worse, it wasn't funny. The other show was "Dark," and it also starred three men and a woman, but it had the advantage of being funny. Philadelphia played out for seven episodes that fall of 2005, and was renewed for ten episodes in the summer of 2006. As the third season gets underway, the first two seasons have been released on a three-disc set.
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