NileQT87, that was great analysis. I have nothing more to add.

*pulls out Angel DVDs to watch JP and Kay*

so did you enjoy the j.p. and kay cameos?

both are pretty significant and memorable. mesektet (the creepy little girl in the white room) is actually a very important part of wolfram & hart--"evil right down to her mary janes". and j.p. had a very memorable role as the paranoia-stricken bellhop in an episode that is considered one of angel's best--most of the episode is a flashback to the '50s. that scene of j.p. manoux walking down the hyperion's hallway fearfully approaching angel's room is a classic scene.

j.p. actually managed to creep me out slightly when he is laughing while the residents of the hyperion hang angel in the lobby.

and of course--you can see a very young kay in those two little scenes of hers. she really showed she actually had a lot of maturity in her from a young age.

i remember being impressed by those two as actors looong before i ever realized they were mostly disney channel stars (a.k.a. when i started watching phil).

i heard something about the reason season 2 went in the new direction (pheely) may have had something to do with a guy from friends came over to the show. i wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the reason for the change in direction.

though a similar thing happened to family ties, where when the show first started, the idea was to focus on the parents, and of course the kids, mainly alex p. keaton a.k.a. michael j. fox stole the show, and it became about them growing up.

happy days had the same thing happen. it was originally about ritchie cunningham (ron howard) and his friends potsy and ralph, but it quickly turned into the fonz show.

i think in potf's case it was both the best and worst thing that happened to the show...best for the character growth in a natural way to progress, best for the actors to get to play more emotions (heavy on the jealousy like in virtu-date and awkwardness of being a boy that is a friend of a girl like in raging bull for the character of phil, and finally even adolescent feelings in back to the future), and also the worst in that it stopped being what disney wanted... disney has shown again and again that they want surfacy emotions--or better yet, just comical gags that are only funny to the youngest of their viewers--and episodes that can be shown in any order with no character growth at all in the entire series.

there was so much more that could have been done. had they handled it in a way like family ties, for example, you'd have a series that felt real in the way that kids could relate to the characters growing up and dealing with the things they actually face. and for ONCE i would like to see somebody on the disney channel cry about something in a way that isn't for comic relief. though phil in a few tiny moments managed to sneak in a few sophisticated ideas, not many, but a few.

They had good parts.

As for Phil, we know that there were plans for a third season before it was canceled which would most likely continue the character development arc of season two.

I mean is there any recent update? I want to do a lot more to help but it's so hard not to feel beaten up and not lose hope for it to be saved. It's like we will still eb trying in 2009 and Raviv and Aly will allready be like 4 years older then the last time they filmed a episode. I mean i just dont understand why disney wont put out a official release. they are probly afraid of the backlash of people who will be mad. It's like Yeah, It's 2011 and were still playing re-runs 4 hours a day from episodes that aired 7 years ago.

None.

I just hard to keep hope. I mean when it's 2009 will I still be Trying? It's just too hard. I wish i could do something more than i do. It's just so wrong on disney keeps eating off us. I mean they play potf like 6 times at the fewest a day. How long will they keep showing. Ill look at the tv guide in 2015 and Future Tutor will be sceduled to be on and it was made in 2004.

Yeah all hope is at the point of disappearing...

and for me to say that...

is a really big deal.

hey, at least phil started in 2004. my other favorite show that i dream of being saved ENDED in 2004.

i mean, season 1 of buffy was made when the spice girls were popular. it is to the point where the clothes look really outdated, whereas the last several seasons look pretty current.

when a show ends in 2006 and it is only a year later, there is a slightly bigger chance than the fat chance you get when your show ended 3 years ago.

no, better yet... when you are a fan of oldies music and anybody who isn't dead yet is dying off like hot cakes (james brown being the latest). i'm surprised fats domino, jerry lee lewis and b.b. king are still around.

it's a sad fact of fandom. whatever you are a fan of, tends to die or end at some point.

when it is really sad, however, is when there was missed and unfinished potential. sometimes things outlive their welcome--like the last few seasons of happy days that were pretty dire. and sometimes things end before they really got started (phil), or things end before a story has been completed (angel). of course, like joss whedon's up-yours to the studios--leaving the fans with a cliffhanger makes them fight harder.

one thing that the last episode of phil did (and quite a bit of the second season) was acknowledge the older fanbase who tuned in to see where the relationship between phil and keely would go. if that hadn't been the last episode, if the show had been renewed, phil and keely probably wouldn't have kissed. one of televisions longest running formulas is to let character relationships simmer and don't let the characters get together until the end. it is a bit like i dream of jeannie--once the characters hooked up, the show was gone. the only way to put characters together earlier in a show's run is to have them split apart by something--usually tragic--which is the route joss always chose in epic style.

phil and keely is what the fanbase of the show wanted, but it also probably doomed the show both in the long-standing show formulaic rules and the disney channel's intended audience.

phil's biggest problem is that the majority of its intended viewership isn't the type that launches save my show campaigns and rallies on the internet. disney only cares about its child viewership almost in a babysitting-by-television capacity, rather than caring about characters, character arcs, story arcs, etc... which is quite obvious when you realize that disney wants everything but what a fan would want. episodes that are self-contained and mean nothing from one episode to the next, and characters who remain stagnant and unchanging.

and let's not forget that any continuation of the pheely relationship might have pushed beyond the g-rating into a pg-rating. frankly, if one wants to get the show back, trying to get it brought back to abc family would be a better place for it. pushing it to a pg-rating would let the show out of making the characters being so stagnant. the only thing that let the show remain disney-safe through season 2 was it dealt only with hints of maturing themes. you bring the show back, and you have to face the inevitable change that would have to occur in the show because of the last episode.

that last episode was written to be as far as the show would be allowed to go.

just because phil and keely would have been a couple does not mean it automatically jumps to PG. Kissing is G rated. I mean heck they can look at season 4 of kim possible at how to do a season with the main charecters together. I dont agree with that because i could be perfectly happy with a g rating as long as phil and keely never broke up and ended the series together. I dont agree with you're last point because season 2 ends in a cliffhanger. If it had a closure ending then i could see you're point.

actually a lot of shows are ended when characters get together. this same discussion comes up when planning shows like bones which started out handling their main couple like the x-files, but everybody was scared it would take 9 seasons for the couple to get together.

it really is a studio rule for television couples. a lot of shows have been ended as soon as the major couple gets together. i dream of jeannie is one that i already mentioned. the only ones exempt from this rule are shows that run on epic tragedies or married tv parents.

kissing is g-rated... but i almost get the feeling that the people running the disney channel don't know that. still, you can't do half the things on phil that one could do with the very family friendly show family ties. there are a lot of things on family ties that would never get shown on the disney channel. and frankly, phil taking on a few elements of family ties would be beneficial for the longevity of the show.

one of the things that was getting old fast was a 20 (i guess 19 then) year old actor who is playing a 16 year old, taking baby talk about keely's music box or a blanky. i'm not blind to knowing the show needed to grow up...

ok, i'll give you a point about the wonder years being a good example (fred savage included) of a young tv couple who as far as i remember, stayed pretty intact. in fact, i think fred savage's first kiss was in the first episode of the show. most of that show revolved around two children who were boyfriend/girlfriend. however, because of the ages of the characters in phil--it needed to probably up the maturity to maybe a little under family ties level.

and a lot of shows have ended on cliffhangers--or at least the evil ones that are canceled abruptly, and the writers put in a cliffhanger just to annoy the studios and rile up the fanbase. but you'd be surprised how many shows aren't ended with closure. a lot don't have closure because of cancellation.

but, let's face it--the show was nearly centered around when keely and phil would hook up--it was the biggest subplot. then it happened. now what? again i return to the old studio tv formulas. and believe me when i say that i want to see those formulas die--simply because they are formulas. but you can't escape the fact that once a couple is together, they get boring unless something happens to them--a lot of movie sequels and such have also failed from this, and i hate to say it but han and leia is a great example--AND I LOVE THEM. as soon as they are on endor surrounded by ewoks, they become wooden and boring--whereas they were stealing the show all through empire strikes back, and actually even in jabba's palace--but return of the jedi did need the focus back on luke, vader and palpatine.

and frankly, i've read enough fanfiction of many, many fandoms to know that fan-wanted happy endings are always painful to read because of how sappy they usually are. even worse is when characters are happy together through the entire fanfiction. it simply doesn't work in a storytelling context. in fact, i find it laborious to get through a happy couple fluff piece. angst and cat and mouse finally getting together are the only ones that frankly work.

fluffy fanfiction is the worst kind. and you don't want a show that feels like it. which is why fans don't write shows. as joss puts it--"don't give them what they want, give them what they need." and of course the old adage of always leave them wanting more.