TV: A tale of two Cupids

Starring: Jeremy Piven, Paula Marshall, Jeffery D. Sams
Category: Romance, Drama

What do you do if you were a TV network and you just cancelled a good show for poor ratings. Not just a good show. Those get cancelled all the time. But a show voted one of the top 10 shows that was cancelled before its time. Deny its existence? Bury it with a remake so bad that it was shown about the same time as another bad reality show with the same name?

What a fate for Cupid, a smart, beautifully-shot series with a slightly unconventional but challenging premise. It starred Jeremy Piven as Trevor, a recent resident of a mental asylum who thinks he is Cupid and Paula Marshall, as Dr. Claire Allen, the shrink assigned to monitor him. Trevor claims to be the banished Cupid, who can only return to Mt Olympus after he unites 100 couples. Dr. Claire Allen is a popular author who is looking for her next best-seller and runs a relationship-therapy session. Trevor thinks this is fertile grounds for him to find candidates for his quest. Most weeks there are basically two intertwining stories, Trevor working on uniting a couple, whether they want to or not and Claire and Trevor's relationship as a bickering patient-therapist to close friends to possibly something more. It sounds corny and with finding love a weekly theme, it always threatens to be so. But the series is filled with witty banter and intelligent dialogue. And you get to catch a pre-Entourage Piven doing what he does best.

The series had a lot going against it. First, it was up against Friends when they were at their best. They were also vying for the same group of audience which made it even harder. Second, it was an expensive series to produce because a lot of it was beautifully shot on location rather than on set (try to think of how little Friends was shot outside. Even street scenes were in a studio or a backlot). The cast was also larger than most. There were a few recurring guest characters but the story lines usually center around guest stars.

Third, the episodes were always part of some story arc. That means that it has to be shown in a certain sequence or else it would get confusing. Very few episodes stood alone. That is bad for syndication, which limits it resale value to other networks. Fourth, it's main strength was it's storyline and dialog which was both unconventional. This seems to be a favorite theme of TV execs who are looking to kill shows. A series has to fit into a certain mold or else they think their viewers won't understand. That is the only reason to them why a show has bad ratings (it also is blameless. Don't want to upset the other TV exec who decided to put this up against Friends). This was a time just before the period when reality shows dominated and marked the fall of scripted TV shows.
Cupid got cancelled after about 13 episodes. What happened next was really a testament of how much respect the TV execs had to their viewers at that time. Again, this was the time before TV series box sets were the norm. American viewers didn't get to see the final episode. That unaired episode didn't even got shown on a rerun on Bravo. But it was shown in overseas markets.
After that it disappeared. It did have a strong, small following and the forums for the show would always be active after it run in some country overseas with the posts following the same theme, "Why are there no more episodes?",  "Why was it cancelled?" and "It is very popular here, how could they have cancelled such a great show". I can't find it on any TV listings anywhere. There was no DVD release ever (not even one to pair up with the remake). The show's creator Rob Thomas admitting to getting a copy off eBay or something of VHS copies compiled by fans. There is probably a fan-made DVD by now. So the best place to get a taste of this lost TV gem is of course on You Tube.

There was remake of the TV series. It probably began as penance for cancelling the TV series. Rob Thomas was getting successful and the TV networks figured that he could re-create the magic for a second time. But then reality probably took over and the standard TV conventions set in. By then, Jeremy was doing good on Entourage so he was out of the question. But Paula Marshall did not do so well on other shows following Cupid and was probably available to reprise her role. By now the series has moved it's location from Chicago to Los Angeles to New York. And most likely somewhere along the line there was note from some TV exec that the lead should be blonde (it happened to X-Files when it started but that show's creators fought back. Imagine a blonde, ample chested Scully). To keep things short, it was a mess and the leads showed no chemistry up to the third episode.
Cupid was a series cancelled far too early. To try to take away the same audience from Friends was foolish. Sure, Cupid was smarter and looked better but Friends was an established show with loyal fans. It was part of the whole NBC Must-See TV Thursday series juggernaut. Counter-programming would have been better. As far as I know, Cupid was not even moved to another time-slot to see whether it could pick up more viewers. In fact, it was regularly pre-empted which frustrated who ever tried watching it.
Ultimately, Cupid was an opportunity lost. The show's creator Rob Thomas, went on to create Veronica Mars, another unconventional series with a smart dialogue. Paula Marshall eventually got Gary Unmarried where her chemistry with Jay Mohr was a worth rival to her and Jeremy's.
Cupid is an example how much TV is business and how little of it is art. Cupid was simply art that did not give back enough business.