Defying Gravity can’t defy the ratings. As posted a few days ago, a second season just isn’t likely at all for the series, which has run on Sunday nights since the beginning of August, taking the slot after Shark Tank on ABC. Viewer turnout for the series has been dismal, and it looks like the show just doesn’t have much of a slot for a second season, at least outside of its native Canada (and even there, chances don’t look bright).
Why is this? It beats me. Defying Gravity is the best new show of the summer. Starring Ron Livingston (Office Space), this series chronicles the lives of eight astronauts on a six-year journey around the solar system, as well as their friends back at home. Present-time scenes are interspersed with flashbacks from five years prior that of course have links to the developing storyline.
Defying Gravity is one of the better summer shows I’ve ever seen, and definitely takes the cake this year. It’s the best one “you might be missing” according to GateWorld, and they’re certainly right, because everyone’s missing it. It deserves a second season more than anything else on television — I’d daresay it’s more deserving than a lot of what pay-cable HBO has to offer. I’d even rather see a second season of it than Hung, to be honest. Why is it so good? Here are a few reasons why you should tune in and do your part to save Defying Gravity.
NEXT: #1
#1: The Cast
Defying Gravity has an absolutely outstanding cast; there’s no denying that. Led by Ron Livingston (who is still most memorable as the protagonist of the Mike Judge comedy Office Space) as Maddux Donner, it’s a cast almost as diverse as Lost. Eyal Podell, formerly of The Young and the Restless, is my favorite member of the cast, however. Not only is he a wonderful actor, but it’s also great to remember him as the coffee shop barista in Lost‘s season two finale.
Steve Wassenfalder, played by Dylan Taylor, brings connections to Lost‘s Hurley, though he’s quite a bit more immature. He surprisingly has wonderful chemistry with Paula Morales (Paula Garces), which is perhaps the most fun dynamic of the show to watch.
Laura Harris (24) plays Donner’s former flame Zoe Barnes, who feels as though she’s in a competition with Donner’s friend-with-benefits Nadia Schilling, a German astronaut played by Florentine Lahme.
Christina Cox and Malik Yoba play Jen Crane and Ted Shaw, former lovers who would later marry Rollie Crane (Ty Olsson) and Eve Shaw (Karen Lablanc), respectively, who would later work on the on-ground CapComm. Also on the ground is Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo), a spiritual and thoughtful man who was on the crew before being removed for heart problems. The entire crew is supervised by Mike Goss (Andrew Airlie), a hardened commander who shares a dark past with Donner and Ted.
NEXT: #2
#2: It’s a beautiful show
If you’ve seen Defying Gravity, then you’ll admit that it’s a beautiful show to watch. The great, sweeping pans over the Antares don’t feel like CGI at all, and feel like what grainy NASA footage should look like. The landscape of space is indeed a barren one, but it’s turned into a vibrant background at least once every episode.
Sure, it’s not a huge part of the show, but the amount of work put into it (the sun gleaming off individual panels on the Antares’ surface, for instance) certainly shows. There are times when you don’t know if you’re watching an ABC drama or the Discovery Channel.
NEXT: #3
#3: It’s not a genre show
I can’t say that I expected much going into Defying Gravity. Sure, it looked like an okay show, but there wasn’t anything that really drew me in. It was being marketed purely as a Grey’s Anatomy in space, which I sooned learned was off by a long shot.
Sure, there are elements of romance and drama throughout the show. In the flashbacks, the characters struggle with complex romantic relationships, worry about their self-image, and contemplate deep moral decisions that will come to affect them for the rest of their life — especially their life on the Antares.
But there’s something else about Defying Gravity that’s kept me coming back for more. There’s a deep element of mystery to it that you can’t find on Grey’s Anatomy. There’s a Lost-ian feel that it’s no coincidence that the eight crew members are on the ship, even though two are last-minute replacements.
There are also the hallucinations. Like Jack saw Christian in the jungle on Lost, something is tantalizing the crew with hallucinations. Donner sees the astronauts he was forced to leave behind on Mars, Paula is shown visions of her dead dog, Evram sees visions of his time in the war, and Zoey continually hears a crying baby on the ship. Zoey and Donner even have corresponding dreams of a strange event that ends disasterously. Though they’ve been convinced that the hallucinations are just the result of faulty medical patches, their commanders on the ground know that this isn’t the case.
And entity known as Beta is on board the ship with the crew members, hidden away in a storage pod. Beta apparently chose the crew, and is manipulating them at will, showing them hallucinations and visions. What is Beta, and what does it want? We don’t know. Our characters haven’t actually seen Beta, only the visions it presents to them, and only one of them even knows that it exists, and is hiding away in Pod #4 on the ship, manipulating the crew the ship for its own purposes…whatever those are.
NEXT: A call to action
Defying Gravity is in danger. The ratings are steady but bad. It’s found a group of devoted fans, but not many other people even know it exists. It’s honestly surprising that Defying Gravity has managed to retain the same timeslot for so long. Even tis native Canada has pushed it to the dreaded Friday dumping ground on CTV.
All thirteen episodes of the first season have already been filmed, which is both a good and bad thing. The upside is that we’ll at least get to see all thirteen episodes in a future DVD release. The downside, however, is that this offers no resolution for the series if it is cancelled. It will likely end on a cliffhanger, and we’ll never get to see what happens afterward if the show is canned. And that’s why we need to save Defying Gravity.
If you’ve already seen the show and are one of the two million fans who tune in every Sunday night, then spread the word about the show. Get your friends to tune in at home.
If you haven’t already seen the show, all the episodes to date are on iTunes ($2.99 for HD, $1.99 for SD), and episodes 3 – 7 are available for free streaming on Hulu.com and ABC.com. If there’s a chance at all that Defying Gravity can be saved, let’s do it. Let us not forget the tragedy that was Kings, a prime piece of television that ended after just thirteen episodes, and let us not let history repeat itself with Defying Gravity, another piece of wonderful television.
Follow Us
