A Few Thoughts On: ABC's Galavant

So, that was only the end of the first season?

I mean, really, ABC? You're really banking on your musical comedy series Galavant to rate well enough to get a second season? Seems to me like you, as a network, are about to be reminded that not only is it possible for your balls to be too big, but that it usually ends badly when they are.

Don't get me wrong, of course. I like what I've seen of Galavant so far. Or perhaps I should say I like the idea of what Galavant is supposed to be. For a fairly substantial portion of my life, I've been a fan of various comedic things like “Weird Al” Yankovic's music, television's Mystery Science Theater 3000 and a variety of its fan-fiction and Internet-based variants (like something known as “capping”, most easily explained by demonstration and example in places like GlitterRock's Cap-Page Board and the related archives), and other such things.

So, when I heard about this Galavant show that ABC was going run, and that it was going to be a musical comedy, I agreed whole-heartedly when my folks offered to DVR it so the three of us could watch it together.

With all that having been said, I should get into what Galavant is all about, beyond just that it's a musical comedy. The story itself is about the eponymous Sir Galavant, a knight who's been in a depression for at least a year on account of the fact that King Richard, a rather sissy fellow, came along and kidnapped his girlfriend to make her his queen. In the course of that year, King Richard had invaded a neighboring kingdom in hopes of impressing his new queen, Madalena. In response, the princess of the other kingdom, Isabella, went to find Galavant in hopes that he could free her family and her kingdom, only to find him an unlikely hero through and through.

But, they find a squire for Galavant and venture out anyway, as it's the only chance Isabella and her people have to regain control of their homeland and crown jewel. Along the way, this band of heroes had their adventures and did a few musical numbers, which were often mirrored by musical numbers by King Richard and crew.

Now, as I watched the first three and a half hours of this show, I was thinking that by the end of the last half hour, they'd somehow have the story wrapped up nicely, with Galavant and Isabella sharing rule over both Isabella's land and Richard's. Sadly, though...

That's... not what happened, and it's really to the show's detriment, and ABC's as well, really. It's like I said towards the top of this article. I like what I've seen so far, for a lot of the things that my fellow blogger and capper The Diva said in a post she made about it on her Musical Hell blog a couple weeks ago. In spite of that, though, I don't think it was good enough for ABC to tease a second season of. If they had ended the story at the end of the second episode last night, I would have been very happy to be pleasantly surprised with a second season or a sequel to this show, where we get to see Galavant and crew do their screwball little song and dance routines through another series of misadventures, possibly involving King Richard.

As it is, though, we've been told that we need to wait for season two to see the end of this story, and I'm afraid Galavant wasn't quite good enough to earn that kind of ratings. I really hope I'm wrong, because I like the idea of a musical comedy show on broadcast TV, and I think Galavant did a fair enough job of it. Plus, I'd kinda like to see the end of the story.

It's really going to suck for Galavant, and Galavant, if the show gets canceled now, because it's going to be another entry on the list of shows I've enjoyed that ended both on a cliffhanger and without fulfilling their premise. And for ABC, well, it's going to be a “double whammy” they could have avoided simply by not banking on this show doing well enough to have more than one season.

But at least Galavant will be in good company, because if memory serves, the Saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon was an ABC program, originally, which also ended on a cliffhanger before it could reach the end of its story line.