Watch 'Big Day' Please!

This is a personal plea to support the show "Big Day." I should rephrase. I'm not asking you to support a show you haven't seen. I'm asking you to just spend a half hour and watch the first episode of "Big Day." If you don't like it, stop watching. But if you're like me, you'll be back for episode two.

Here's the problem with television, as so eloquently put by ESPN's The Sports Guy:

"TV networks spend so many time/money/energy pushing their new shows, lack the patience to stick with those same shows once they're on ... and then they wonder why we aren't watching as much TV anymore. I mean, why would I start watching a serial show like 'Kidnapped' or 'The Nine' when I know there's a 90 percent chance it's going to be gone within four weeks, or even within a year? Would you buy a book in the store if you could only read one chapter a week and knew there was a chance the last 20 chapters would disintegrate within six weeks if there weren't enough people that bought the book? These stupid TV networks blame DVDs, video games, Internet, iPod downloads and everything else for declining ratings, but the real reason more people aren't watching them is because nobody trusts free networks to keep their shows on the air."

I don't know why I hadn't thought of that before, but it is so true. To be fair to my subconscious, he knew. Yes, he knew, because I started watching "The Nine" and enjoyed it, but then there were rumours it was getting canned, plus it started to become very very bad, so I stopped watching, anticipating its cancellation, anticipating me getting upset, avoiding that feeling.

Last season (look what tv has done to us, it's not "last year," it's "last season"), I watched a show called "Love Monkey" and, well, loved it. People said it was like "Sex and the City" but for guys. I'll take their word for it as I cannot compare a show I loved to a show I didn't watch. They cancelled it after three episodes. The same can be said about a half dozen other shows I enjoyed over the past few years (years!).

So this brings me back to "Big Day." It's a show about a wedding between Marla Sokoloff and Josh Cook (who was in "Committed," which was cancelled prematurely and "Four Kings" which wasn't cancelled quick enough). The whole season apparently is one day. It's shot in real time. So the first episode, which premiered on Tuesday, was the first half hour of the wedding day. It's like "24," in that it's in real time, one day for the whole season. It's like "Arrested Development," in that it's intelligent humour without a laugh track. And it's like "Full House," because Marla Sokoloff is in it.

I hadn't seen a commercial for it so without doing any research, I'm assuming ABC is going to screw up with this show. The numbers are in and they are not good. 7.6 million people watched along with me, which is 10 million people fewer than "House" received. But nobody knows about this show. It debuted after "A Charlie Brown Christmas." How are people supposed to know ABC is going to launch a new, hilarious sitcom when Charlie Brown precedes it? Nobody's coming back to ABC at 9:00 when they see an old cartoon on. And without ads - which again, I'm assuming there were none since I didn't see any – nobody will know anything about the show!

So go to abc.com and watch the show, or download it, or just find a copy and watch it and tune in again on Tuesday. I've had enough shows get cancelled on me and I can't keep investing myself emotionally into programs, only to have them taken away from me after three weeks. (This can't be good for future relationships.) I thank God every day that I didn't watch the first episode of Heather Graham's "Emily's Reasons Why Not" last season, a show that was cancelled after one single episode.

"Big Day" is not the best show on television and it's not the funniest, but it is a simple, funny, solid show, and television is missing those. There are fewer than a handful of funny sitcoms on the air now, so I just don't want to see one that I actually enjoy get cancelled.

Thanks for listening and please watch the show.

P.S. Also watch "Traveler" when it debuts sometime soon. I have seen the first episode and believe me, best new show on television, when it finally surfaces.