On the Double Life and Television Entertainment

I'm several months late on this post and I'm not quite sure why it occurred to me now (maybe the Golden Globe Awards stirred it up?), but I'd like to discuss the (extremely) short lived FOX television drama Lone Star. I was one of only 4.1 million people to watch the first episode of this program, which involved a con man in Texas who leads two separate lives and is partnered with two separate women, but starts turning his life around when he gets hired by Jon Voigt (at least I remember it to be him) and can start making money legally. But there is still the issue of his two women...

I'm fairly certain that the main problem with the program was that all of the things mentioned above happened in the very first episode. The character development was so rapid as to seem unimportant ("I'm not going to con people anymore, Dad!") and the protagonist's supposedly well-built life/lives of lies was already beginning to crumble by the end of the first episode. Despite my obvious love for con men and double lives, I didn't bother to watch the second episode, and neither did most of the rest of the country, apparently. FOX canned it after only two episodes (supposedly that may be some kind of record) and put another show about fakers, Lie to Me, into its Monday-after-House spot. I'm slightly surprised because like me, the American public seems increasingly interested in manipulation of truth and con men, but I'd prefer an episode of Lie to Me any day.