Kudos, brickbats for Fox

Some people want me to jump all over Fox for its (apparent) cancellation of "Arrested Development."

I'm not going to do it.

Not that I don't enjoy jumping all over Fox. And, generally, the network makes that easy for TV critics.

But, in the case of "Arrested Development," even the show's most ardent fans (including me) ought to be sending the network thank-you notes for keeping the show on the air as long as it has. Fox tried everything it could think of — including using "American Idol" as a lead-in — to make the show a hit, but the public just wasn't interested.

However, Fox deserves to get its brains beaten in by loyal viewers of "Reunion," which the network has canceled after 13 episodes. This is the sort of move that infuriates viewers and makes TV skeptics of us all.

Not that "Reunion" is better than "Arrested Development," but it's a different kind of show — a murder mystery that follows a group of friends over 20 years. One of them was murdered in 2005; we flash back to successive years beginning in 1986; the plan was that at the end of 22 episodes, we'd find out whodunit and why.

Well, we're only going to get 13 episodes. In Episode 5, at least we found out who the victim was — Samantha (Alexa Davalos). But, according to the show's creator/executive producer, Jon Harmon Feldman, we're not going to find out whodunit in Episode 13.

"The show was intricately plotted over 22 episodes to tell the full story of our characters' lives," Feldman said in a prepared statement. "Because the events of Samantha's murder are partially reliant on characters we haven't met yet — and events we haven't yet seen — there is no way to solve the mystery of her murder without being able to complete the full arc of our story through present day."

Gee, let's compare that to what Feldman told a roomful of skeptical TV critics last summer: "If I get a call that says, 'You're only doing 13 (episodes),' will I tie (the story) up? Absolutely."

I'm not naive. I know that network television depends on ratings and advertiser dollars. And "Reunion" wasn't doing well in the ratings.

But if you're not going to commit to playing out a story like this from beginning to end, don't buy the show at all. And maybe part of the reason "Reunion" didn't do better in the ratings is that viewers, having been burned like this before, were less inclined to commit to something Fox hadn't fully committed to.

More than 4 million viewers who tuned in to "Reunion" every week will be left hanging, and Fox deserves every iota of their ire.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com