If you were hoping to find out what’s going to happen next on Fox’s new series Lone Star, there’s bad news. Lone Star is the first series to get the boot as Fox has pulled it from their primetime line-up after just two episodes.
Lone Star starred Jon Voight and James Wolk and followed a con artist in Texas who, in addition to scamming people out of their money, was also living a double-life and in love with two women.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the series took in 4.1 million viewers for its premiere. On cable, that might be a good showing but for network TV, that’s definitely a fail. Only 3.2 million viewers tuned in this week to see Episode 2 and apparently, that wasn’t enough to convince Fox to keep the show around.
The Reporter states that Lone Star got a lot of positive reviews. I tried watching the season premiere twice and couldn’t bring myself to pay attention long enough to make it through the episode either time. The cast seemed talented enough and certainly pretty enough, but the story was a bit too soap-opera-esque for me and there was nothing particularly edgy about the series.
Ok, sure, it centered on a guy who was lying to people and trying to steal their money but the whole thing with him being genuinely in love with both women (that he’s lying to and cheating on), added to the implication that he was sort of dragged into the con-artist life watered down anything that might have been interesting about him. Perhaps if Bob Allen had a bit more semi-ruthless-bad-guy in him (whose softer side isn’t exposed until at least the second half of the first season) and less of the victim-of-his-own-crimes syndrome, there might’ve been more reason to care about what was going to happen next. Even if you disagree with me or thought the show had potential to get really good, Fox isn’t one to beat around the bush with their TV shows. The plug’s been pulled on this one.
On a related note, if you’re a fan of Lie to Me, Fox announced that the series will premiere its third season on Monday, October 4 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT), filling in the hole left by Lone Star.
