Tom Swift Wasn't A Good Series. That's Not Why It Was Cancelled

 

Having watched the CW’s update of Tom Swift, I have to acknowledge that it wasn’t a very good show. It had some ambitious ideas, I do grant you – most of it based on turning the title character a gay, African-American young man – but ultimately it just didn’t work. The title character was too self-absorbed to ever be likable, most of the characters around him were never fully drawn outside of their relationship to Tom, the messaging became increasingly heavy-handed the longer the series went on, and in the final analysis, a broadcast cable network may not have been the ideal home to deal with some of the issues – or sexuality – that the idea deserved.

So I do understand why the CW chose to cancel the series. That’s not my problem. My issue is that, in many ways, this series came pre-cancelled.  The average rating for an episode, according to imdb.com, was around 6 to 6.5, which means it was viewed as being barely above average. But before the series even aired an episode, it had been ranked as 2.6.  People didn’t even have to watch it to know that it was terrible.

In a way, this continues a very disturbing trend that has plagued so many of the CW series since Greg Berlanti and his crew began making it a home for updates of the DC universe. Fans were fine with the updates of franchises that were secondary, such as The Green Arrow and Flash but the problems began, well, pretty soon after Iris West was cast as African-American. Candace Patton, who played the character on The Flash for eight years, has since got public about the immense hostility she has faced from the internet as well as in real life because the show’s writers had cast her. Patton revealed she would have left the series years ago and has gotten little protection from the network for that feedback.

Similarly, fans have expressed outrage over Jimmy Olsen being played by Meshed Brooks in Supergirl and utterly tormented Ruby Rose for playing Batwoman as a lesbian to the point that she had to leave the series after the first season. (There may have very well been behind the scenes conflict behind the latter decision.) Nor did this kind of outrage limited to comic book based series; similar hostility was cast about Nancy Drew for a portrayal of the title character as a cynical, promiscuous teen – and there was similar anger when Tom Swift was introduced on this series in the manner he was.

All of the hostility towards many of the above characters is not implausible to fathom given the general attitude of so much of the internet misogyny and racism; the same people who find endless problems with Moses Ingram in Obi-Wan and will also use it to blame their problems with the new Miss Marvel. I’m frankly tired of this mindless trolling, but at a certain level I’m not shocked by it - fanboys simultaneously want new versions of their favorite series but only in the setting, not in the characters. But the hatred for Tom Swift before it aired an episode just goes to show how far the bigotry online goes to these kinds of series.  I’m willing to bet that well before he debuted on Nancy Drew – a series, I’ll remind you, most of these same fans dismissed out hand without seeing – the Internet had no idea who Tom Swift was. He was a character in a series of books that went out of print before the Internet was even a thing, who probably have no idea what Tom Swift’s legacy to phraseology and weaponry were.  But that didn’t make a lick of difference. Tom Swift is black and gay – pandering and defamation. Should be hated, doesn’t deserve to even be watched.

This is the fundamental problem with pop culture fans today. People will complain about the lack of originality, but their ideas of originality start and end with variations on John Wick and Taken. They will argue for original characters, but those characters are always white males. Doctor Who can transfigure 12 times, but somehow he must always be a white man. He can travel through time, but he can’t talk with anything that involves real history – or you know, historical figures who aren’t themselves white men. Ghostbusters 2016 was a disgrace, nothing like what Ghostbusters: Afterlife was. In other words, if your character is black, Latino, LGBTQ+ or really anything that isn’t a straight, white male, you do not get to play the lead in any major series, movie or comic book. Any attempt to do so is ‘pandering’. And if you try to argue that these groups are entitled to their own heroes and stories, they will be dismissed by saying roughly the equivalent: “Keep them out of our franchises.”

They won’t go so far to say that stories focused on them are ‘separate but equal’ because they’re not in their eyes. Even before the term ‘woke’ became subject of abuse, the fanboys had no use for shows that didn’t feature white males at the center. This is something that has been reflected throughout Peak TV as well with millions idolizing the horrible deeds of Tony Soprano and Walter White and turning Carmela and Skyler into harridans because they want to protect their children or even themselves from these horrible men. I’ve never liked Shonda Rhimes and I will never find anything worthwhile in Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder but I do understand why those series were popular among a certain kind of fan base – they were a tonic to everybody who was sick of so many series with White Male Antiheroes.

 The irony that one of the great series about an all-powerful group of women, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was essentially created and staffed by what appears to be the definition of the toxic male showrunner doesn’t escape me either. In truth, we probably should have clued in earlier when you consider that most of the regulars who were killed off on the series were female while the males survived, there were almost no minority characters of note in the entire seven year run – and most of them got killed – and while it was loved by a generation of LGBTQ+ fans, most of the gay and lesbian characters died pretty horribly too. (I remember reading in so many disclaimers for Buffy and Angel fanfic: ‘Joss is a dick’ to apply to how he handled romantic relationships. That itself should have been a clue as well to his nature.)

That is the reason series like Tom Swift are important, even if they are failures, as the hostility towards them before they even debut so upsetting. I would have liked it if Tom Swift had managed to stagger on for two or three more seasons, like so many clearly inferior low-rated CW series have over the years. Perhaps it could have improved over time, perhaps it would have just been another mess like Legends of Tomorrow or Riverdale, series that had interesting ideas at first, but ultimately became bogged down in their own messaging and mythology. These kinds of ideas for series don’t get much room for growth even in the era of marginal audiences. I know some fans out there will be glad Tom Swift failed – they will say it got what it deserved. The problem is, it didn’t – and those fans will never understand that.