Reprieve for "The Nine"?

At the start of this season, ABC launched a handful of new shows, including the serial drama The Nine, about nine individuals who were trapped together in a bank heist gone wrong. As episodes progressed, frequent flashbacks to the fifty-two hours the characters spent in the bank together helped to piece together the horror they endured, while current drama built characterizations and added humor to offset the serious nature of the show. The show was well-received by critics prior to its launch nationwide, and thirteen initial episodes were ordered.

Unfortunately, placed in a timeslot after the wildly popular Lost, The Nine fell hard, netting far less viewers in its initial showing than expected. In subsequent weeks, as devoted viewers learned more about their favorite characters and grew hungry to learn all of the missing pieces, ratings fell further and further. It seems the devoted crowd was the minority, and viewership dropped from week to week.

Finally, just in time for fall sweeps and around the Thanksgiving holiday, ABC made the difficult decision to suspend The Nine from its lineup, with the vague statement that the show may return in the spring of 2007 to show the remaining episodes already produced. Although this statement was repeated as 2006 drew to a close, no definitive time was chosen for the remaining shows to air.

With midseason replacements now launching and the lineup shaken up a bit, the future of The Nine still appears uncertain. The writers of the show it previously followed, Lost, are now formulating an exit strategy to bring that successful series to a close, and so along with several other serials that began and failed (notably Daybreak), it seems the primetime serial is destined to again fall by the wayside, losing out to sitcoms and the ever-present reality shows that show anything but realism.

Fans and insiders theorize that ABC may get out of showing the remaining episodes in primetime by bringing the series to a close online or in a limited DVD release. Although it will satisfy the curiosity of some to watch the unaired episodes, many questions about the actual storyline itself will likely remain, as the show was originally planned for far more than just thirteen parts.

What do you think? Should ABC show the remaining episodes on air or online? Would you watch if either option were available? Or, perhaps, should ABC abandon this show in favor of others more successful? One point of optimism remains: unlike Daybreak, another ABC serial that fell short, The Nine remains listed as an active show on the network's website. In all statements and interviews since the series was placed on hiatus, ABC executives and programmers have stood by their prior statements on playing all remaining episodes of The Nine - it seems the victims of the fifty-two hour bank heist may get a second reprieve, if only for a few additional weeks.