The Sad, Cruel End to Harry Potter Weekend or Hey Freeform, Need About 40 Scripts?

At the age of 30, I finished Harry Potter. It was honestly only about a month ago. I’m not sure if I should be proud of this fact, or embarrassed. Like most kids, I started reading the series when it came out. I read through the first 4 books, and was gifted the 5^th book on its release day. I started to read it, enjoyed it, and then never picked it up again. I couldn’t tell you why, but I didn’t. Finally, this year, I decided to finish what I started. Of course, I had no recollection about the series other than Harry’s aunt and uncle were assholes and that Harry was a wizard. I knew that Hagrid was a huge giant of the man (Spoilers!), and most men who grew up watching the movies are in love with Emma Watson. This is all basic information.

I should warn you I’ll be going into spoiler territory for the next few paragraphs. But I mean, the series is 20 years old now so it’s fair games. Granted, I just finished it, but most people actually complete children’s series as children. Still, if you don’t want to be spoiled you’ve been warned, though I’m pretty sure we all know the biggest spoiler of the series. It’s pretty common knowledge in pop culture that Neville kills Harry by stabbing him 16 times in the chest with his wand. He didn’t even use a spell to savor the kill.

Oops… So much for the spoiler warning.

You didn’t even kill him clean you bastard

Anyway, while I certainly enjoyed the series, I did have some problems with it. Dumbledore, that gentle old fool, is nothing more than a walking plot synopsis for the first 5 books. That’s you know, 5/7^ths of the series*. Seriously, he’s barely a character other than the occasional speech at the school. He’ll appear at the end of these books to clean up any mess Harry couldn’t handle, and then he’ll explain every part of the plot that was mysterious in one of the last three chapters. At this point in the series, he’s JK Rowling with a beard. Granted, he became extremely interesting in the last two books when he was, you know, a person, but still, this could have been built up prior to the end of the series. At least they did expand on his character later on.

My second criticism is how was Malfoy allowed to continue to attend school? The piece of shit was evil from day one, and his father would have went down on old Voldemort if given the opportunity. The Malfoy’s were known to support the Dark Lord, actually got caught fighting for him, and nothing happens to Draco? Maybe, you know, expel him? The in universe argument was that Dumbledore allowed him to stay since he was in danger, and wanted to protect him. But you know what? Homie was evil. I’d rather not have the servants of the Dark Lord running around free. Maybe we should have let Voldemort kill him. It would have been the first favor he ever did for Harry.

Finally, my last complaint, and this one is very important, is how bad the heroes were at fighting. We’re not talking about the main characters, or even the students. Hell, the students held their own while they were learning, and actually won fights. As they learned more in school, the students got much better at magic throughout the series. You saw progression in the books. So why were all the adults so awful at fighting? The Order of the Phoenix might have learned how to fight from henchmen in action movies. All of their big hitters lost every major fight in the series. Seriously, did they win any battle without Harry? Sure, Dumbledore saved the day a few times, but can you name another adult who didn’t suck at fighting for the majority of the book?** No you can’t. All they did was retreat and wait for Harry, who was under 18, to save them. Pathetic. The Dark Lord should have been the victor by the end of book five with the Order’s track record.

Yes, I get it, it’s a kid’s book. But let the adults at least seem remotely capable.

Now, there was a lot of good stuff in these books. Severus Snape was a complex character. You continually flip on your opinion of Snape until the 6^th book, where you know he’s evil. And then, at the end of the series, you get in my opinion, the best chapter of the series, where you find out Snape was a triple agent the whole time. It’s a bit convoluted, but a great twist and puts light to his character. Was he a good man? Oh my no. Fighting against evil doesn’t justify torturing young students, outing a werewolf so he needs to lose his job, and hating Harry Potter. I know he had to act like a death eater, but he totally enjoyed it. However, you can’t question his loyalty. You can however question the creepiness of his obsession with Lily, going as far as to stare at Harry before dying because he had his mother’s eyes. Did Snape need to get over it? Always. But for a creep in love with a dead woman who hated him 20 years later, he was pretty entertaining.

I also love how complex Dumbledore became. At first, Dumbledore was Mr. Exposition, not a character but a construction worker, filling in plot holes. However, in the last two books, we learn an awful lot about Dumbledore, including his past. He wasn’t this perfect, undefeatable wizard. He was a manipulator, a schemer, and unwilling to share key info with anybody. Ultimately, he was a good man, but this gave him a surprising amount of depth. I didn’t expect him to have depth at all. The chapter where he speaks to Harry after they are both dead (or for Harry “Dead”) has Dumbledore lamenting his shortcomings. It’s very well done.

Finally, Neville. Oh man. Neville was such a bumbling fool in the first few books, you knew he was going to be a big deal eventually. But I never expected him to be a badass. Seriously, Neville is the most bad ass person in the books. He and Harry are the last two students standing against the Death Eaters in book 5, even with a broken nose (meanwhile the Order members are dropping in seconds. Seriously, why even show up?). In the 7^th book, he’s being tortured regularly, but is still upbeat and cheery because he knows Harry will eventually save him. And then of course he frigging beheads a giant snake with a secret magic sword and helps save the world. It’s metal as anything.

I mean, let’s be honest, wouldn’t book 5 be better from Neville’s perspective instead of angst filler, moody Harry Potter? Fifth book Harry sucks. Neville for main character, 2018.

No kidding. Try a deep breath once in a while.

Now that I have finished the books, I decided to move to the next logical step – the movies. I’ve heard from big Harry Potter fans the movies are a mixed bag at best. Obviously they have to cut things to prevent the movies being 9 hours long, but from what I’ve heard, they chop some significant scenes, and add new ones that don’t make sense. The movies also hint and Harry and Hermione as a thing, which is outright shot down in the books. But then again, it’s Emma Watson, so I couldn’t blame Harry for giving it a shot***. It would just be nice to see things I read come to life, even if they skipped a lot of the good parts. And where else would I be disappointed in bad edits and poor scripts than the popular channel Freeform.

That’s right, Freeform (formerly ABC Family) has been the unofficial home of Harry Potter for years. When I say unofficial home, I mean more that it milked the license until there wasn’t a drip left. Freeform specialized in Harry Potter Weekend, an event where they marathoned all the movies for a full three days. This would be a nice surprise to have a few times a year. However, they didn’t save it for a few times a year. They did it a minimum of twice a month. This was 144 hours of content a week covered by Harry Potter. That’s too much Harry Potter Angst for this blogger.

But having Harry Potter weekend wasn’t quite enough. The channel also tried to pass off Weasley Weekend as a thing. This, off course, was an excuse to play the Harry Potter movies again, but remember it wasn’t “Harry Potter Weekend” it was a Weasley Weekend. Does anyone see the problem here? You can’t just rename something to pass it off as new and think people won’t notice. It’s not like the actors and actresses who played the Weasleys are in a whole bunch of movies Freefrom could have tied in to be original. No, perish the thought. It was an excuse to get the channel to play the movies 3 weekends in a month.

Honestly, I’m disappointed they stopped at Weasley Weekend. I would have had more tie ins and stopped showing their original programs. This would have been a huge improvement for the channel. There could have been Holiday with Hermione, shown on any national holiday. We could have had Saturday for Snape, showing Snape’s best movies (there’s 8 to choose from). And who wouldn’t sit down after work to watch Mad Eye Mondays? In fact, in my research, I find some promotion material for that last one:

Like you wouldn’t tune in

It was so short-sighted for them to pull their advertising. Mad Eye Moody would have been bigger than Mickey Mouse.

I don’t even want to guess how many times the network played these movies. Just counting the Harry Potter and (sigh) Weasley Weekends, it had to be at least half of each year’s weekends. This doesn’t factor in all the single movie showings they had, which I’m sure was pretty high. I hope those kids got residuals for each showing like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. Maybe that’s why most of them don’t act anymore.

The most mind-boggling part of all this? The network did not have the rights to Order of the Phoenix until September of 2017.  How the hell can the network marathon the entire movie series, and fail to have the rights of one of the movies? This was a grave over site. I mean, the 5^th book is pretty important, so the movie it’s based on probably has a key plot point or 50. Yet this lack of rights never stopped the network from whoring out the franchise like a lady of the night working a double shift.**** You have to give credit to the network, they took advantage of the franchise, and played the films until the DVDs were ready to burst into flames.. Unfortunately for them, their rights to movies have ended.

As of January 1, 2018, HBO has acquired the sole rights to all 8 of the Potter movies. This is the end of a long standing era of Freeform going on easy mode and playing the movies on repeat. I imagine the CEO of Freeform still reeks of scotch and tears. When one of his/her underlings ask him/her what the Network’s plan is, he/she probably sprints out of the room to lock himself/herself in a bathroom stall to cry.

People are upset by the change, saying they loved the Harry Potter Weekend, and don’t know how they will handle the change. My question is, who cares? I mean, other than the very depressed CEO of Freeform. Yeah, he needs some consoling. And a second flask.

Seriously, as a fan of the films, why does anyone care? Firstly, everyone had a chance to watch the movies a billion times on Freeform. If you hadn’t seen them before the rights were lost, it wasn’t all that important to you. Secondly, you could have easily DVR’d the movies during 1 of the 96 Harry Potter Weekends last year, and had a showing whenever you want. You can’t possibly play the “whoa is me” card. Lets not forget, HBO is extremely shameless and has 9 different channels. If you don’t think Harry Potter Weekend will be a fixture of the HBO family channel as soon as February, you haven’t watched HBO. Plus, with HBO Go, a service most people have, you can watch the movies anywhere, at anytime.

Also, DVDs are still sold people. The whole Harry Potter collection is probably like 8 bucks at this point. If you love it so damn much, support the series and stop whining.

So yeah, while I don’t think there’s any change for the fans of Harry Potter, I think Freeform is in trouble. The channel not only relied on Harry Potter for people to know Freeform was a channel, it also covered huge time blocks. Who knows the last time Freeform filmed an original episode or movie for their network? That seriously depressed and sauced up CEO sure doesn’t know. Honestly, they must be shaking in their boots. Is there any other 8 part series they can buy for cheap? Christ, they might pick up the rights to the Tyler Perry’s Madea films. That will save them all right.

I actually researched all the original shows that have aired on Freeform in the past 5 years outside of Harry Potter, and they only have 1, Pretty Little Liars.*****

You should go to prison for watching this

Now, this show’s run has finished, but from what I can tell, it wasn’t exactly critically acclaimed. Most of my knowledge of the show comes from seeing reviewed sandwiched between links on yahoo about football, and half of episode that I watched. In it, there were several murders discussed, and a blind girl seemed to be fond of killing people. So I mean, it’s taking a page out of Hallmark’s scripts******. Honestly, the promotional picture makes it look like a show about young hookers being arrested. Maybe that sort of thing will work on Cinemax, but not Freeform.

If Freeform chooses to push Pretty Little Liars, they will only attract two types of viewers – people who love bad shows, and horny men. The problem with these demographics being the target audience is their saturated markets. There’s hundreds of bad shows out there already – The above mentioned Hallmark channel would easily satisfy this market, as would any sort of reality TV. For the horny men, 78% of the internet is actually porn, so that could pretty much satisfy their needs, so to speak. In fact, they can just google whichever actress on Pretty Little Liars they want, and get the same benefit as they would by watching with much less time commitment. If only Pretty Little Liars debuted in like 1993, this marketing plan would have worked. Alas, this is modern times.

Also the show looks like it sucks. Like really, really badly.

Truthfully, Freeform is either going to have to pump out new shows, buy the rights to other popular things they didn’t create, push the hell out of Pretty Little Liars despite its questionable merit, or fold. Currently, folding is the heavy favorite at 1-35 odds.

However, I have a different suggestion for you, dear Freeform network. Why not produce new shows and try to fill the void Harry Potter left? The problem there is it takes a long time to develop and script out a full season of episodes. If you only had a series already written and in needing of filming. Why, that would take out half of the work for you. But who could be so creative, so forward thinking, and so damn handsome to have such a thing?

Oh right, I am.

So what do you say Freeform? Make me an offer for 40 scripts, keep me on as show runner and lead creative mind, and I’ll give you them all. I also want themed nights and weekends for each of the characters. Evenings with Evan. Raging with Rodney. Milo’s Monday Mayhem. Lunchtime with Lance and Luke. Play Hookey with Paul. Sketchy Sundays with Ron, Pirate Jim and Emo Marcel*******. There would be a million of them. And with the lucrative residual contract I’d write for myself, I’d never have to work a real job again.

Wait, I was supposed to think that last part to myself. Ah well, you people are desperate. I’ll leave it in.

The ball is in your court Freeform. Do you want good, wholesome entertainment the family can enjoy, or do you want my show? I think we know the answer. I’ll be by my phone to discuss numbers.

*I did not read the play and I will not.  Apparently it’s fan fiction. It’s like 50 shades of Grey without all the kinky sex, so I mean, what’s the point? And no, I didn’t read or watch 50 shades of Grey, but I’ve heard it’s like a snuff erotic novel. Not for me.

**Notice I said the majority. Molly Weasley icing Bellatrix was awesome, but let’s not pretend it came out of nowhere. If she could take that one out, why wasn’t she on the front lines the second Voldy returned?

***You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

****Or maybe more accurately, double shaft… Hey oh!

****If you think this is what I waste my time researching… well you’re not far off, but no, I did not actually research this topic in the slightest.

******Hall Mark movies actually only have 2 page scripts. Most of the dialogue is cut and paste from their first movie. The male leads don’t have personalities, so the robots they build to fill the roles have their generic catch phrases preloaded. It saves a fortune in the long run. Hallmarks Animatronics game puts Disney’s to shame.

*****For those of you who don’t know, these are all characters from my series. I;m sure these scripts will make an appearance on the sight soon, but not yet.