Dear Bryan Fuller

What happened to you?  Did your brain finally snap when NBC refused to pick up Mockingbird Lane?  I feel like the weight of so many genius level projects that you birthed being bludgeoned to death before your eyes may have finally strangled the whimsey from your word processor.

Your first stint as show runner ended after only six episodes.  Dead Like Me was a macabre yet somehow still lighthearted dark comedy.  It had poignant and sad moments, but made me laugh more often than not.  You quit that show due to creative differences right as it hit it's stride.  It continued on fairly well with your blueprint, but once that ran dry, it crashed and burned.  The abomination that was the wrap up movie made me sterile, so the world must mourn the loss of what children I may have had.

Next came Wonderfalls, where you introduced the world outside of Canada to a wonderful little snarkbucket named Caroline Dhavernas.  Equal parts pithy and enchanting, this is where I truly fell in love with your world.  And with Caroline Dhavernas.  Seriously, can you tell her to call me?  Unfortunately, few remember this wonderful Wonderfalls, and even fewer watched when it aired.  Another ignominious cancellation.  Another broken Greg heart.  I wouldn't see Caroline again until her brief stint on The Pacific where her 1940's period clothing and hair awakened some new fetish in me. 

What can only be described as your utter masterpiece followed in Pushing Daisies.  It pushed past what would under any other circumstance be an unacceptable and dangerous amount of whimsy, and captured the hearts of all that gazed upon the bright, vivid, and glorious world of Couers d' Couers.  It was like a pop up book come to life, and I relished every episode.  Even while dealing with dark themes, the show was funny, lighthearted, and made the viewer feel wonderful, wishing they could enter that world and have a cup-pie at the Pie Hole.  Like everything I have ever loved, this too was taken from me.

I confess, I didn't watch Mockingbird Lane that Halloween it aired.  I grew up watching The Munsters on Nick at Nite, and you doing a remake with Eddie Izzard seemed too good to last.  I was right.  It was one episode.  So, when I heard you were tackling a show about Hannibal Lector, I didn't know what to think.  Surely, this would be an odd mix.  One doesn't think of the mixture of dark comedy and pure joy that burst from your pen when one thinks of Red Dragon, Silence of The Lambs, or Hannbal.  I stayed away initially, because I needed to know I wouldn't love this, only to have it ripped away from me again.

I made myself a deal.  If you got to season three, a feat you've never accomplished on any of the other shows, then I would watch.  I almost made it too, until my friend Dave convince me of how good the show was halfway through season 2.  I read up, and a third season seemed a foregone conclusion, so I dove in.  Yes, I dove right into the congealed, dead miserable quilt of sadness you have made for the world.

If this show had a spirit animal, it would be a widowed beagle about to be evicted from its house. There is no whimsy, there is no stylized patter, and there is no hope.  Everyone is grey, until they are covered in red.  Even my beautiful Caroline Dhavernas is muted and sad.  Her eyes scream out at the bleakness of it all.  I made the mistake of marathoning the first season on a couple of my days off.  I was forced to watch The Deer Hunter as a more cheerful option to pull myself out of the malaise I was thrust into.

What has happened, Bryan?  Has it gotten so bad that this is what you look like happy? Somehow, this grave look is what the critics finally accepted.  You are garnering universal acclaim for the series, but at what cost?  It is a great show, well written and well acted, so why can't I enjoy it?  I find myself craving a scene at The Waffle House with Daisy Adair, listening to Rube berate the cook over how well done the eggs are, or an afternoon at The Pie Hole with Olive Penderghast eating a slice of pear and gruyere pie.  Can't I just sit one more time in Jaye's trailer as she fights with the wax lion?

My life is already crummy.  I go to TV to escape.  This feel like salt on a wound, not a vivid Bryan Fuller dream like I wished for.