I'm feeling the pain here. There are times when I've hesitated to start watching a new show because past history has proved that my eyeballs are clearly (unintentionally) "twin lasers of searing death for any new show I happen to like."

It is hard to maintain deep fannish love and involvement for such short-lived shows. In terms of short runs, where do you think the fannish tipping point lies between "too short" and "just long enough" to gain support a sustainable fannish base?

Rubicon ran for 13 episodes (right?). Too early to tell if it will have a post series fannish life, though Firefly with only 11 originally aired episodes (out of a total of 14 produced) has done pretty well for itself. The you have a show like Now and Again which got a run of 22 episodes, but has only a modest fannish afterlife. Maybe the number of episodes really has nothing to do with it?