Os cinco maiores fiascos de 2006, segundo a TIME

5 Things That Went From Buzz to Bust

The message of this page is, Beware all hype. Here are five phenomena that captivated the media for a spell, then turned out to be less than huge. Our bad

By  LEV GROSSMAN, BELINDA LUSCOMBE

SNAKES ON A PLANE, AUDIENCE DISEMBARKS

When the words Snakes on a Plane hit the Internet, you could almost hear the hisses of delight. Net users celebrated the old-school cheesiness of the movie's premise and urged the studio, New Line Cinema, to amp up the film's violence. But like snakes, Internet hype can't be tamed, and like flying, it's not that easy to get right. When Snakes finally opened, it was box-office venom, taking in a mere $34 million, not even half of cheapie horror flick Saw III.

IF HE DID IT

Twelve years after his wife and her friend were murdered, O.J. Simpson, who, you may recall, was accused of their murders, suggested he was no longer in mourning by writing a fictional account of their deaths, titled If I Did It. He also agreed to do a Fox TV interview with his publisher, Judith Regan. After an outcry from, really, practically everyone, the book was pulled from stores and the TV interview canceled.

STUDIO SCHMUDIO

How, pundits asked, could Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip miss? It was made by the guy who did The West Wing! It had that funny guy from Friends! It was about Saturday Night Live! There had been a network bidding war for it! But after the first episode, viewership plummeted, and while the show is not exactly a failure, it's not a success. And it's pretty expensive to be only the 51st most popular on TV. On the other hand, Seinfeld started badly too.

TO PLAY'S THE THING

The big story in computer games this year was HOW TO BLOW A HUGE LEAD, by Sony. Its PlayStation 2 was the champ in the last round of the console wars. This time Sony bet on a chip called the Cell and a disc format called Blu-ray. They're probably awesome, but how would anybody know? The PS3 is hideously expensive--it goes for up to $600--and Sony manufactured only a piddling few hundred thousand for the U.S., fewer for Japan. Plus it's hard to write games for; the launch titles were lame. You know you're in trouble when you get beat by something called a Wii.

IT ALL WENT DOWNHILL SO FAST

Ah, Bode Miller, the bad boy of Torino. Profiled and promoted in media as diverse as 60 Minutes, Rolling Stone and, ahem, TIME, he was bound to disappoint. But not the way he did. Of the five Olympic events in which he was expected to medal, he did not finish two, was disqualified in one and finished fifth and sixth in the others. After being touted as the best of America--talented, free-spirited and confident--he left Italy as that other type: reckless, careless and cocky. Currently ranked ninth in the world in overall Alpine events, he's making that trudge back up the hill.