Another summer rolls around, and with it comes a laundry list of show cancellations from every TV station across the board. With all the crap these channels pump into your cable box, I’m surprised that a few shows actually escaped the guillotine. They get another year to prove they deserve to be on TV, but there are a number of shows that won’t be coming back. Some of them are your favorite shows. Others are the shows that you knew from the get-go would be atrocious (like Outsourced – Pictured above). Surpassing that are the shows whose existence was just pure insulting. Check out some of the series that aren’t making the cut, and why you should (or shouldn’t) care.
Entourage
That’s right folks. After eight seasons of the same old crap, Entourage is finally coming to an end. Let’s not get confused though: I loved Entourage. Sex, drugs, money, AND comedy? Those are my four favorite things, all neatly packaged into a box and tied with Lloyd’s anal beads. But we have to be honest to ourselves – This series was dead when we found out that “Medellin” was a total bust. What a coincidence! This summer, the series will air its final episodes and then vanish from HBO’s Sunday lineup forever. But, with a little hope and prayer, there could be a Johnny Drama or Turtle spin-off in the near future, because everyone knows that they’re undoubtedly the best characters in the show (besides Ari Gold, but he can’t carry a show on his own…it’d piss too many people off).
Party Down
This show went totally unnoticed for the two seasons it existed, which pisses me off. It was an incredibly insightful dry comedy about the reality of Hollywood, but I guess not enough people picked up on its unique brand of humor (either that or thousands of unemployed actors didn’t like how it portrayed their lifestyle), so it got the axe. Then again, most Starz original series tend to go under the radar, so I’m thankful that we even got as much as we did. It ripped on every Hollywood stereotype and had endless “that’s soo frickin true” moments. I’d explain further, but I’d rather you just go watch it. Hopefully you get it – If you don’t, well I actually don’t care if you don’t.
Greek
Thank goodness. I never watched Greek, but I didn’t need to in order to understand how truly retarded it was. An ABC Family show about college? Seriously? In no way whatsoever could that even remotely come close to resembling the real college experience, let alone Greek life. That’s one down. The next show I expect ABC Family to cancel is The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which, surprisingly enough, doesn’t resemble the life of any American teenager ever. That one I’ve actually seen once or twice (blame my intellectually inept ex-girlfriend), although I wish I had just killed myself instead. Dear ABC Family, please just stick to destroying my favorite movies and airing late-night blocks of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Thank you.
Glory Daze
If Greek didn’t work, god knows what genius thought this was going to survive more than a season. Kids can’t associate with wholesome college life, especially when it’s set in an era they weren’t even born in. The show was marketed towards college students (like yourselves), but did any of you go to college in the 80’s? That’s what I thought. There was just no logic there. On top of all of that nonsense was one more thing that just didn’t add up: I watched one episode, and was totally surprised to see that everyone was wearing Abercrombie and stuff that would be stylish today, not 20 years ago. I’m no expert on the 1980’s, but I’m pretty sure it was the era of New Wave, Punk, and Madonna, and the costume design should reflect that.
Official Death of the Soap Opera
This double-header gets slammed into one category. All My Children and As The World Turns were both canceled this year after 1000 years of being on the air. Obviously it wasn’t really 1000 years – It was more like 3000 years. These soap operas have been on TV since our parents were impressionable young adults. They survived on day-to-day casting changes and the most ludicrous plotlines known to man, but alas: even some girl finding out that her husband is really her long-lost twin brother isn’t enough of a draw to continue paying some of the worst actors in history. I think the advent of reality TV plus the slow, cancerous demise of the Soap Opera generation is to blame here…I could probably turn this one into an argumentative essay (anyone in a Television in American Culture class, I give you permission to go nuts on this – Send me the finished product, I’ll frickin post that stuff).
Tyler Perry’s House of Payne
Oh no! House of Payne is done? What are we to do? Well, you could watch one of the other Tyler Perry shows on TBS, there are like a million of them. But in all seriousness, House of Payne aired 222 episodes before it was given the shaft, making it the second longest running sitcom with an African-American cast, right after after The Jeffersons. That’s quite the achievement. I was never a fan of the house, given that I’m totally in the wrong demographic, but I’ve seen Tyler Perry on Conan (TBS: The kings of vertical integration), and the dude is actually mad funny. He should step outside of his comfort zone and try writing a show for middle class white folks like myself, I’d probably laugh.
A Whole Shitload of Crime Dramas
There are just too many crime dramas that have gone the way of the Dodo to name them all. It seems like no genre gets exploited more than this one (or finds failure so easy). This year should probably be remembered as the Holocaust of Crime Drama (not in good taste?). The shows are canceled just as quickly as the networks can churn them out. It’s unfair because a few of them might have actually had potential, but they just didn’t find their audience or got lost in the shuffle amongst a bunch of cookie-cutter crime dramas, and were cut down before they even got the opportunity to grow into something more. It might be safe to assume that the crime drama fad is nearing an end. What genre will cable and network TV stations destroy next? That’s open to speculation.
Got a favorite show that didn’t survive to see another season? Shout it out in the comments. Let’s give props to our fallen brothers.
