One of the tough things about being a TV fan, a comedy fan, a sitcom fan, and having a wide willingness to try things, is that I often find shows I love that are watched by very few other people and thus end up canceled relatively quickly after pretty brief runs1. This trend arguably goes all the way back to Police Squad! and Get a Life for me; if you stretched it, you could include shows like NewsRadio, which ran too long to get this treatment but was also jerked around the schedule so much it never got to find an audience; and Arrested Development, which was cancelled after roughly two and a half seasons, although given the decline in quality in the third season and further decline of the revival seasons, maybe that was for the best. Note that it’s often network shows, particularly sitcoms, that get this treatment— the funniest shows are often too weird to find a big audience, or else executives don’t have much investment in them and don’t really give them a chance to.
In the modern TV landscape, Happy Endings and Don’t Trust the B— in Apt. 23 were some of the earliest and cruelest blows in that regard. Suburgatory ran for roughly the same length of time as Happy Endings, and if not as riotously funny as that show, it also subsequently has fewer people singing its praises these days. Ben and Kate was a delightful little gem that was, admittedly, more delightful than hilarious, but it was quite funny at times and we were quite taken with it. This probably also happened with some other shows some time between 2013-2019.
In the 2020s, this trend has run the gamut from shows like Kenan and Grand Crew (solid above-average network sitcoms with good casts) to Mr. Mayor and American Auto (inconsistent first seasons but arguably the funniest shows on network in their second seasons).
This happened three times in pretty quick succession recently in this TV season. I’m not counting shows that end on their own terms, like Hacks. (That may merit its own feature sometime down the road.) But so far on the network lineup, we’ve gotten three shows canceled that were on my weekly calendar: One got two seasons (albeit short spring ones); the other two got just one. None more than 22 episodes. We’ll look in order from most episodes to least, because that’s also roughly the order they went from least favorite to most favorite (though I do like them all):
Going Dutch
2 Seasons, 22 Episodes
The premise of Going Dutch involves hardass Colonel Patrick Quinn (Denis Leary), in a retaliatory move by one of his superiors, General Davidson (Joe Morton, recurring), being reassigned to the army base at Stroopsdorf, a base in the Netherlands considered the U.S. Army’s most useless— there is little to no military readiness, but there is a fromagerie and a number of other luxury amenities. Will Army lifer hardass Quinn whip the base into shape, or will the base soften him? Well, that question is complicated by how he deals with the base’s leader until he was reassigned there… his estranged daughter, Captain Maggie Quinn (Taylor Misiak).
In tow with the Colonel is his XO Major Abraham Shah (Danny Pudi); also on the base are Master Sergeant Dana Conway (Laci Mosley), a supply sergeant who usually has some kind of side hustle going on, and Corporal Elias Papadakis (Hal Cumpston), a cyber operations specialist who, if not for his specialty and the base he’s stationed at, would almost certainly not meet any sort of basic Army requirements— physical fitness, grooming, anything that would generally require some level of discipline or physical effort.
So, Quinn has to learn how to adapt to the base, reconnect with his daughter, maybe stop being so stubborn about everything, and along the way, he might even end up teaching his soldiers a thing or two.
It wasn’t anything special, but in a world where its hourlong partner Animal Control is headed into season five (albeit in short spring-only seasons), it was good enough to merit similar treatment. Particularly so because in season 2, the writing took a step up and became a little sharper and a little more willing to get weird with it. Papadakis ended up being a strong breakout character, who gets some great lines and some inspired, supremely goofy stories; my favorite is when he decides to listen to the Bible on audiobook and treats it like a doorstopper fantasy series with extensive lore. “Did you know the Bible is the highest selling book of all time? Sold more copies than Da Vinci Code. Which is also about Jesus, so I guess it’s Extended Bible Universe.” “You mean Christianity?”
It won’t take home any awards in the real world or mine, but in a network-TV landscape so full of reality shows, shows like Cops to Watch While You Wait to Die running double-digit seasons, and an increasingly absurd number of The Big Bang Theory spinoffs, Going Dutch was certainly good enough to keep watching and keep producing.
DMV
1 Season, 20 Episodes
The premise of this one is a little easier to explain: workers at the DMV. Our main focus (or at least the actors I was most familiar with) are our three driving instructors: people-pleasing do-gooder Colette (Harriet Dyer), weird dim-bulb gym bro with a foster-care past Vic (Tony Cavalero), and former teacher and generally disaffected grump Gregg (Tim Meadows). The main cast is rounded out by branch manager Barb (Molly Kearney), a sheltered Army brat full of a disturbingly strong commitment to the DMV and unintentional double entendres; counter worker Noa (Alex Tarrant), the laid-back new hire from New Zealand / token hot guy, who it eventually comes out is a trust-fund kid estranged from his family; and photographer / also counter worker Ceci (Gigi Zumbado), token hot mean girl.
The show got off to a rocky start. This is largely due to the show trying to launch with Colette’s crush on Noa, which led to some really stale and cringey plots that drew from the worst of hack rom-com material. So the show took a little while to grow past that and really lean into the strengths of its cast. But once it did— giving Colette better material, growing Barb and Ceci’s roles in the show, giving Noa a character besides “generic hot love interest,” it really started to shine, coming back strong from winter break with a renewed focus on comedy and the particular strangeness of the individual characters.
That version of the show got all of five episodes before the cancelation was announced. The final episode aired Monday, which appropriately wrapped a couple of major stories (both the overall story of the East Hollywood branch avoiding closure, and Colette and Noa, who finally go for it and realize they have zero chemistry. Also, Noa finally gets his drivers license, leading to the celebratory image above).
I get that sometimes a show doesn’t really launch and can’t find the ratings even if it improves. And I know the olden days of Brandon Tartikoff giving Cheers time after a last-place first season, or giving Seinfeld room to grow after a four-episode run that didn’t get back on air for nearly two years and after four seasons of struggling ratings, aren’t coming back. But for sitcoms in particular, where the exact alchemy of cast and writing isn’t always clear at first, shows often need fine-tuning and a real chance to grow to become the best versions of themselves.
DMV stumbled a bit for a half-season but then was on its way to making something specific and worth watching. Certainly better than most of what we see on network television, and with the obviously talented cast described above. There were some great and weird episodes down the stretch, like “Fresh Ink,” where Colette tries to get some good press for Barb… in a high school newspaper, which of course leads to the real story being “Insane DMV Driving Instructor Harasses Teen Journalist.” And “Gilbert” was a good show of the heart side of things, with Vic considering adopting a dog to help with his loneliness, and Colette and Gregg essentially parenting him through the process.
It won’t take a place in the all-time great roster of sitcoms cancelled too soon, but cancelled too soon it was, and with a second season, it might have found an audience and really tuned in to the best version of itself. We’ll never know now.
Stumble
1 Season, 13 Episodes
A show that, ironically, did not stumble a bit from beginning to end, a delightful little underseen (clearly) gem.
Champion college cheer coach Courteney Potter (Jenn Lyon) is fired after a video emerges of her drinking with her team at Sammy Davis Sr. Junior College2, one national championship short of the record. Desperate to set that record, she decides to take whatever job she can get… which ends up being at Heådltston State Junior College, in a small Oklahoma town where the primary business is a candy-button factory (which frequently pollutes the air with brightly-colored fumes), and where Courteney has to put together a ragtag team of misfits to win that title. With a documentary crew in tow following her efforts.
Courteney is supported by her husband, Boon E. Potter (Taran Killam), football coach at Sammy Davis Sr., who notably suffered a severe injury during his playing days that left him slightly brain-damaged (and I think missing a testicle as well? I forget how that happened). Her former assistant played by Kristin Chenoweth, Tammy Istiny3, is promoted to Sammy Davis Sr. head cheer coach… and may not be as loyal as Courteney believed.
That aforementioned ragtag group of misfits is largely played by newcomers or nearly-newcomers. The most recognizable among them is Ryan Pinkston as Steven, one of Courteney’s former “bases” in his college-aged days, now working at a rental-car company (and, even though he’s in his thirties, apparently eligible to join the squad as he never graduated). Courteney also poaches a couple of students from Sammy Davis Sr.: her star “flyer” Krystal (Anissa Borrego), and Boon’s star player Dimarcus (Jarrett Austin Brown), who’s in the middle of quitting the football team because… well, essentially, because it’s the football team, not the football Dimarcus. Only one student at Heådltston, the narcoleptic Madonna (Arianna Davis), was previously on the school’s cheer team.
Courteney also recruits Peaches (Taylor Dunbar), a thief and otherwise petty criminal frequently being ankle-monitored, after seeing her acrobatic efforts to avoid getting caught. And while Sally (Georgie Murphy) is the least skilled of the cheerleaders who audition, Courteney can, will, and must find a spot for her once she realizes the eternally cheery and optimistic young lady has had an objectively horrifying life in a series of foster homes and is currently living out of her car. (Eventually the Potters take her in to stay with them for a while until she’s ready to move into the dorms, and the relationship Boon and Sally form is genuinely sweet.)
Misadventures in learning how to cheer, fundraising, keeping everyone’s academics in order, Peaches getting arrested again, etc. ensue on the team’s way to qualifying for the national cheer championship in Daytona. But along the way we get some hilarious stories, relentless use of the documentary format for comedy whenever possible4, tons of jokes, and some great three-dimensional characters we really come to care about.
The show comes to us from the brother-sister team of Jeff (Trial & Error) and Liz (Pivoting) Astrof, and the strengths of each show can be seen in this partnership. I mentioned the puns earlier; Trial & Error‘s sense of wordplay and of goofy small-towns with ridiculous people and traditions is fully forth here driving the comedy. And Pivoting‘s sense of major midlife changes and understanding women and their relationships is strong, too (albeit, it’s a bit different when it’s primarily as shown between Courteney and her charges, rather than peers). But, anyway, the show is that rare combination of legitimately laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely building strong enough characters and character relationships to be heartfelt and even moving.
Oh, right. Was.
What really frustrates me is the total lack of effort NBC put into Stumble and the lack of a chance the network gave it to succeed. I think of St. Denis Medical, another NBC sitcom I quite like, by comparison. St. Denis premiered in November 2024, and for about two months before it premiered, every Sunday Night Football broadcast had a St. Denis commercial at nearly every commercial break. And then it aired on Monday nights, in a pretty good spot for a sitcom. So far it has been a real success for NBC.
Stumble, meanwhile, I learned about essentially by accident, and then it was released in November, well after the typical network premiere schedule; aired on Fridays, maybe the worst day for network television to find viewers; and it was interrupted multiple times by the holidays and the Olympics. NBC put no effort into marketing it or giving it a chance to succeed.
Stumble was a great show, and if NBC had put half the effort into marketing it as they did some of their other shows, I think it would still be with us. But it gave us 13 episodes of great laughs that have proven to be easy to rewatch, and two of my favorite newcomer performances (which I’ll have more to say about in a few weeks, when I get to my unsung performance awards after the TV year ends5).
Some good news
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, at least, was renewed for season 2. It seems like it will be another short spring season in 2027, probably because Daniel Radcliffe probably doesn’t have time to commit to 22 network episodes a year. You may hug your hero.
Jury Duty was also officially renewed for season 3 on Monday; however, given the gap in time between seasons 1 and 2 (and that there was no renewal announcement and very little fanfare on season 2 until right before it premiered), I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not at least another three years before season 3 airs.
The rest of TV
The TV calendar is very slim right now and getting slimmer. For me, Hacks‘ journey through the final season is the most compelling watch right now. We wrap the network season with the Bob’s Burgers season finale this coming Sunday, and Elsbeth‘s season finale next week. I assume American Dad! isn’t going to air over the summer, so I think Sunday is also its midseason finale. But I believe it will return in the fall, and the next episodes will still be considered part of the same season (Wikipedia 22 / Hulu 20), as far as I know. I could be wrong on both counts.
To fill that gap coming up: Rick and Morty season 9 on May 24, weekly; The Four Seasons season 2 on May 28, all at once I think. House of the Dragon season 3 also got June 21 confirmed as its official premiere date.
If there are other shows you’re interested in, feel free to mention them. I’ve heard interesting things about The Audacity (Billy Magnussen, Sarah Goldberg), but haven’t watched yet. Sunny Nights with Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden has been available on Hulu for a while after dropping on Australia in December; that may be worth checking out as well. I don’t really know much else of what’s new, so I’m willing to listen.
Next week
As I head out today to northern California wine country for a wedding, I leave next Thursday in the capable hands of Dave Shutton. I don’t remember what he’s writing about (he may have told me and I forgot), but I’m sure it’ll be good.
What did all of you watch?
My weekly lineup is currently down to Elsbeth, Hacks, American Dad!, and Bob’s Burgers, none of which will still be airing after May.
- One of the tough things about being me is how hard I had to try to resist working “Love’s Labours Lost” into that headline. ↩︎
- The show is loaded with wordplay and puns like this. I will probably inadvertently give several more examples in this section. ↩︎
- See? (It’s pronounced “iss-TIN-ee,” so the joke probably isn’t evident unless you pay attention to the documentary chyrons. Or to the fact that the camera crew never gets Tammy completely in frame.) ↩︎
- One of my favorites here is a one-episode plot about Boon trying to develop a spinoff from the documentary that follows him at his work, Boon Country (“It’s a play on words.” “What words is it playing on?” “Um……… ‘Boon’ and ‘country'”). Boon manages to offer a player committed to Miami a million-dollar NIL deal he definitely is not authorized to offer (with money the school certainly doesn’t have), spends the rest of the episode researching ways to get himself off the hook legally and/or figure out how to break the news to Courteney that he’s going to prison, and gets bailed out at the end when Miami ups their offer to get the kid back. ↩︎
- The Emmy eligibility calendar is June 1 – May 31, so I figured, why not hand out any TV awards I want to give out on the same schedule? ↩︎
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Four, Episode Four, “It Happened One Night”
“I keep begging the janitor for more heat.”
“These beans are from World War II!”
“They’re hasbeans.”
This is another bonsai plot – many tiny plots, united by the fact that this takes place over a single very cold night, one that works very well because the writers seemed particularly inspired. The most interesting plot here is that Frank discovers Margaret has kept every note he ever wrote her, whereas he destroyed everything to keep his ass covered. A while back, I polled the MM Discord for people’s thoughts on Frank and Margaret as a couple, and it was universally considered that she improved him slightly but he dragged her down, and I think you can see that here; even better, I think this points to Margaret’s slow rewriting as a character, finding sincere love in her.
“You don’t have to whisper, Frank, he knows he’s Chinese.”
“I certainly wouldn’t trust anybody who could understand us.”
“You’re trembling. You scared?”
“Uh, no sir, just cold.”
“Got any brains, you’d be scared.”
This is a great Potter line, really conveys his sympathy and humanity. We also get his ability to charm his fellow colonels and even generals; he’s not just unlike Henry, he’s unlike anybody we’ve had as a main character here. Of course, it doesn’t help.
This also has an offhand line in which Hawkeye announces he’s a proud coward, a very consistent character trait the show had (he’d get Frank’s plan even as he disagreed). Hawkeye’s righteousness is also rational; there’s a very specific calculus he has for how much more the war costs than it achieves.
Columbo, “Suitable for Framing”
My favorite episode so far. Ross Martin plays an art critic who, with the help of his younger girlfriend, murders his wealthy art collector uncle and liberates a couple of his paintings. After last episode’s somewhat lackluster mystery, this one works like gangbusters: Columbo’s deductive skills are at their most sparkling throughout (the final bit with the fingerprints is a brilliant surprise, but the whole story is punctuated with lovely little pokes and prods like him setting the critic up to eviscerate the artwork he apparently devotedly celebrated the night before), and the plot keeps piling up surprises, retooling my understanding of Martin’s character’s exact plan a couple times. And Columbo gets a dual motivation here: not only a murder to solve but an innocent woman (Kim Hunter’s sweet, slightly daffy character) to protect, and this adds to the stakes. I love when he briefly stymies Martin’s Dale by simply refusing to search his aunt’s house, and Dale doesn’t know what to do about this.
Martin’s character is among the most acute in understanding that Columbo’s slovenly appearence is a facade, and that his ability to evade traps (as in not searching his stepmother’s house) is part of a calculated strategy. The humor of this episode comes from the fallacy of believing that because one person is an expert at one thing means he can be an expert at another, and he clearly recognizes that he’s in over his head.
I just realized that much of the novelty of this program is that, from a traditional narrative vantage point, Columbo is the antagonist. I think this is underscored more in the next episode, where there is a bit more sympathy for the killer’s predicament.
Yes, Martin thinking he’s outwitted Columbo by getting the house searched after all–cleverly enough–gives him such satisfaction, and then that makes it an even better stinger when it turns out he’s unknowingly played right into Columbo’s hands.
The antagonist role really is fascinating. Looking forward to seeing that play out in the next episode, although unfortunately that’ll have to wait until next week.
Pluribus, Episode One – Yeah, I’m into this, especially the sheer uncanny dread of the alien collective that felt very American/Twilight Zone in the sheer fear of collectivism and the hive-mind that tends to animate a lot of our science fiction and horror. But it’s also the fear of erasing what makes us human, our weird individual quirks and tendencies. This is also extremely funny with Vince Gilligan’s trademark humor – you cackle even with the goosebumps at the CSPAN text asking Carol – specifically – to call this number, please. Rhea Seehorn is also a great lead with her crankiness and increasing horror at her situation. (A great touch that Carol and Helen, like the alien collective, communicate well non-verbally.)
Tales from the Crypt, S2E2 – Directed by…Arnold Schwarzenegger?! And he does a good job?! Not the best episode, with one line giving away the twist far too easily. Still, the plot of an old man switching out body parts to please a younger woman leans well into the over the top comic book nature of the story (the reveal of Carlton’s new face is suitably grotesque) and it’s clearly personal in it’s focus on the body and preserving it at a cost, something Arnie in the early 90s understood all too well. Arnold Schwarzenegger, auteur?
I really like that Pluribus manages to go past any normal one-to-one bit of symbolism: the hive mind has various parallels, including ones Gilligan says couldn’t even have been on his mind when he started working on it (like generative AI) and ones different characters find obvious or meaningful, but it’s not only a metaphor, and it having a thingness of its own makes the whole thing feel more science fictional. (Which is also better for long-running stories: a TZ episode can be pure parable, but it’s over in half an hour; if you’re going to spend multiple hours telling me about something, I don’t want it to entirely be a metaphor for the thing you actually wanted to talk about.)
Yeah, there was evident thought put into how this would work and what makes the aliens seem sinister and also creepily benign. They don’t feel EVIL; they are acting according to some kind of inner nature and directive.
Seinfeld, S7: “The Calzone” – another really strong episode, season 7 seems to be finishing well after a little inconsistency earlier on. All of the plots here are funny and they intersect in clever ways, I love that Kramer’s plot is “he now likes wearing clothes that have been heated up” and they manage to make this compelling in a way some of the zanier stuff recently hasn’t been. This is also easily the funniest showcase for George’s faceless boss, he gets some great lines, Jerry and Elaine’s respective weird dating situations have some good laughs and Newman gets to be perfectly diabolical.
Secret Garden – finished off the new BBC nature series last night, five episodes that each applies the usual detailed wildlife photography but in British gardens this time rather than the desert or rainforest or whatever. Admittedly most of the selected gardens are pretty unusual but I guess you’ve got to go where the action is. Anyway it was pretty amazing while also being beautiful and relaxing, also every episode I got to laugh at the idea of David Attenborough (who is now ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD) reading out the URL for the BBC’s wildlife website. Feels slightly like elder abuse getting the extremely old to read a URL out loud.
George Steinbrenner! To be fair, my father had to explain who that was when I was a kid.
Aha! From my position of British ignorance I didn’t know if he was actually a caricature of a real person or just a general Sports Manager guy.
Also the source of the Simpsons joke “I still like him better than Steinbrenner.”
He was owner of the Yankees and kind of famously belligerent in that role. And got up to all sorts of weird stuff as such. (The one off the top of my head is hiring a private investigator to tail one of his own star players. Also I think at some point he got himself suspended for a year.)
Hence the joke comparing him unfavorably to Mr. Burns, which is quite the diss.
Good eulogies for some good-sounding shows: Stumble is one I especially want to get around to one of these days.