We live in a world saturated with misinformation,
so it's no surprise that we get things wrong from time to time. Sit back and
find out all the false things you've come to believe about why these shows were cancelled.
Years after Felicity left the airwaves, it's still remembered for one event:
The Haircut. More than any character, plot point, or storyline, Felicity's
iconic hair getting trimmed into a weird sort of pixie cut has defined
the series. It's been a source of pop culture derision ever since,
and it's often considered the moment that killed the show. There is a little truth to this, being
that there was enough fan backlash that executive producer J.J. Abrams took responsibility for the
idea in the press. However, the real problems were changing time slots and weaker stories.
First, the time slot. Felicity was broadcast on Tuesday evenings during the first season,
prime TV real estate for the late '90s. The second season saw the network move it to Sunday nights,
a much weaker time slot. Second, the storylines were underwhelming,
an opinion held by both fans and creatives working on the
show. Abrams admitted this at the time to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, saying:
"There was a crucial period of four or five episodes where we told stories that
were a little unfocused and it didn't feel as compelling as it should have."
His estimate of four or five is important, because the Haircut
happened in episode five. It might have shocked some fans, but the show was already
losing viewers — and it's easier to blame a single event than a series of bad decisions.
The final season of Zoey 101 was shown under the spectre of one of Nickelodeon's biggest
controversies: star Jamie Lynn Spears becoming pregnant at age 16. Given that she announced
her pregnancy in December of 2007 and the fourth and final season began January 2008,
many see the two events and assume one led to the finale
of the other. This is false — the two events were, in fact, independent of one another.
Series creator Dan Schneider gets asked if Spears' pregnancy led to the end of the show
quite a bit, so much so that he put the answer on his blog's FAQ page.
He made it abundantly clear that they didn't even find out she was pregnant until later.
"The last season was shot during the summer of 2007, and wrapped in August. We had our final
wrap party at the end of August. Everyone had a fun time, hugged, and we all said our
goodbyes. That was the end of Zoey 101, in terms of production. It wasn't until several
weeks later (in October) that anyone from our production heard about Jamie Lynn being pregnant."
He also said the show ended because Nick had enough in the
can for reruns and everyone was ready to move on.
One of the central narratives NBC pushed in the wake of the 2010 Tonight Show conflict
was that Conan O'Brien's run as the host of the show led to the long-running franchise
losing money for the first time in its history. Somehow, despite all the public examination
and re-litigation, this point has stood. Here's the thing, though:
it's mathematically improbable for the show to have lost money.
For starters, television isn't about having the most viewers, it's about having the right viewers.
While O'Brien's Tonight was drawing fewer overall viewers, he outperformed Leno's tenure in key
demographics — a surefire sign of better ad buys and high revenue. Speaking of revenue,
lower revenue doesn't mean unprofitable: O'Brien's Tonight had similar ratings to
The Late Show with David Letterman, a show that cost more and was still profitable. O'Brien's
salary was also estimated to be just half of Leno's $30 million. On top of all this,
talk shows are so durable because they're among the cheapest television shows to produce,
and the idea that the biggest name show in late night would lose money is unlikely.
O'Brien told 60 Minutes that NBC's claim about Tonight losing money was impossible,
a sentiment echoed by late night experts and experts consulted by The Wrap. O'Brien reasoned in
Bill Carter's book The War For Late Night that NBC could have only decided the show was unprofitable
if they factored in construction of new offices and sets, which is a stretch to say the least.
Strangers with Candy frequently appears on lists of shows canceled too soon.
Running for 30 episodes between 1999 and 2000,
the show had a murderers' row of comedic talent — Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert,
Paul Dinello, and Janeane Garofalo— and a strong cult following. Fans rejoiced when a prequel film
came out in 2005 starring all the original cast. During the press tour, Sedaris revealed something
that didn't get much attention then, nor has it since: the show was never canceled at all.
In an interview with the Austin Chronicle,
Sedaris stated that at no point was the show ever canceled:
"We wanted to go out; we wanted a final episode because usually Comedy Central does
things in three seasons, so we kind of figured we had three seasons. We thought
if we were going to do it again, yeah, we could write 10 episodes or not write 10 episodes."
They just stopped making episodes, figuring that their time was up anyway.
The Wonder Years came to a natural conclusion, both in the show's continuity and with real life
circumstances. In the show, Kevin and Winnie's relationship comes to a passionate close and
everyone is ready to move on to their next chapter. In real life, all of the young actors
were getting older and the show had to wrap up sooner rather than later. But according to at
least one source, these aren't the true reasons the show ended: the blame lies with a lawsuit.
"My hunch was that my father would not let being called a brain-washed
moron at his dinner table go by unremarked."
During the final season, the show's former costume designer Monique Long filed a sexual
harassment suit against stars Fred Savage and Jason Hervey, claiming she was let go from the
show after rebuffing their advances. Abbey Mills, who played Norma Arnold, revealed in a 2018
interview with Yahoo! Entertainment that the PR nightmare that would have resulted
led the show to make the final episode of that season the series finale instead of hanging on
for another year. Mills refuted the suit, which was later settled out of court. Savage has long
defended his innocence, but Long stands by her claims. Either way, there's credible reason to
believe this legal action had more to do with the show getting axed than Savage turning 17.
The arc of Twin Peaks as a show, from debut to cancellation, is often summed up thusly:
the first season was a smash hit, the network forced the show to reveal the
killer early after dwindling interest, and the rest of season two just wasn't that good.
Every part of this is at least partially true, and there were other factors that fed into it — such
as a behind-the-scenes feud that killed the planned Audrey-Cooper storyline. But this
all leaves out maybe the most important reason for the ratings drop: time slot shenanigans.
The first episode of Twin Peaks, broadcast on a Sunday, nabbed monster ratings — partially
due to America's Funniest Home Videos being the lead-in. Ratings stayed solid enough after it
moved to Thursdays, but there was a clear decline in viewership after four episodes. This was due
in part to ABC scheduling Twin Peaks against Cheers, a well-established powerhouse of a show.
Cheers was also episodic instead of serialized like Twin Peaks, meaning that someone who missed
an episode of Twin Peaks might be more willing to cut their losses in an era before DVR.
The situation was made worse in season two,
being that it was moved to Saturday nights, one of the worst time slots on all of TV.
Series co-creator Mark Frost brought up another obstacle during an interview on WFDU,
which was that the show kept getting preempted by coverage of the Gulf War, a huge moneymaker and
ratings getter for TV at the time. Between the bad time slot, the preemption, and the serialization
in an era when that wasn't common, the show was going to lose viewers regardless of its content.
The 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon came out at the initial height of the
game's popularity — and was a big hit for a few seasons. It also attracted controversy,
almost entirely because D&D was one of the targets of the 1980s Satanic panic. The most prominent of
these objections came from the National Coalition of Television Violence, who petitioned the Federal
Trade Commission and Consumer Protection Agency to put a warning on all D&D properties — including
the TV show — that they were linked to violent deaths. These requests were rejected.
Between the D&D panic and the concerns about violence, the fact that the show ended with an
unresolved storyline after three seasons fed into two rumors about its cancellation, both of them
false. First, that the missing episode showed the kids suffering an awful fate — often listed
as being stuck in Hell after dying. Script writer Michael Reaves shot this down hard on his blog.
Second, that the show was canceled after protests. Mark Evanier,
who developed the show for television, dismissed that on his blog, explaining:
"The Dungeons & Dragons series was cancelled due to declining ratings. I keep reading stories about
it getting yanked off the air because it was too 'violent' or because protest groups thought
it was Satanic or something of the sort. As far as I know, the protests were minimal and had no
impact. The show simply began losing its audience, as all shows eventually do."
"Good, but make sure you wait until I fire the signal arrow before you begin your attack."
The mere phrase "Cousin Oliver" inspires snarled lips and looks of disdain among sitcom lovers.
Brought in during the last season of The Brady Bunch, Oliver was meant to replace some of the
cute factor that was lost after the youngest kids grew up — but instead ended up a cloying presence.
None of this is a knock on actor Robbie Rist, who was just a kid and went on to have a solid career
in music and voice acting. Nonetheless, "Cousin Oliver" is now shorthand for when shows bring
in someone cute to liven up a dying show and the new character ends up having the inverse effect.
There's just one problem with that theory:
The Brady Bunch was not popular during its original run, not by any meaningful metric.
Though the show surely had its regular viewers, at no point during its five-season run did it
crack the Top 30 of Nielsen ratings, peaking at 31 in season three. The final season was rated 55th
out of a possible 80 shows, and at that point no cast addition or subtraction is going to make
a difference — and it's unfair to blame a kid, albeit an obnoxious one, who was only there for a
handful of episodes. There's also a decent chance ABC wouldn't have wanted to continue anyway:
not only were the kids getting older, they had enough episodes for syndication. If so,
that plan worked beautifully: it became a monster hit and TV staple in reruns,
never leaving the air and kickstarting a new franchise.
The phrase "jump the shark" has a special meaning to Happy Days fans. Named after an absurd stunt in
season five episode "Hollywood: Part 3" where Fonzie straps on water skis and jumps over a
shark, the idiom refers to the point where a show does something that marks a decline in quality.
For Happy Days in particular, the shark jump wasn't even close to the beginning of the end.
It wasn't even the beginning of the middle. It ran for years afterwards.
Happy Days was never a critical darling, so the idea that reviews went down afterwards is hard to
substantiate. Also, the phrase "jump the shark" was coined circa 1985 — at least one year after
Happy Days ended and nearly a decade after the episode in question. Having such a moment marked
in hindsight instead of contemporarily shows this as more of a thought experiment than a
hard and fast rule. The franchise also had a number of important events occur
after the jump, including the introduction of Mork from Ork and a half dozen spinoffs.
Fred Fox Jr., who wrote the episode, made an airtight point in the L.A. Times:
"It was the 91st episode and the fifth season. If this was really the beginning of a downward
spiral, why did the show stay on the air for six more seasons and shoot an additional 164 episodes?
Why did we rank among the Top 25 in five of those six seasons?"
MeTV even offered their own list of more accurate alternatives,
including Fonzie working as a teacher and kissing a nun.
Television in the 1950s and 60s was defined by shows taking place in rural areas and small towns.
Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, and more than a few shows about
the town of Mayberry ruled the airwaves — and that's just scratching the surface.
Then there was a sea change around 1970, when networks saw urban shows like All in the Family
and Mary Tyler Moore draw great ratings and bring a new level of respectability
and sophistication to the networks. By the end of the 1970 and 1971 TV season, most of
these country-themed shows were unceremoniously canceled in what's been dubbed the Rural Purge.
One such show that wrapped during this era was Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. – and,
given its connection to Mayberry, is often incorrectly listed as getting canceled as
part of the Rural Purge. This is false, being that star Jim Nabors left the show
in 1969 after five wildly successful seasons simply because he wanted to do something else.
Nabors saw himself as more of an entertainer than an actor, and as such he built a variety show
after departing. There was, however, one related show that got axed:
Mayberry R.F.D., the last connection to The Andy Griffith Show remaining. It's likely
Mayberry R.F.D. and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. got conflated and a misconception was born.
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