It sounds like my favorite TV show, Arrested Development, is facing some big trouble. The ratings were never good, despite critical acclaim, several Emmy wins (including “Best Comedy Series”), and a recent Golden Globe for the lead actor, Jason Bateman. But apparently Fox has ordered fewer episodes for AD’s third season, the new Seth McFarlane cartoon American Dad is taking over its Sunday night at 8:30 time slot in May, and David Cross was just on the Jimmy Kimmel show saying Fox shut down production. I am horribly disappointed, because it was the funniest damn show on television, and perhaps my all-time favorite series. Here is more information:
Lou, thanks for the articles I’d missed. My feelings about this are too full of cuss words for CS, so if this news makes you want to break the rules too, please join me in The Pit.
<doing the coke-a, coke-a, coke-a dance of contempt for Fox>
This is ridiculous. I think it was about a month ago that Fox was complaining about how horrible the ratings were for their awful reality shows and that they were going to cut down production on them, and now suddenly they want to stop production of one of the most brilliant sitcoms ever, and instead make more agonizingly unfunny episodes of American Dad? Then I promise you, they’ll decide to cancel that in about a year and shrug their collective shoulders and say, Gee whiz, why aren’t people watching our shows? And continue to have no clues whatsoever. But, given the critical popularity with Arrested Development, how could some other channel not want to pick it up?
I really hate to say it, but two seasons is more than enough time to find an audience if it’s there.
Fox didn’t yank this thing around from timeslot to timeslot, pre-empt it every other week, and pimped the hell out of the show with commercials that gave the tone as accurately as could be reasonably expected. If the ratings are bad, Fox shouldn’t be expected to keep it on life support until America finally gets it.
America will get the crap they’ll watch. They aren’t watching Arrested Development. Not enough for it to be profitable, apparently.
Not that the show isn’t brilliant and news of the impending cancellation doesn’t make me want to put my fist through a window.
I agree. Sometimes good shows just don’t find an audience. I was very disappointed when *Sports Night * was canceled. I thought it was a great show, but never seemed to find its audience.
I’d have to give Fox credit on this one. They ran a FULL Season, Renewed on Faith, and when they won the Emmy, Fox promoted the heck out of it. And the show has one of the best timeslots that Fox can offer (behind its #2 rated series).
I new something was up when it wasn’t promoted ONCE during the Superbowl leadup.
Sad news. It is ashame that America wants crap instead of quality.
Sadly, the quality of the show has dropped this year from last as well. It was still good, but much of last year’s spark was gone. Blue man group, Anne, Dad in the attic- all painfully unfunny bits that never end. Even Buster and Gob are alot less funny this year, which I thought would never happen.
Oh well, I will still have fond memories of the first year.
Yeah, you can only beat the “look how WACKY this family is!” dead horse for so long. I tried really hard to like that show but it never did anything for me.
I have to agree. I gave it several episodes and couldn’t make a connection with it. I should be a prime audience for it: I detest most ordinary sitcoms. But it wasn’t in the lest bit funny. It was odd, or wacky, or deliberately in-your-face, but never funny.
Sorry to have to agree with you. I saw it several times and, although I wouldn’t say I was bored, I don’t think I ever laughed out loud, or for that matter, smiled much during the show. It was at best “clever” but I do not understand people calling it the funniest show on TV. If so, I am really missing something. BTW, don’t mean to rain on the parade and I take no glee that it seems to be on the way out.
Actually the Blue Man started in the first year, and it did end. We’ll see how things go with Ann… anyway the first season is a lot to live up to, but I think the show can equal that if it has more than one other season.
I’m in the camp of “loved it at first, but not so much now”. I think that the show lost something between season one and two (perhaps a writer or two?). As funny and outrageous as it can sometimes still be, it’s apparent to me that the downward slide is probably unstoppable.
It’s not easy to maintain such a high level. Even Coupling (the BBC version), which I think was the best written sitcom ever, lost it’s spark relatively quickly (and died without Jeff). I’ll place the first season of AD on that same level with Coupling, but I’m not expecting it to get much better from here on out.
That said, I am curous why Fox never promoted AD’s Emmy wins as heavily as NBC pimps out it’s winners.
Though I’m terribly saddened by the news, an itty-bitty part of me is relieved. The high level of quality that the show (even now) so often reaches is incredibly hard to maintain, and if the show were more successful, I’d be afraid that the normal problems with shows (especially with such an enormous cast) might begin to emerge. Better for it to go out on top, though a meaty 3rd season would be nice…
I never expected it to last so long. It was hilarious – by far the funniest show on TV – but the humor was much too subtle for most people. It required very close attention to understand it, and no matter how carefully you watched, you’d get on line and discover something else someone else caught (like sneaking the f-word past the censors unbleeped, or the outrageous double entendres*). No one did a better job of building a joke, and it was one of the few sitcoms that actually knew how to top a joke.
It’s the only show I ever desired to have a DVD of the entire season. By far the best TV comedy in years.
The sad thing is that it looks like they’ll replace it with that abomination, American Dad. :wally
*For instance, in one show, someone referred to George, Sr. as always having something in the kitty. Not very funny until you realize that Kitty was his secretary.
I read a letter to TV Guide about Arrested Development that read something like this [paraphrasing]:
I think AD was doomed from the start. The humor was of a subtle variety that Mainstream American just wasn’t likely to “get.”
Too bad. It was a funny show, in its own way. Especially the first couple of episodes.
Funniest scene: George Michael is crushing on Maeby, while she’s oblivious. She has to move into his room, and he’s laying on the bed with a horrified expression while she’s bouncing up and down on his bed trying to get him to wrestle. hee hee hee
