I’ve seen only a handful of eps, so I’m pretty clueless about it other than Drew Cary was the star and ‘Mimi’ was his foil. Anyway, here’s the question (and set-up):
Season 8: They basically pulled it off the schedule in mid-season. Then, in the summer they showed the rest of the season. Usually, when a show is tanking, they just pull the plug completely, and just add the unaired eps to the syndication package.
But the more puzzling fact is Season 9: The program was off the air for 10 months (from August to June) before the season started. Typically, it’s only about four months, from May to September. Then, they crammed in the whole season to run during the summer months, where you normally see only reruns.
That seems like an abnormally prolonged death for a show that’s going down the tubes. In most cases a network just pulls the plug. What accounted for this weird scheduling? Contract commitments?
Carey had a contract through Season 8. Since the network didn’t place them on the schedule, they were in effect cancelled, but still under contract to produce shows. So they did. Seems like they had fun with it, too.
Just Shoot Me was similar. I remember seeing David Spade around toward the end of that show on Leno. He said, “Yeah…we’re still making them. I guess they’ll air in the summer some time.”
You can read more about the Drew Carey show’s end here:
you can tell that once they were “cancelled” none of the cast and crew really gave a crap about the show anymore, but still wanted ABC to hold up their end of the deal, so they did all this crazy stuff that didn’t fit the show at all. Most of it was painful to watch (almost as painful as the Simpsons has been the last…7 seasons or so) but there was one gem in the Eagle episode, which was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on tv…ever.