5 Cancelled Shows I’ll Miss, and 5 I Won’t

It sucks when your favorite shows get cancelled. It also sucks when some not so promising shows get renewed over them. Still, I’d say the broadcast networks got it mostly right with their decisions this year (while HBO and TNT dropped the ball big time).

5 Cancelled Shows I’ll Miss…

5. Honorable Mention: Fringe and 30 Rock…These shows weren’t cancelled exactly as they had predetermined end dates going into their final seasons, but I’ll still miss them. The Office has also struggled for years but you have to admit their send-off was as good as it could be (it even redeemed Pam!).

4. Happy Endings…I never fell in love with this show the way other critics did, but I know it was top-quality, and it’s sad to see a promising show cut down while so many other stale sitcoms (anything on CBS) continue to dominate the ratings.

3. Go On and The New Normal…Two NBC comedies that probably deserved another season.

2. Enlightened…HBO’s excellent, wide-open exploration of one woman’s spiritual journey ended their second season with quite possibly their most accessible, crowd-pleasing episode ever (Amy finally blows the whistle on the corrupt, soul-stunting company she works for). At its heart the show captured what it’s like to try to become a better person in a world that doesn’t really reward that, and it’s a sad irony that HBO didn’t reward this over the limited, claustrophobic worlds of its other comedies.

1. Southland…You knew it was coming. I wrote an entire article a few weeks back begging TNT to save this show. They should have. It is quite simply the best cop show on TV since The Wire and The Shield ended. The huge cliffhangers (will Lydia and Russell finally be together? What happens to the partnership of Sammy and corrupt-cop Ben? Will John Cooper survive the night after being mistakenly shot by his fellow officers?) need resolution and now they’ll never come. This is the best show TNT has ever had and it’s a mistake not to continue it.

And 5 Cancelled Shows I Won’t Miss…

5. Dishonorable Mention: Touch…I loved this show’s first season. Then there was the second season, which is horrible. They took everything that made the first season great (the open vibe, the connectivity of seemingly unconnected people, the unique settings and tone, etc.) and morphed it into some hollow thriller where they had to find a kidnapped girl and stave off a maniacal, seemingly superhuman killer. If the third season could have continued in the tradition of the first, I would have happily signed on for that, but as is, I’m just glad we’ll be seeing Kiefer Sutherland in a 24 reboot.

4. Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23…This show always felt like it was trying too hard to be like the other off-the-wall single camera comedies. It became an experience in diminishing results.

3. Red Widow…I would have continued to watch this frustrating, wholly unsatisfying show into a second season. I’m glad I won’t have to.

2. Whitney…Okay, so I don’t technically watch this show, but it never should have gotten a second season. It’s good to know NBC finally realized their mistake. [Bonus points for cancelling the awful Guys with Kids.]

1. Up All Night…This show should have been formally cancelled a long time ago. It just shows how NBC is no longer monkeying around by gutting it. First, it was supposed to be a family comedy about raising a kid…Then it turned into The Maya Rudolph Show…Then it became a more generic workplace comedy with Will Arnett standing around awkwardly looking for stuff to do…Then this season cancelled the Ava Show and had Arnett go back to work totally confusing the tone…Then they yanked it from the network in hopes of making it a 3-camera comedy set on a soundstage (like most CBS comedies)…Then the creator quit…Then Christina Applegate quit…Then they hoped to recast Applegate with Lisa Kudrow, which would have been the umpteenth change to a show that was already struggling in buzz and ratings only in the middle of its second season. This was a mercy killing.