When a studio gives you money to shoot a pilot episode, hopes are so high. The actors are all rip-roaring and ready to deliver. Everyone involved is looking to create a pop culture phenomenon for the masses that will last long enough to give all of the workers a stable career for a few years. Not only does the network decide to pick your show up based on that Pilot episode, but your show also finds an audience and helps the network do gangbuster business. Then it could go on for years. Most of the best-remembered shows lasted for at least three to five years.
During Pilot season, countless amounts of new shows are produced, and all of the crews work hard to realize a singular vision. But for whatever the reason, the series isn’t picked up and the crew goes back to the drawing board. Then there’s the even more dreaded feeling of when a show is “this close” to premiering that there’s a buzz around them, but the network decides not to air the show at the last minute. Thanks to the internet, more and more we’ve found out about plenty of these.
On the flip side of never airing, there are shows that last way too long. Here are Ten Canceled TV Shows We Never Got To See (And Ten That Went On Too Long).
Never Got To See: Mission Control
Krysten Ritter has garnered a devoted following of fans over the years. She’s always willing to try something out of the box with every role she takes on. It was no different when she signed on to 2014’s Mission Control.
With Will Ferrell on board as producer, the show was going to have an Anchorman type of feel and center on Ritter’s character butting heads with an astronaut during the 1960’s space race. Ritter wasn’t the issue for the show’s cancellation but casting changes were.
Went On Too Long: The Big Bang Theory
When The Big Bang Theory debuted way back in 2007, no one expected the kind of runaway success the show would have. A comedy featuring four geeks as it stars spoke to a lot of geeks who always flew their flag and the closeted ones, who only started coming out thanks to things like the MCU, and this show.
For the most part like many sitcoms of yesteryear, the yuks pretty much always come from the same place. For. Twelve. Years. We should all thank star Jim Parsons, not just for his portrayal of Sheldon, but for not wanting to continue past this current season, which is why it’s the last. Series creator, Chuck Lorre too, for not even attempting a single episode without Sheldon.
Never Got To See: Emily Reasons Why Not
When a self-help guru needs help finding love, that’s usually a decent premise for a sitcom. Emily Reasons Why Not, starring Heather Graham was supposed to feature her dating life. If Emily can come up with five reasons to break up with a guy, then she has to do so.
The failure of the show was epic. ABC signed the series up without seeing a script. Then they plunked down all kinds of money for advertising on the [Love] In The City clone. But after one episode, the network decided they had found their five reasons and didn’t bother airing the remaining episodes.
Went On Too Long: How I Met Your Mother
Even though we would have never have seen Ted meet Tracy, the season eight finale where she arrives to the tune of the Shins’ “A Simple Song,” is pretty near perfect. There would have been plenty of ends left open, but that moment where we finally see her is pure TV magic.
That magic did not translate to the final season of How I Met Your Mother, at all. The decision to have it take place over the course of the weekend of Barney and Robin’s nuptials should have maybe been done as a cool Emo movie; series star Josh Radnor had directed two of those so far. The final season was devoid of what made the show great: its heart and earnestness.
Never Got To See: The IT Crowd
Take a pre-Community Joel McHale, along with a shot-for-shot remake of the pilot episode of a popular British sitcom and you should have the makings of a pretty funny show. The IT Crowd was going to be a series about a bunch of computer nerds and their boss.
After seeing the Pilot, NBC ultimately decided against the show, despite picking it for a full season. The series couldn’t escape its British roots, and when it did, McHale’s character, which was a take on Roy was more of a scumbag and less of a good guy.
Went On Too Long: The Simpsons
A funny thing about The Simpsons – no matter the amount of people who keep calling for the show’s end (“it hasn’t been great since the late-nineties") – people (the very same people) wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if the show went off the air.
Something like that isn’t going to happen for a long time still. Currently at episode 657 episodes, the show will at least head into the 32nd season and its 700th episode. So, has the show gone on for too long, or have detractors who were once fans simply gotten too old?
Never Got To See: Lookwell
Adam West will forever be Batman in a lot of fans’ hearts and minds. As evidenced by his run on Family Guy, he didn’t mind poking fun at himself either. Which might have been something that would have been done to demise if his show, Lookwell, got picked up as a series.
Created by Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel, the show featured West as an actor of a bad 70’s detective show. Ty Lookwell felt that made him qualified to solve crimes. The show was ahead of its time for 1991, and NBC passed on it, not knowing where to fit the show into its schedule.
Went On Too Long: Two And A Half Men
Any list of this nature would and should include Two And A Half Men. The show was hitting a slight second wind when Charlie Sheen began winning and was subsequently fired from the show that renewed his stardom.
Not one to let Sheen win and spend the rest of his life talking about how Men couldn’t go on without him, Chuck Lorre kept the show plodding along for another four years. Casting Ashton Kutcher didn’t help at all. It merely changed the dynamic of what the show was.
Never Got To See: Clerks.
Jim Breuer has the dubious distinction of being on this list not once, but twice! Here, the comic starred as Randall Graves in the pilot episode of Clerks. It’s not the first time that someone tried to turn a two-hour movie into a weekly sitcom, but it might be the worst.
With the exception of Breuer doing his best to embody Jeff Anderson’s original performance and a pre-stealing everyone’s heart, Keri Russell, there was clearly nothing here. If you want to watch the 22-minute train wreck, you can find it on YouTube.
Went On Too Long: The Office
Just because the star of your show leaves doesn’t always necessarily mean the end for your series. For a series like The Office that’s a big insult to the rest of the ensemble cast. Steve Carrell was amazing as Michael Scott, but so was the rest of the cast.
But after Carrell left, the big void he created was extremely hard to fill. But they tried to slog on for a few more seasons. James Spader joined the cast, he couldn’t replace Carrell. When you have an actor as zany as James Spader and he can’t redirect the show, it’s time to end it. But still, they slogged on until the finale.
Never Got To See: Sick In The Head
Freaks And Geeks and Undeclared were two Judd Apatow shows gone before their time. But they both showed how talented the guy was. Apatow had another show he had tried to get off the ground – Sick In The Head.
The show would have starred David Krumholtz as a psychiatrist trying to get his practice off the ground. You’d have to assume here that a lot of the humor would come from Krumholtz probably being a lot more neurotic than any of his patients.
Went On Too Long: That ’70s Show
About 93% of That ’70s Show took place in Eric Forman’s basement. Most of the show revolved around Eric and Donna’s relationship. When Topher Grace left the show at the end of the seventh season, the cast and crew decided to try to go on. Then they also would lose Ashton Kutcher.
The last season of the show is largely and rightfully forgotten by fans. They brought in Josh Myers as a new character, Randy. Just about every joke he told was forced and unnatural. The rest of the cast phoned it all in and Jackie all of the sudden decided she was in love with Fez. It was an entire head-scratcher of a last season.
Never Got To See: Heat Vision And Jack
Jack Black won’t rest until he gets to play a superhero of some kind and completely ruins the action genre. He almost played Green Lantern. Here he is again, playing an astronaut who flew too close to the sun and would become super smart in the daylight. Jack’s bike, voiced by Owen Wilson, would join to create a true spectacle – Heat Vision And Jack.
The whole series was undoubtedly going to be a send-up of shows like Knight Rider and the Pilot was directed by Ben Stiller. For some reason, NBC brass decided this concept wouldn’t work and the show was not picked up.
Went On Too Long: Roseanne
In the final moments of Roseanne, she delivered a mega-meta monologue explaining how the entire last season (and plenty of the character elements of the entire show) was all just a figment of a writer’s imagination.
For eight years, the show was able to deliver a microcosm of what it was like living from paycheck to paycheck. The Connor family were wacky by TV standards, but still very relatable. Eight years was enough for the show. The last season was series creator and writers completely off their rockers filming whatever strange idea they dreamt up.
Never Got To See: Nobody’s Watching
Have you ever watched some of the shows on TV and thought that you could make a better show? That’s what Derrick and Will thought too. Only they acted on this impulse and somehow wormed their way into the WB giving them a show.
Created by Bill Lawrence and starring a pre-SNL Tarran Killam and Paul Campbell as two friends who lucked out and got the chance to produce their own sketch show, which they decide to call “Nobody’s Watching.” The show might have been way too smart and meta for its own good. That’s good for critics, but bad for viewership.
Went On Too Long: Friends
In recent years, Jerry Seinfeld has pointed out the similarities between his show and Friends. In his opinion, NBC wanted a younger, hipper version of his series. Whether that’s true or not, Friends did copy the formula slightly. It wasn’t a series about nothing, but when the show debuted in 1994, there were very few sitcoms that featured a crew just hanging around.
Fast-forward ten years and by the time it ended, there were a bazillion clones (and still more come to this day). But the last few seasons had Joey kissing Rachel. Even the Titanic hit an iceberg.
Never Got To See: Buddies
When comic friends Dave Chappelle and Jim Breuer had a guest spot on Home Improvement, ABC executives fell in love with the pair and were committed to bringing their chemistry to their own show. Buddies was born.
Instead of letting Chappelle and Breuer do their thing, ABC replaced Breuer during filming of the Pilot. They replaced him with Christopher Gartin and there went any possibility of a classic sitcom. Chappelle’s heart wasn’t into doing it alone and the show lasted five out of their thirteen episodes.
Went On Too Long: Glee
When real life drama hit Glee hard, creator Ryan Murphy did exactly what he should have done. Right after Cory Monteith’s tribute episode, “The Quarterback,” he had announced that it would be show’s final season.
That doesn’t mean that Glee didn’t run several seasons too long. The comedy-drama series tackled plenty of issues, but the first two seasons are nothing short of phenomenal. The rest of the series, especially when the cast was split between college and high school…not so much.
Never Got To See: Tag Team
The most popular wrestling villain of the eighties was set to team up with the most popular wrestling villain color commentator of the eighties for a Tag Team extravaganza. Roddy Piper and Jesse Ventura we’re set to star in this ABC show.
The show was not set up to be a sitcom, but anyone who’s ever heard these two speak, combined with the outlandish (two wrestlers foil a robbery and decided to become cops), it very well should have been one. The premise was crazy enough for wrestling fans to tune in, but an unrelated legal dispute between the show’s two production companies left work on Tag Team in limbo.
Went On Too Long: Family Guy
Seth Macfarlane had once said that he thought Family Guy had gone on for too long. That interview was eight years ago. The show is still on – seventeen seasons, a couple of cancellations, 326 episodes, some bazillion complaints, and endless criticisms later and the show is still on.
This begs the question – if the show hasn’t ended yet, even when it’s creator has said it probably should have ended, and he’s very busy doing other shows as well – how and when will this show actually end?
