It wasn’t all good news for the shows over at ABC. While 13 shows were given new life at the network, ABC decided to do away with four series which unfortunately won’t make the cut for the 2020-21 season.
The cancellations include the freshman series Emergence, sophomore comedies Bless This Mess, Single Parents & Schooled as well as the new Kids Say The Darndest Things revival with Tiffany Haddish. Only one of these cancellations really isn’t all that surprising and that’s Emergence which, despite strong reviews for its first season, just didn’t connect with viewers during its fall run. ABC put a big marketing blitz behind the show, which they obtained from NBC in a bit of unusual circumstances where it had been developed and piloted, last May. The series starred Allison Tollman as a police chief who takes in a young child that she finds near the site of a mysterious accident who has no memory of what has happened.
The other cancellations sting a bit more because while they weren’t breakout hits, they had a decent fanbase, pedigree with the network, and much love from the network as well. Bless This Mess, which starred Lake Bell and Dax Shepard as a newlywed couple whose plan to ditch big-city living for a simpler life in Nebraska, actually drew sizeable numbers behind ABC flagship comedy The Conners. The theory was that Bless This Mess had a slight edge over Single Parents due to stronger ratings but no one expected both to be canceled. I’m sure ABC will further explain the decision when they announce their fall schedule.
Single Parents has been a fan favorite for the two seasons it has aired but the linear ratings have never been there for the show. The series followed a group of single parents as they lean on each other to help raise their 7-year-old kids and maintain some kind of personal lives outside of parenthood. The show starred Leighton Meester, Taran Killam, Kimrie Lewis, Jake Choi, and Brad Garrett.
Schooled, which is a spinoff of their popular series The Goldbergs, was also in its second season and seemed like a lock to return given its connection to the parent show. The spinoff did have a rocky run with a slew of showrunner changes, which likely factored into the cancelation decision because the numbers were stable enough for a return. The Goldbergs’ spinoff, set in the 1990s with Lainey Lewis, played by AK Michalka returning to Jenkintown after her rock n roll dreams fizzled out, was created by Marc Firek and The Goldbergs creator Adam F. Goldberg. Firek was the original showrunner during Schooled’s freshman season. He was replaced by Tim Doyle at the start of season two, but Doyle himself left over creative differences after 13 episodes and was replaced by Tom Hertz and Vanessa McCarthy who ran the show for the Back 9 Season 2 episodes.
Lastly, Kids Say Darndest Thing, which saw Haddish replace Bill Cosby in a reboot of the series that ran on CBS between 1998 and 2000, got off to a respectable start, becoming ABC’s most-watched fall premiere in the Sunday night slot in four years but the ratings dwindled week-to-week and the show just couldn’t hold on to its early buzz. Some thought it could return since it’s not expensive to produce but Haddish likely required a hefty payday and I’m sure that factored into letting the show go.
