One could argue Brooklyn Nine-Nine is now in its natural habitat. NBC had preexisting ties to the five-year-old Fox sitcom before salvaging it from the latter network’s bin this past week.
As USA Today’s Gary Levin assessed, “NBC’s Universal Television owns the comedy…so extending it figures to increase profits on the show and give the network some goodwill among comedy fans of its like-minded Superstore and The Good Place.”
Levin’s report also described the Andy Samberg vehicle as an “acclaimed but low-rated comedy.” Based on his aforementioned analysis, though, there is cause to believe NBC will know how to remedy the ratings. It will reportedly have at least a half-year to configure its plan, as the show projects to wait until 2019 to premiere Season 6.
Paradoxically, Brooklyn Nine-Nine had both the longest chronicle and arguably the most potential still ahead of all recent Fox cancellations. Fellow sitcoms The Last Man on Earth and The Mick were also led down the egress.
With three-and-a-half and one-and-a-half seasons, those two combined to match the length of Samberg’s show. Even so, their respective sagas did not appear to have much of a ceiling. Never say never, but their futures under new auspices are in doubt.
Still, their main actors will have an inlet to dispense their talents somewhere, somehow. With that in mind, here are the questions most worth pondering for the aftermath of this troika of terminations among Fox sitcoms.
Will NBC be Samberg and Schur’s haven for prosperity?
Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s centerpiece returns to familiar territory, having spent seven years on Saturday Night Live. His tenure there overlapped with those of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who each stayed at NBC for their respective successful sitcoms.
Fey’s program, 30 Rock, won three consecutive Emmys for outstanding comedy series. Poehler’s project, Parks and Recreation, was overseen by offscreen SNL alum and Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-creator Michael Schur. The ensemble was twice nominated for an Emmy, while Schur and Poehler garnered one and five individual nods, respectively.
The unofficial tradition of ex-SNLers thriving on later NBC programs dates back even farther. In the ’90s, Julia Louis-Dreyfus won an Emmy and several equivalent prizes for her supporting performances on Seinfeld. In the same era, Jane Curtin was part of the Screen Actors Guild-nominated cast of 3rd Rock from the Sun.
Ordinarily, a show running as long as Brooklyn Nine-Nine has already peaked as an award contender at this point. But while it may not reach the summit, it would be more surprising if it did not get more attention and consideration for its first couple of years post-transfer.
No pressure, naturally, but Samberg and Schur, who also produced The Office, warrant elevated expectations under this arrangement.
What about Will (and Jason)?
Will Forte and the other brains behind The Last Man on Earth have nothing to be ashamed of. Who honestly thought a program with that premise would have mustered one, let alone three full seasons?
Come what may, the eventuality one could have logically expected to happen two months after the March 1, 2015 premiere waited another 36. Now that it has, yet another former SNL staple is without a defining TV project.
But one of Last Man’s plus points was its use of Forte’s chemistry with former SNL contemporary Jason Sudeikis. Even if there is no room for a warm welcome back to NBC, there are plenty of other platforms for a potential new program. Just consider all of the cable and web-only outlets that reportedly clamored for Brooklyn Nine–Nine on Friday.
No one ever said two actors couldn’t play brothers on unrelated series. A fresh start for the Forte-Sudeikis tandem would be the best-cast scenario for those who banked on more Last Man action.
In the meantime, at least Kristen Schaal is staying on Fox, as Bob’s Burgers keeps cooking strong.
Is there an Always Sunny curse?
To complete its cancellation hat trick, Fox cut off The Mick at its year-and-a-half mark. Now Kaitlin Olson’s fans must wait indefinitely for the 13th season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
FXX promises it will happen, as will a 14th season, but not for a while. After all, another Always Sunny core cast member Glenn Howerton has just begun his own mainstream network show.
But the abrupt ending of The Mick makes one wonder whether A.P. Bio can grow lasting legs on NBC. Consider some of the unfavorable critical assessments of each show, and how they remind one of Olson and Howerton’s breakout performances as the Reynolds twins.
Of The Mick, Rotten Tomatoes concluded, “Kaitlin Olson’s considerable charm isn’t enough to keep the intermittently funny The Mick from falling prey to conventional storylines and hard-to-root-for characters.”
Meanwhile, on the eve of A.P. Bio’s midwinter premiere, the New York Times’ Margaret Lyons termed it a “terrible-person-is-inappropriately-bad-at-job show.”
In fairness, that is more or less what Always Sunny has been for 12 years. That dynamic worked for the program’s initial run on FX, essentially the JV Fox network. And it has continued to please its niche audience since being relegated to FXX, the JV-B of the family.
With that said, the quartet from the show that embraced its “Seinfeld on crack” characterization may be looking at its own hex. By the early looks of it, said curse is triggered when anyone attempts a new program on a non-cable channel.
Naturally, Louis-Dreyfus dispelled the notion of a “Seinfeld curse,” although she has mostly done it outside of seasoned, non-cable TV. After a sound run on CBS with The New Adventures of Old Christine, she has made her legacy on Veep via HBO.
Fortunately, as the previous capsule mentions, there are many more suitable outlets online and on digital cable for “The Gang’s” post-Always Sunny era. They do not need to try to graduate to the varsity of primetime programming.
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