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UPDATE 11:30 AM: NBC has made it official: Starting next week, repeats of Whitney will air in the Wednesday 8:30 PM slot vacated by Free Agents.
PREVIOUS: The inevitable happened this morning after another poor showing from NBC’s freshman comedy. Free Agents averaged a paltry 1.0 rating in 18-49 and 3.3 million viewers last night. The underperforming new comedy got a stay of execution last week, when it also posted a 1.0 demo rating, for one more shot at improving — but that didn’t happen. There is no final decision yet what NBC will put in the Wednesday 8:30 PM slot, but reruns of new comedy Whitney are a strong possibility. NBC’s boss Bob Greenblatt earlier this week replaced canceled The Playboy Club with repeats of new drama Prime Suspect for additional sampling. I won’t be surprised if Whitney eventually migrates to Wednesday with originals while 30 Rock rejoins NBC’s Thursday lineup. Production on Free Agents was stopped right away. As one commenter noted, “They canceled the show in the middle of an episode and in the middle of a work day. Actors were just called to not come to set today. Harsh.” Based on the British series of the same name, Free Agents starred Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hahn as co-workers who start sleeping together. Azaria started the season with two series on the air, Free Agents and The Simpsons. With Free Agents just cancelled and The Simpsons‘ future in limbo over salary dispute with the voice cast, he may lose both in one week.
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Hmmm. Big shocker.
Bummer – love Kathryn Hahn. She & Hank had great chemistry. Adaptation/story just didn’t hold up.
Agreed. Bad writing.
Looks like Hank shouldn’t take that 45% pay decrease from Fox after all. Too bad, this show was really growing on me.
This show was good. Parks and Rec and 30 Rock were given the time to succeed. What gives?
OMG, Greenblatt is embarrassing himself with this one. NOT that this is a show going to make it’s huge mark or tons of cash. Nope, but compared to that insipid painful-to-watch Whitney, this makes NO sense at all. Sadly shakes head after thinking NBC had a shot at something….
Look at the ratings, no one would cancel Whitney ESPECIALLY not ratings-starved NBC.
Give it a few more weeks.
How does this not make sense? The ratings were awful.
you don’t know what the difference is, seriously? theyre called ratings, you should look into them.
When 30 Rock returns they can add it back to Thursday and move Whitney to Wednesdays.
Really sucks that they had to push it to 2012… Whitney doesn’t fit AT ALL with the rest of the Thursday line-up. Definitely a better fit with Up All Night.
Maybe they can get Dan Harmon to make twice as many Community episodes until then?
They should get Community on Netflix watch-it-now to get NEW viewers caught up and to gain them as well!!! CMON NBC!!! Don’t let this show get cancelled like Arrested Development, Firefly, and Better off Ted!!!
I really liked this show. Guess there’s no place for smart comedies on TV.
try watching Community.
Actually, there is. It’s called the BBC, and it’s where you can find the vastly superior original.
“I really liked this show. Guess there’s no place for smart comedies on TV.”
I hate comments like this. The OP implying that he himself is smart and everyone else is dumb. Free Agents was not smart. At all. In any conceivable manner.
And you are not smart.
Poor NBC.
Bob Greenblatt must be in tears.
So sad to see this go. An actually smart television show, god forbid.
I’m sad to see Free Agents go. I think the leads were terrific and the writing was smart. How they can praise shows like Two Broke Girls is beyond me. Wake up, America.
30 ROCK has barely even started production for the season so they won’t be able to put it in Whitney’s slot for some time, at least not original episodes.
Oof. There goes the only new show that was actually funny.
Surprised it took this long.
It’s too bad that this wonderful show didn’t get the chance it deserved. What a shame to see it go.
Intelligent and sophisticated comedies have a better shot on cable. The ‘big three’ seem to be ever-increasingly becoming a trailer park.
FIST PUMP WHOOOOO!!!
For the life of me, can’t figure out who at NBC watched the pilot and said, “Yes! Put this on the schedule.” Wanna know why this failed? Because in every single way it was objectively BAD. Horrible. And people got paid to write and produce this? NBC spent money from their budget to put it on the air? I know sometimes, it’s hard predicting what will hit and what won’t. But man alive this was the worst piece of dreck I’ve seen in forever. And I accidentally hurt my eyeballs when I flipped on my TV last week just when the second episode was on. Before I could turn the channel I was exposed to a “Brilliant” joke centered around “Guess who I have a date with” “Who?” “that’s right, Hu?” “No tell me who?” “Hu.” See, cuz the guy’s name was Hu. Oh how fucking funny. I swear my TV almost got ripped off the wall before I hurriedly changed the channel. Yes I’m ranting, and yes I’m angry because as someone who struggles to make a living in this industry, knowing how much money got put into this shit… It burns.
You sure don’t SEEM like a better writer.
Perhaps if you spent as much time punching up your sitcom pilot as you do trolling industry comment sections it’d be your masterpiece being cancelled instead.
Free Agents wasn’t very good but it was hardly even the worst sitcom pilot this fall (that’d be Whitney, Last Man Standing, the first 20ish minutes of 2 Broke Girls). And wait until ABC premieres Work It…
Agreed. I only watched the pilot and couldn’t even bear the thought of watching it again.
I’m sure you’ll get a job writing the crap on Two Broke Girls or Whitney.
The show was bad and the leads were weird choices, but dude, relax. Your bitterness stinks worse than the garbage you probably write. You’re like one of the Free Agents one-liners: awful.
no, no… you’re right dude… We should all applaud the networks for putting crap on the air instead of calling them to task. let the same old hacks keep getting paid to beam abortions into the living rooms of america… or should we just politely say, “excuse me sirs, that wasn’t very good. Please try again.” Yeah… you’re right that’ll work better.
No one said we should applaud them but look at what America likes: dreck like Two and a Half Men and mindless procedurals like CSI.
You may lament the fact that there is nothing good on television (and I would disagree, especially if we’re talking cable) but what can’t be argued is that Americans suck up this garbage. Would I have picked up Whitney, Work It, How to Be a Gentleman, Feces My Dad Says, Playboy Club, Two and a Half Men, NCIS, Big Bang Theory, Mike and Molly, etc…? Depending on the other options, it’s highly unlikely. Would I have kept Arrested Development, Men of a Certain Age, Terriers on longer than their networks did? Absolutely. But do either of those facts really make me a successful television exec? Creatively, maybe, but commercially? Because I would have passed on some big hits because, unlike me, most of America doesn’t like to be challenged or think.
It burns and it stings. I feel your pain…If YOU write it, they will come…
Cool attitude bro. You’ll go far in this town.
Well, it was hilarious when Abbot and Costello did it. I hope your complaint was with lack of originality, or execution. ‘Cause the bit itself is pretty classically brilliant. If you haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying it, there are about 30,000 youtube vids of the two masters having at it (be warned: some renditions better than others).
well yeah, that was the point.
I agree that is a lame joke but the BIG HIT new show – 2 Broke Girls has even worse writing – in the pilot the big blow to the cold open is one of the waitresses getting banged in the kitchen and as we clearly hear sounds of orgasm, the customer asks Kat Dennings Where his waitress is and she replies “she’s coming.” Yeah – pretty funny if you’re 13 and high for the first time. And also in the pilot the “clever” topical joke was “You’re like a maid in the Schwarzenegger household – you just got screwed.” Wooo-hooo. Funny stuff. I know this show has BIg numbers but Bea Arthur gardening would get big numbers following the new 2 and Half men. This emperor has NO clothes.
Too bad. I still miss Azaria’s wonderful prior drama/comedy Huff!
Hey, I’m with you! Huff was great. Maybe we can start a letter writing campaign to get it back on. With your letter AND mine, they are bound to listen! lol
Shocking, NBC continues to suck. Is there a way NBC could cancel itself?
Sophisticated, intelligent comedy seems to have a better shot on cable. The ‘Big Three’ are ever-increasingly turning into trailer parks.
30 Rock just started filming and wotn be ready til jan
Sad. I started watching it late and while it wasn’t the greatest show ever, there was something about the cast that I liked.
boo!
I think the problem with Free Agents was that nobody really had a clear idea what it was about. It’s called, “Free Agents” and that’s a title you can’t tell a lot from. Are they Agents? What kind? Movie, sports, secret? This could either be an adaptation of Moneyball or a reboot of Get Smart. It’s too vague.
All the promos just showed that it was about two coworkers who slept together. That’s a premise for a single episode, the “Uh oh, this is awkward now” storyline. What do you do for the series though? I’m sure they had a notion for what the premise of the series was, but it wasn’t made clear to the potential audience.
Completely agree. Btw, they actually work in Public Relations but that was only finally made clear in the most recent episode.
Dead on! Great cast, good chemistry, decent jokes… but what was the show ABOUT? If a show is mediocre but is clearly defined, people will give it a chance. But if a show is not clearly defined, even if it’s charming/funny/well written/ it’s easy to get bored and tune out. This show, sadly, was not clearly defined.
Also, how many shows have failed because the plot centers around a “will they/won’t they” story-line. If THAT is the main focus of your show every week, it gets old and fast.
Lastly, you had a real funny character in Natasha Leggerio…. should have made more of her and a bigger part of the show from the get-go. She was a female Dwight Schrute type people love to watch. It’s actually sad because had the show been developed just a little bit better, it could easily have been a hit. I hope people at the studios don’t write this off as just another failed show, as there is a good lesson to learn from it’s demise.
I feel like British audiences have more of a tolerance for low-concept shows that just have two people being witty in nebulous situations. Every time an American network adapts a British show, it takes a while to migrate the tone over to the high-concept model that American audiences seem to need.
Look at The Office: the BBC version works specifically because of how understated it is. The humor is in the sideways glances, the awkward pauses, etc. The US version, while hilarious, is hugely broader and functions much more like a regular sitcom (they abandoned the whole “documentary” conceit by Season 3 or so).
Please tell me Charlie’s Angels & How to be a Gentleman are not far behind…..and Terrible Nova I assume will only hang around cause of all the LOSTies…….2 Broke Girls, New Girl, are indeed deserving of their full season pick-ups….and I fear for Prime Suspect….with Maria being the only reason to watch in an ensemble of cardboard cutouts.
There could always be 30 minute versions of “Minute to Win It” or “It’s Worth WHAAAT?” which would still be an improvement. How about Bob Costas just talking about the upcoming NFL games?
How about instead of moving to Wednesday. ‘Whitney’ AND Whitney herself, move to Canada. She and her show are killing this nation.
For what it’s worth: I watch a fair amount on NBC, but I remember seeing very few previews for this show, and none of them told me what it was about. In fact I still have no idea what it was about.
Neither did John Enbom.
I watched it and have no idea what it was about.