It's a shame CRITICAL DARLING 'The Middle' (a 'Malcolm In The Middle' rip-off) scores IDENTICAL numbers, but get saved.
You know your show is about to be canceled when the network decides it would rather run a second consecutive night of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" than broadcast your fifth episode, immediately after which the network airs your Thanksgiving episode three weeks early.
Which is to say absolutely no one was surprised when ABC on Wednesday finally put its Kelsey Grammer sitcom "Hank" out of our misery.
By the time ABC finally pulled the plug on "Hank," the producers were working on a 10th episode, and so far we've only suffered through five.
On the bright side, ABC says it has no immediate plans to air the remaining episodes.
In case you missed it -- lucky you -- Grammer played a self-made multimillionaire named Hank Pryor who married a woman named Tilly from Rubesville, Virginia, who came from a family whose members had all been dropped on their heads from a great height. Grammer's character made his fortune building a retail sporting-goods empire -- you betcha -- but then lost everything in this economic downturn so he packed up Tilly and their two revolting sitcom children and moved back to Rubesville so Hank could be a fish out of water.
ABC is going to fill the Tuesday 8 p.m. half hour with holiday specials and reruns of its more successful comedies. A month ago, ABC announced it had picked up the other three comedies of its all-new Wednesday comedy lineup, which had attracted more viewers than "Hank" (which had been averaging under 7 million viewers). Those three series -- "The Middle" starring Patricia Heaton (7.3 million), Christopher Lloyd's "Modern Family" (11 million) and "Cougar Town" starring Courteney Cox (9 million) -- are among the most surprising success stories of this new TV season, what with ABC not being known for developing strong comedies. Remember "According to Jim"?
Now the real fun begins as we wait to see whether Grammer will savage ABC for the cancellation. ABC's the only network Grammer has not nicked in recent months. Over the summer he chastised CBS CEO Leslie Moonves for his handling of "Medium" -- which CBS produces and for which Grammer is one of the executive producers. Grammer also did not appear to think much of NBC suits for the way they treated "Medium" when it ran on that network. And he wasn't too complimentary of Fox execs for dumping his sitcom "Back to You."
Because it's the "critical darling" of the network and
they claim by critics, too.
On the realistic side, it was a pretty middling sitcom (pardon the pun).
I think they needed to split the show into a 50% work place, 50% work sitcom by sending Hank to work as the editor at some small town newspaper and introduce new quirky characters all while downplaying the grating B.I.L. character (the actor who got royally fired after one year on SNL) and chirpy wife.
Maybe they needed to pull some tricks from 'Green Acres' character and make the house more grey dilapidated and make their high-end furniture stand out. Maybe that's to gimmicky.
But maybe they needed to pull some tricks from GA and make Hank LOVE his life in the rural... except it's TOTALLY out of the realm of Grammer, who
IS Frasier Crane in real life; lacking the folksy warmth of Eddie Albert.
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