Fox temporarily pulls "New Girl" to expand "The X Factor" to two full hours
By James Brady RyanOctober 11th, 2011, 10:30 amComments (7)
Have you found yourself thinking recently, "You know, these ninety-minute long episodes of The X Factor are great, but what I really want are two-hour long episodes?" No, of course you haven't, because no one thinks that! Except I guess the people at Fox do, because they've messed around with their schedule to accommodate this thing we need like a hole in the head. (We already have this show three times over. Three! Haven't we run out of singers yet? Dear God, when will we run out of singers?)
And who is the main casualty in this war to bring us ever more screeching pop embryos? The delightful Zooey Deschanel-helmed comedy New Girl. (Oh wait, is it delightful? Do we hate her right now? Am I supposed to be in a backlash to the backlash yet? Goddamn it, where's my newest edition of Hipster Weekly?!) As reported by The Futon Critic, Fox will be pulling the show tomorrow night, the 18th, and the 25th — giving it nearly a one month break between its first three episodes and the following three. (Though, for what it's worth, Hulu still thinks we're getting a new episode this week.) That's the way to build up an audience for a promising new sitcom, right?
Whether you like the show or not — and, for the record, I absolutely do so far — it seems like a shame that a season of pilots that seemed so promising for female creators, writers, and actors has already hit so many stumbling blocks. Of the two shows created by comedian Whitney Cummings, 2 Broke Girls and Whitney, one is already squandering a great premise while the other is full of jokes that were getting tired in 1996. Chelsea Handler's Are You There Vodka, It's Me, Chelsea, got pushed to mid-season (and also does not look great). And now Elizabeth Meriwether's charming young show is getting the dreaded network shell game treatment.
But hey, at least we can comfort ourselves with the ramblings of Paula Abdul, right? Now that is some quality programming.
Update: Zooey has attributed the bump to "baseball stuff." How adorkable.
Commentarium (7 Comments)
don't you mean to 'decrease the suck-factor' of its programming.
Hey there's always those cotton commercials she delightfully sings....
That's one of those scramble-for-the-mute-button ads.
What should you expect, remember what they did to Firefly? Shown out of order, pulled for Football games, cancelled before the final two episodes because Joe Millionaire had higher ratings.
Seriously, who remembers Joe Millionaire now? Shows, especially scripted programs, require a berth to grow and evolve, a season to find their tone and substance, for the actors to get into their characters and the writers to find their niche and develop (hopefully) an audience.
Killing and ruining and giving up after a pilot or so is rather...depressing. :(
I love New Girl. Really funny. Great one-liners. The 3rd episode was especially funny and now they take it away? Damn reality shows need to give it a rest. Zero fucks given to reality shows. Nada.
Couldn't agree more. Fox blows for making this decision. New Girl was funny. The X Factor is a waste of progamming time.
The 3rd episode of New Girl was surprisingly funny. It would be a shame if they squander what looks to be one of the best sitcoms of the new season (yes, that's a low bar, but to be fair sitcoms usually have rocky beginnings and this one appears to be getting better and better).
But I in the article, you seem to be conflating commercial failure (New Girl, apparently) with critical failure (everything Whitney Cummings touches). Whitney, for example, has been doing better than Parks & Rec or Community.
I haven't watched New Girl, and I myself am not the biggest fan of Zooey, but I do know that the X Factor is a terrible, terrible show (Paula Abdul needs to leave. Right now.) and pulling anything else for it is a terrible, terrible idea.
Now you say something