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'Community' Renewed For Season 4 On NBC
Til Death dumped by Fox...for two weeks...for now
by Allison Waldman, posted Oct 30th 2008 12:16PM
Primetime Wednesday seems to be the toughest night of all for TV programmers. There's not one network that seems to do particularly well in the 8-9 p.m. time slot, and the juggling has begun. Fox yanked Do Not Disturb weeks ago, admitting it was a dud. Now the Brad Garrett-Joely Fisher sitcom Til Death will be off the air for two weeks, effective immediately. In that time slot, instead, we'll be seeing more House, albeit repeats. Still, you watch, those reruns will do markedly better than the sitcoms did.
Til Death, to be frank, has regressed this year. I defended the renewal of the show when Fox gave it a third season, based on the episodes I watched last spring. But the comedy has really strained since its season premiere in September. There's no other way to put it -- Death is in the death throes and should be put out of its misery. This two week hiatus should be the end of the series.
Does that seem like cruel and unusual punishment for a blue collar comedy? It's not. Til Death has had time to get better. Good and talented people are involved, both in front of the camera and behind it. The comedy is as vulgar as Two and a Half Men, without any of the yucks. Fox has a history of great, uncouth comedy -- Married... with Children -- but Til Death doesn't meet that quality of crass and classlessness.
Fox is saying that Til Death will return after the November sweeps. But the translation of that statement is this: Til Death is not good enough to compete in sweeps. Sounds like the start of an obituary to me.
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