Sometimes it can be hard to predict which TV shows will hit it big, and which ones will fail miserably. There are projects that can take years to get made that end up being wildly successful, like “Mad Men,” a show that was famously rejected by networks like HBO before finally finding a home at AMC. Then there are projects that get the green light so fast you wonder if anyone had time to sit and think whether or not this show was a good idea. And while it can sometimes take a season or two for a network to wave the white flag and cancel a show, some of them are so bad that executives pull the plug after just a few episodes.
A few shows, however, are in a category all by themselves. These shows were such epic disasters, such colossal train wrecks, that it only took networks one episode to decide they’d seen enough. Sometimes the writing was bad, other times the acting missed the mark. This is our list of five shows that were mercifully put out of their misery after airing just one single episode, and as you’ll see, it won’t be hard to figure out why.
5. Viva Laughlin
“Viva Laughlin” promised to be a sexy crime drama when it made its debut on CBS in 2007. The trailers positioned it as a high-energy, high-stakes show filled with bright lights, big city intrigue, and characters randomly breaking into song midway through the episode. While this was definitely not the first attempt at a primetime musical series (does anyone remember “Cop Rock?”), this show had something other entries did not have: Hugh Jackman.
At the time, Jackman was not only a bona fide Hollywood box office star, but a Tony Award-winning Broadway success as well. So it’s no surprise that when he put his name on “Viva Laughlin” as a producer, and was also prominently featured in the trailer as a cast member, CBS thought they might have a hit on their hands.
Instead, they got a glitzy mess. Jackman’s appearance in the pilot episode was more of a cameo than anything else, and once he was gone, so was any hope of this British remake surviving. In its review, The Guardian claimed “the remake is stilted, permanently two beats off the pace and horribly misconceived.” Critics and audiences seemed to agree with that assessment. CBS debuted the show as a two-episode premiere, and less than 24 hours after airing, “Viva Laughlin” rolled snake eyes and was canceled.
4. The Will
In the mid ’00s, reality TV had become so popular that networks were scrambling to approve as many of them as possible. Reality shows are notoriously cheap to produce, and when a few of them, like “Survivor,” started drawing in big ratings, networks figured they had discovered a brand new cash cow to squeeze.
Another one of the early reality hits was “The Bachelor,” created by Mike Fleiss in 2002. So it was no surprise when CBS tapped him to create a brand-new reality game show, only this time with a far more morbid twist. “The Will” centered around a multi-millionaire who brought 10 of his friends and relatives together to see who he would leave his massive ranch to. The contestants would compete in various challenges, trying to avoid elimination and be left as the most worthy heir.
Despite a big push by CBS to position “The Will” as the next great reality competition series, audiences avoided the show completely, leaving it as the lowest-rated show on the network for that week. Almost immediately, the network pulled the plug and decided not to air the remaining five episodes.
All was not lost for the show, however, as a station in New Zealand did end up running all six episodes, revealing the millionaire’s fourth wife as the eventual winner. As for Fleiss, he would stick with “The Bachelor” for nearly two more decades before leaving the franchise over allegations of racial discrimination.
3. Lawless
Fox / Courtesy: Everett Collection
In the ’80s, Brian Bosworth was a college football phenom. A standout linebacker at Oklahoma, it seemed he and his trademark buzzcut were destined for NFL greatness. Before he had even played a down of professional football, he was starring in commercials and making appearances as “The Boz.” Sadly, injuries cut his playing career short, but his name recognition earned him a few acting roles, including the TV bomb “Lawless.”
It’s hard to know where to begin when listing all the ways this show failed. While Bosworth’s acting would never be confused with Oscar-worthy, it’s hardly the only thing wrong with this concept. On “Lawless,” Bosworth plays a gun for hire who patrols Miami looking for an opportunity to mete out justice on people who deserve it. His name? John Lawless — the name alone should have been an indication of how in-your-face and uncreative the writing was on this show. E! News called it “[A]n atrocious private-eye shoot-’em-up … that made the ‘A-Team’ look sophisticated.”
The show debuted on a Saturday night, which isn’t a good sign to begin with, and, according to creator Ken Sanzel, was such a debacle that Fox made the decision to cancel it while the premiere episode was airing. That definitely puts “Lawless” on the list of TV shows canceled quickly. To Sanzel’s credit, the show was a far cry from his original concept. For starters, Fox recast the lead with Bosworth to make the show more splashy, a move that clearly didn’t pay off.
2. Emily’s Reasons Why Not
“Emily’s Reasons Why Not” had a promising premise: Emily needs help in the love department so she adopts a new dating strategy. If she can think of five reasons not to date someone, she dumps them. The problem was the execution. Critics everywhere panned the writing, saying that the show was just a more family-friendly version of “Sex and the City” that gave Graham little to work with. It also didn’t help that in the premiere episode she assumes the man she’s dating must be gay because he doesn’t want to sleep with her, in addition to noticing a few other stale, stereotypical “gay” behaviors that come off more offensive than funny.
If you’re wondering how a poorly written show makes it on TV, the answer in this case seemed to be that executives said yes without so much as looking at the script. Once they saw the show, however, they realized they made a mistake and canceled it without giving it even one more episode.
1. Heil Honey I’m Home
In the pantheon of terrible ideas, there sits a show so absurd, so inflammatory, so over the top that you truly do have to wonder how it managed to get approved. That show is “Heil Honey I’m Home,” a sitcom featuring Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, who end up living next to a Jewish couple. As bad as that premise might be, it gets worse. While Adolf and Eva are played like parodies of sitcom couples of the ’50s and ’60s, the Jewish couple next door plays on one offensive stereotype after another with Adolf always looking for ways to kill them.
The show, which premiered in Britain in 1990, presented itself as found footage of a long-lost American sitcom and was an attempt to make fun of the “I Love Lucy” clones of the era. Instead, what aired was something audiences found unfunny and deeply offensive. While some enjoyed the extreme examples of parody, others thought it was in incredibly poor taste, including Britain’s largest Jewish organization, the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
While a few people compared it favorably to projects like Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” critics said the show simply wasn’t funny enough to overcome all the issues the show had going against it. Unsurprisingly, even though eight episodes were filmed, it took only one episode for this series to be removed from the airwaves.
