Never Cancelled, Yet Never Returning

Every year when I post about the cancelled shows from a season, you may notice me mention the fact that some shows weren’t actually cancelled, yet I’m including them in the list of cancelled shows. That’s because some shows, while never actually cancelled, never return to air new episodes again. There are actually a lot of them. But there is a reason behind this phenomenon.

The best way of describing these shows are simply as forgotten. I mean, they don’t have a notice about any future regarding them. This is because they don’t actually have a future. It can be strange that some of them aren’t even acknowledged as over, but these are mostly just summer shows with few of them being shows you might have actually heard of. You might remember them if I mention it or you might not. But I will give you examples in case you are still confused.

There was once a show on ABC called The Quest. They cared so little about the show that after announcing that it would air, it wasn’t until the late summer when it actually did. The show never returned with future seasons, but ABC never bothered to cancel it either. This is hardly the only show to suffer this fate of basically being forgotten about.

Other ABC shows that were effectively forgotten about were Repeat after Me, which aired during the main season but never showed up for future seasons. There was a show called Trust us with Your Life that aired during the summer, but was abruptly pulled before two episodes aired. ABC immediately lied to us by saying that it wasn’t cancelled because the show has never returned to TV. Technically, though, it was never actually cancelled just liked they said. They also neglected to bring back Wipeout after it air multiple summers. Another show that aired during the summer and never returned again was called Whodunnit?

A lot of the CW shows that aired during the summer are blatantly forgotten about. There was actually a show they aired where the plot was about a man whose life was turned upside down when his roommate starts dating his mother. That show was a rare comedy from the network, another reason they would want you to forget it. This show, Significant Mother, has never been cancelled, nor will it ever return with new episodes. It's kind of a shame because I thought that it would be cancelled, but it probably never will be.

The CW aired a reality show called A Wicked Offer that never returned nor was cancelled. They once aired a competitive musical chairs game show that was as lame as it sounded and it never returned even after airing multiple summers. Another one that was interesting was Cedric’s Barber Battle. It aired for two episodes and was pulled from the schedule. While it did return for more episodes, it never finished airing all the new episodes and it will never come back either.

FOX aired a game show called Boom! It never returned and wasn’t cancelled either. They also aired a revival of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? When it didn’t return the next summer, it marked the show’s second cancellation, even though they never made it official this time around.

On a season of Big Brother, CBS promoted the new show Same Name through a competition inspired by the show. Same Name still has two episodes that haven’t aired and never will. They never cancelled it either and if you tweet them about the show, they probably won’t acknowledge that it even existed in the first place. 3 is another show that was in and out of the schedule and I’m not sure that there was much about it that I know of.

You might be wondering if there are any NBC shows that have this weird fact in common with all the shows that I mentioned on other networks. Well, The Island, a reality show that was basically Survivor without much of a purpose (not that it was bad, but…), is another show that fits that same mold that all these other forgotten shows do. More research of mine proves that just last season, there were a lot of shows that fell into this category so I’m not even sure that I should bother with them all. Just know that every network among the big five has done this.

Well, I’m honestly not sure what else there is to say. This post is something that I wrote so people would be aware of this event. I might have to make a list of all of these shows that I can remember and put it on imdb so others outside of this blog’s readers will know that this happens. Now you’ll know why some shows just disappear forever without even the common decency to tell us that the show isn’t coming back. I don’t know why this happens. Sometimes there’s a show that you watch and it’s never returning, even though they never bothered to make the cancellation official.