8 Cancelled Shows That I Still Miss…

I do not know about you, but about half my shows were cancelled last week. Hilary Winston, the creator of Bad Teacher, called it a “comedy bloodbath,” and it really did feel like that. Some shows we will probably forget about in a few years, but some will always stay with us. These are the shows from previous seasons that I still miss having on my television and still watch repeatedly on DVD, iTunes or Netflix.*

1. Kitchen Confindential, starring Bradley Cooper, Jaime King, John Francis Daley, Nicholas Brendan, Owain Yeomen, Bonnie Somerville, John Cho, Sam Pancake, Erinn Hayes and Frank Langella. It was based on the book of the same name by Anthony Bourdain. Only four episodes ever aired, but all thirteen are on the DVDs and they are all hilarious.

2. The Black Donnellys, starring Jonathan Tucker, Olivia Wilde, Tom Guiry, Billy Lush, Michael Stahl-David, Kirk Acevedo, Keith Nobbs and Peter Greene. Tucker, Guiry, Lush and Stahl-David played four Irish brothers living in New York who always look after each other, even when one of them gets into trouble with the Irish and Italian Mobs.

3. Life As We Know It, starring Sean Faris, Missy Peregrym, Jon Foster, Chris Lowell, Kelly Osbourne, Jessica Lucas, D.B. Sweeney, Lisa Darr and Marguerite Moreau. Aside from the great cast, this show also dealt with a lot of great high school issues like a mother’s infidelity, a teacher-student affair and how a teenager might deal with their father’s alcoholism. The opening credits also introduced me to musician Michael Tolcher.

4. The Deep End, starring Matt Long, Tina Majorino, Leah Pipes, Ben Lawson, Mehcad Brooks, Billy Zane, Norbert Leo Butz, Nicole Ari Parker and Clancy Brown. This show followed a group of first year lawyers as they learned the robes at a reputable law firm in Los Angeles. My favorite scenes were always the ones with Butz’s Rowdy Kaiser, especially when he was trying to give Lawson’s Liam Priory advice on girls.

5. Bent, starring David Walton, Amanda Peet, Jeffrey Tambor, Joey King, Margo Harshman, J.B. Smoove, Jesse Plemons, Pasha D. Lynchnikoff and Matt Letscher. Luckily, About a Boy has been renewed, otherwise I would have started to worry about David Walton. This is just one of his many shows that were cancelled and it is my favorite of them all. His chemistry with Amanda Peet was great and the supporting cast was always spot-on.

6. Lone Star, starring James Wolk Adrianne Palicki, Eloise Mumford, David Keith, Jon Voight, Mark Deklin, Bryce Johnson and Chad Faust. I only even saw three episodes of this show (and am still bitter that I never saw the fourth at ATX Television Fesitval Season One), but I thought the duality of the main characters two worlds was really great. It also introduced me to James Wolk, who is now one of my favorite actors, and Kyle Killen, one of my favorite showrunners (Awake and Mind Games could also have made this list).

7. The Finder, starring Geoff Stults, Michael Clarke Duncan, Maddie Hasson, Mercedes Masöhn and Toby Hemingway. I only recently got into Bones and subsequently watched this spin-off, so I guess it is partly my fault that it did not get renewed. However, thanks to Netflix, I still got a chance to see all the episodes and, for that, I am thankful because it was a wonderful show.

8. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, starring Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber, Sarah Paulson, D.L. Hughley, Nate Corddry and Timothy Busfield. Although the final episodes were a bit more serious than I would have liked, it was an Aaron Sorkin show, so of course I loved it. The two episodes that I can watch repeatedly are the Christmas episode and the Disaster Show with Allison Janney.

*I did not include shows that lasted more than one season (ie.Veronica Mars) or shows that were given a second life (ie. Firefly, Arrested Development)

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