Fox not putting ‘The Mob Doctor’ out of its misery … yet
Ready for a surprise? For weeks now, we have been predicting that “The Mob Doctor” on Fox would become one of the first shows to get canceled thanks to some ratings that can really only be described in one word: terrible. For this past installment, it drew a 0.9 rating in the 18-49 demographic that was lower than the now-canceled “Animal Practice” on NBC, and so far four shows on The CW in “Arrow,” “Supernatural,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “The Vampire Diaries” have defeated it with at least one of their episodes.
However, Fox has just released their November schedule, and the series is still around on it for some of reason that we cannot describe. What in the world are they doing? We clearly don’t know, but we do have a pretty defined guess here: Fox just doesn’t have anything else to put on in its place. They clearly made a mistake in axing “Terra Nova” or “Alcatraz,” and they also seem to have very little confidence in “Touch” coming on, since they seem to be waiting instead to plug it into the “Fringe” timeslot once it is.
Really, what we imagine that the network is trying to do is this: keep “The Mob Doctor” around for long enough so that its thirteen episodes can air and then it will disappear into the night; then, they will likely put on repeats until they premiere the Kevin Bacon series “The Following” on in the new year featuring Kevin Bacon. This show has already generated a great deal of buzz and excitement, and they likely don’t want to use up this timeslot until that time.
With this being said, we do now have to say this: Fox has been a disaster zone this year. As predicted, their Tuesday comedy block is a flop, “The X Factor” continues to not be the smash hit they were hoping for, and earlier this week they had one of the most embarrassing scheduling issues we’ve seen in some time. It’s hard to figure out that just a few years ago, this network had a beastly “American Idol” plus “24,” “Prison Break,” and a younger “Bones.” Now, its most consistent night contains a comedy that is more than two decades old.