‘Sean Saves the World’ canceled by NBC; not all ordered episodes will film

You knew that this was coming for quite a long time, but given that NBC had already ordered the episodes, the following news still comes as somewhat of a surprise: “Sean Saves the World” has been formally canceled.

This was a show that from the very start of this past summer, the network had high hopes for. They felt like they were genuinely going to be able to use to launch some sort of family-friendly comedy block, similar to what ABC had with part of their Wednesday-night lineup. Getting a comedy veteran on board like Sean Hayes was also supposed to help in some capacity. Unfortunately, this show fell apart just like Hayes’ last show in “Smash” did, and it never managed to be a good lead-in for the also low-rated “The Michael J. Fox.” The numbers for these two shows have been so bad, both “Community” and “Parks and Recreation” have actually looked somewhat excellent by comparison.

There have been 14 episodes of the show filmed, and of those, 12 of them have aired. It is not entirely clear as to when those episodes could air; it’s possible that they will just be plugged in after the Winter Olympics, but it seems unlikely that they would want to continue supporting a show that has no future on the network.

So what does this mean for the struggling “The Michael J. Fox Show”? It may not be a good idea to really read into anything that is going on here. It is unlikely to us that this series will get the ax, since all of the episodes have already been filmed. Not only that, but it would look embarrassing for NBC not to air them, giving that they made the big 22-episode commitment to this show almost the minute that it was picked up.

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Photo: NBC