It took just two disastrously-rated episodes–and a pile of awful critical reviews–for NBC to pull the plug on its “The Paul Reiser Show” comedy, and star Paul Reiser is not expressing any bitterness about the situation.
Never coming across as an optimistic NBC investment based on its late-season, little-hyped debut in the struggling 8:30PM timeslot on April 14, “Reiser” performed even below soft expectations with a mere 1.1 adults 18-49 rating and 3.37 million viewers.
While indeed against “American Idol,” that episode aired sans original competition from CBS’ Thursday comedy hour and thus gave little hope of blossoming into anything remotely-resembling a success.
Sure enough, its second week–again absent CBS competition–fell deeper to a 0.9 with 2.38 million viewers despite a fairly steady lead-in performance from “Community” (which, though already renewed for season three, has crashed below its already-low ballpark in recent weeks).
NBC thus made the quick call to pull the plug on the project, scrapping it from the lineup as its Thursday moves forward without Steve Carell on “The Office” (his final episode airs this coming Thursday).
Tweeting about the cancellation, Reiser expressed some surprise but hardly reached the level of vitriol other television stars have demonstrated in similar network decisions. He wrote, “Well that was fast!! Apparently networks like big numbers quickly. who knew…To the millions of people who would have loved this show but didn’t get a chance to hear about it, hopefully we will live on elsewhere…by the way – feel free to start a groundswell movement I’ll back you up. thanks for all those who tuned in and supported.”