Do You Remember These Weird Sitcoms From 1993

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They were promoted during the World Series. They starred Oscar winners, rock legends, and future Emmy favorites. Then they were gone — sometimes after a single episode, sometimes after two, occasionally because a wildfire made it physically impossible for viewers to watch.

This is the story of the television graveyard season that network executives quietly buried and almost nobody talks about anymore.

The 1993 to 1994 broadcast season was unlike almost any other in American television history. Two rival networks were preparing to launch. Cable was accelerating. The established broadcasters were pulling struggling shows faster than audiences could even find them — cancelling series after three episodes, two episodes, one episode, and in one extraordinary case, pre-empting a West Coast premiere because Malibu was on fire on the exact night the show aired for the first and last time.

We're covering Glenn Frey stepping away from The Eagles to lead a $900,000-per-episode CBS crime drama that was cancelled before most of America saw it. We're covering Courteney Cox appearing in a show built around a baboon before Friends made her a cultural institution. We're covering Faye Dunaway and Robert Urich in a romantic comedy that CBS buried under the phrase "indefinite hiatus." We're covering Bruce Campbell and Carlton Cuse launching a science fiction western on the same Friday night, on the same network, in the same time slot, as a little programme called The X-Files — and you already know which one kept going.

We're covering the animated film satire that two networks cancelled in succession before Comedy Central reruns proved it was brilliant all along. The sketch comedy troupe that turned down CBS and went on to reshape American comedy for twenty years. And the teen drama that accidentally invented the online fan petition when viewers organised to save it in 1994 — a form of audience advocacy the internet has used in every decade since.

These weren't all misunderstood masterpieces. Some had real problems. But what ended most of them wasn't quality. It was impatience, brutal scheduling, and the specific chaos of an industry mid-upheaval — and the shows that survived often had the right time slot as much as the right content.

This is what the television graveyard of 1994 actually looks like. Not a catalogue of failures. A catalogue of casualties.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Introduction — The Graveyard Season of 1993 to 1994 Network Television
  
• 00:41 South of Sunset — Glenn Frey, CBS, and the Malibu Wildfire That Pre-empted the Premiere
  
• 02:44 The Trouble With Larry — Bronson Pinchot, Courteney Cox, and Three Episodes About a Baboon
  
• 03:33 It Had to Be You — Faye Dunaway, Robert Urich, and the Indefinite Hiatus That Never Ended
  
• 04:24 Angel Falls — Peggy Lipton and CBS's Three-Episode Mercy Interval
  
• 04:58 The Paula Poundstone Show — Two Episodes, No Explanation, No Trace
  
• 05:46 The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. — Bruce Campbell on the Same Friday Night as The X-Files
  
• 07:00 Bakersfield P.D. — Giancarlo Esposito Before Gus Fring Changed Everything
  
• 07:57 The Critic — Jon Lovitz, Two Cancellations, and the Audience That Arrived Too Late
  
• 09:09 The State — The Sketch Troupe That Turned Down CBS and Reshaped Comedy Anyway
  
• 10:33 My So-Called Life — Claire Danes, the Impossible Time Slot, and Television's First Online Petition
  
• 12:15 The Connective Thread — What Actually Ended These Shows

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