FOX: MULANEY

Synopsis: From Emmy Award-winning writer and comedian John Mulaney (“Saturday Night Live”) comes MULANEY, a multi-camera ensemble comedy series about a rising stand-up comic trying to take his career to the next level and the friends and mentors who lift him up, hold him back and push him around.

Why Is It Doomed?
Trying to recreate the success of SEINFELD with a comic that has zero screen presence and tends to come off so awkward and distracting that it is hard to watch him for long is one of the reasons why I had this show as one of the worst looking news shows of the fall TV season. Not being funny is another reason. But those two things don’t really matter because bad shows sometimes last for an entire season (DADS anyone?) while good shows get cancelled after one or two airings (LONESTAR we barely knew you). What is not in MULANEY’s favor is having all of those things going against you coupled with the specter of how FOX has struggled mightily to break a hit comedy. Even the shows that survive (and are really good too) like BROOKLYN NINE-NINE and NEW GIRL only do so because of critical acclaim because their ratings are pretty dreadful. So being a bad comedy on FOX is not a good look. Being a bad comedy in that Sunday @ 9:30 slot is also not going to make things any easier. Fans of MULANEY’s lead-in, FAMILY GUY, are not going to stick around to watch a bootleg SEINFELD especially if they are anything like me and will be holding a grudge over the fact that AMERICAN DAD (the far superior Seth McFarland show) was dropped by FOX and had to move to TBS in favor of this show that should have never made it past a pitch meeting.
Cancellation Countdown: 1 episode