Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Networks Setting Up Diverse Shows for Failure: A Phenomenon

In the midst of the garbage fire dumpster world we're living in at the moment, one good thing that came out of this year's Pride Month that I'd like to talk about was the renewal of the critically acclaimed show, One Day at a Time, which had been cancelled by Netflix earlier this year. ODAAT has found its new home on PopTV, in which episodes will air weekly instead of Netflix's binge-watch style.

If you've never heard of One Day at a Time, you are missing out. Based on the the 1970s sitcom of the same name (and produced by the same person, too!) ODAAT stars a Latinx family of color living out their lives, essentially one day at a time. With the rare combination of hilarity and poignancy, ODAAT manages to make you laugh even when you're crying; being fearless with tackling of modern social issues such as immigration, gun control, and LGBT rights inside a tightly scripted comedy that keeps you simultaneously entertained and educated.


When Netflix cancelled the show after only three seasons, despite a large fanbase and critical acclaim, the outcry was immediate. Hashtags such as #SaveODAAT trended on social media for days, and even major celebrities such as Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda and Brooklyn 99's Melissa Fumero (who also cameoed on the show) chimed in with their support.

In response, Netflix cited rising production costs as the reason for cancellation, claiming that they had fought for the show as hard as they could have. In a Twitter thread regarding ODAAT's cancellation, which I will link below, one particular tweet stuck out.


When I first saw this tweet back in March, I was furious - still am. This fake and performative tweet was supposed to make fans, particularly marginalized fans, feel better that one of their most important sources of representation had been unfairly taken away? Closeted gay fans of color, who could relate to experiencing homophobia in an immigrant family after Elena comes out? Brown families who experience the impacts of racism and colorism every day? PTSD-stricken military veterans dealing with life after serving? How are you going to claim that diversity/diverse stories are important, and then cancel the one show of yours that arguably has the most - but not only most, the most positive and influential - representation?

However, in my opinion, the worst part about that tweet and the cancellation in general was the hypocrisy. Netflix spends billions of dollars every year on their content, to the point where they are in debt. Keep in mind that a lot of their content, particularly original movies, is objectively not good. Will Smith's Bright, which offers a poorly constructed police allegory? The Kissing Booth, a fanfiction-turned-trashy movie filled with tired sexist tropes? And probably many, many more buried deep within Netflix's collection that subscribers will never see due to the sheer lack of time and sheer amount of content on their hands? Why is Netflix spending so much money on objectively bad things when they could've used that to support ODAAT's budget?

There was also a problem with how Netflix promoted the series. Many people pointed out that when a new season was available, they didn't even know about it, since Netflix hadn't bothered putting it on the front page. See below:



Compare that to Netflix's lavish spending on marketing for shows such as Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why, the latter of which made waves for negative representation - its romanticizing of mental health problems and suicide. Netflix already promotes those two better than ODAAT by simply putting them on its home page, as shown below:


Notice: the second tweet directly points out the stark difference in promotion between Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why with ODAAT and another diverse yet cancelled Netflix show, Sense8.

If shows such as ODAAT and Sense8 (and I'm going to throw in The Get Down, yet another Netflix show that you've probably never heard of because they didn't bother to promote it, which centers around the lives of black and brown teens in the 70s) cost more to make, as Netflix and industry reports claim, then wouldn't it make sense to promote them so more people will watch? The very least you could do is put the episodes on the front page whenever a new season comes out. It's almost as if, drum roll.....networks are setting up their best shows (both in terms of quality and representation) for failure.

This is not a Netflix-exclusive phenomenon, though it does seem that the streaming service is always mired in controversy. When Fox cancelled cop comedy Brooklyn 99 last year due to low ratings, the Internet promptly lost its shit, trending #SaveB99 and asking other networks to pick up the show. In an eerily similar parallel to ODAAT's cancellation, celebrities like Seth Meyers, Guillermo del Toro, and Mark Hamill (MARK HAMILL!!) advocated heavily for its renewal. Within 24 hours of its cancellation, it had found a new home on NBC, which has renewed it this year for a forthcoming season 7.

Although I acknowledge that B99 is more problematic than ODAAT in the sense that it is sort of police propaganda, and often unintentionally glorifies corrupt cop practices, it was important to many people to see LGBT, female, and nonwhite characters (some characters various combinations of the three) on screen. Latina leads Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz have continuously talked about the excitement of having more than one Latina lead on screen at a time, neither being tokenized in any way. B99 has even tackled issues such as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements.

The cancellation seems to trace back to Fox's lack of promotion (yet again, it seems). See below:


Newsflash, networks: If people don't know your show exists, they won't watch it. Then, you won't be able to make money off of episodes. Fox did this with 2016's Pitch as well, which was tragically cancelled after only one season.

There's more - ABC's Still Star Crossed, gone after one season. NBC's Timeless, gone after two. Freeform's Shadowhunters, gone after three, although I do acknowledge that this show had gotten good ratings and the cancellation was mostly because of a deal between Freeform and Netflix that had fallen through. Freeform is still not completely off the hook, however, since it continues to air some pretty bad shows with lower ratings.

In my view, the ultimate problem is a lack of faith in diverse narratives. Networks are scared that stories featuring people other than the cisgender heterosexual white man in a positive light will fail, so they rack up the production budget and leave little room for marketing. It's an easy excuse to default to - when the show inevitably gets cancelled, people can simply claim that it was too expensive to continue, instead of truly questioning why the shows gone too soon always seem to be the ones with diversity and positive representation.

I'm happy that shows such as B99 and ODAAT are actually getting renewed, albeit on different networks. But there are so many other shows out there with equal caliber, who are not getting the love, attention, and ultimately protection they deserve due to perhaps a smaller fanbase and little social media awareness, that we must continue to speak out and fight for. No longer can we let bigoted showrunners and production companies set their shows up for failure. We can't.

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