“There’s nothing on.” We’ve all uttered those words, especially since lockdowns and quarantines have left most of us housebound for the foreseeable future. Click, click, click… 200 channels of rubbish.

Oh look… it’s season 7 of The Curse of Oak Island,^[1] a show where a team of questionably intelligent treasure hunters spends a full hour digging an empty hole. Meanwhile, on Showtime, Black Monday^[2] is so terrible it makes me hate the infinitely likable Don Cheadle. Perhaps I’ll catch a rerun of Big Bang Theory, which is good for a muffled laugh once every fourth season.

Why did these crappy shows get made and the following ten get cancelled? They don’t call it the boob tube for nothing.

Top 10 TV Shows That Predicted The Future And Got It Right

10 Police Squad! (1982, 6 episodes)

“Is this some kind of bust?”
“Yes, it’s very impressive. But we’d just like to ask a few questions.”^[3]

A comedy well ahead of its time^[4], Police Squad! parodied detective dramas with rapid-fire jokes. Eschewing a sitcom-style laugh track, Leslie Nielsen and company let viewers decide for themselves whether a joke was funny. While nowadays comedies without laugh tracks are commonplace (Modern Family, Veep), in the early 1980s it was a daring novelty that, unfortunately, fell on deaf ears for too many.

For starters, Police Squad! had one of the best intros in television history: a point-of-view runaway cop car speeding through various comedic scenes over the opening credits. Years later, Family Guy paid the ingenious bit homage^[5] with a scene featuring Stewie on his tricycle. The closing credits were just as good,^[6] with the main characters in a self-imposed freeze frame while the rest of the scene continues, often to their detriment.

In between, Police Squad! was… well, it was the Naked Gun movies in a TV show (the films are direct descendants of the show, down to the main character, Frank Drebin). How the hell does that gets cancelled after half a dozen episodes?

Of note, Police Squad! holds a unique distinction among prematurely cancelled TV shows: combined, the three movies it inspired have a longer running time than all of its episodes put together.

9 It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (1986, four seasons)

“This is the theme to Garry’s show, the theme to Garry’s show. Garry called me up and asked if I would write his theme song…”

It may feel a bit odd to include a series that aired 72 episodes on this list. But It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which began on Showtime before eventually being picked up by the then-fledgling Fox Network, was among the most inventive programs ever.

It took the neurotic brilliance of the late Garry Shandling to create the first major sitcom to break the fourth wall. The concept – a sitcom that knew it was a sitcom, with the main character side-tracking to address the audience – broke the mold and paved the way for other out-of-the-box series, first among them the “show about nothing” hit Seinfeld.

His crowd is welcomed in on the act. “If you’re in a bad mood don’t come in here and take it out on my audience,” Garry tells a friend in a restaurant scene, “they’ve been here since 7 am.” The studio audience then pelts Garry’s lunchmate with rolls.^[7]

Despite deserving a longer run, the show took Shandling mainstream and set the star-studded late-night stage^[8] for his role as variety show host Larry Sanders, one of the smartest, funniest series ever.

8 Twin Peaks (1990, two seasons)

Two questions: Who killed Laura Palmer,^[9] and why the hell did the most inventive whodunnit ever get axed after two seasons?

The first question is less relevant than the latter, because if you watched Twin Peaks with the single-minded goal of learning who the killer really was, you were watching it wrong. The cryptic drama is a freak show dive into the underbelly of small-town Americana. Everyone has something to hide and nothing is as it seems. As Log Lady^[10] puts it in her maniacal monotone, Laura Palmer is but the “one leading to the many.”

Like no other show in TV history, Twin Peaks was driven by its weirdness. From marble-mouthed dancing midgets to the ubiquitous yet ungraspable Killer Bob,^[11] David Lynch’s highly unorthodox storytelling leaves viewers guessing about what’s real, what’s imagined, and what each new twist and turn down the show’s winding path represents.

When Twin Peaks left the air after two seasons, with many main characters presumably dead and the show’s protagonist possessed by an evil spirit, viewers had more questions than answers^[12] – a longing that ultimately led to the show’s brief 18 episode revival in 2017.

7 The Critic (1994, two seasons)

Some actors never reach their full potential because their ideal vehicles – that perfectly suited project taking them another level of stardom – gets grounded before it can soar. Such is the case with Jon Lovitz, whose short-lived animated series, The Critic, fell victim to a premature two thumbs down from network executives.

Smart, adult-targeted cartoons have a history of quick hooks. Notably, Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy survived two cancellations^[13] to become one of the most successful animated series ever.

The Critic had a promising premise: Lovitz voices Jay Sherman, a balding, plump sarcastic film critic patterned after himself. Its basic schtick saw Sherman shoveling popcorn into his mouth while watching what are essentially parodies of well-known Hollywood films. “Tonight, “he quips, “I’ll be reviewing Home Alone… 5” Cut away to Catherine O’Hara on a plane, panic-stricken at having left Kevin home yet again, “…and he’s only 23!”

Above is a montage of some of the best film parodies, including Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Hanukkah” and Dennis the Menace 2 Society, in which Mr. Wilson finally gets what’s coming to him.

The Critic was a cartoon Curb Your Enthusiasm; it’s what happens when a talented comedian gets to play an exaggerated version of himself. Arrogant, bad with women and unflinchingly cynical, Lovitz as Sherman had an authenticity to it that transcended most animated series. Unfortunately, not even a 1995 Simpsons crossover episode^[14] saved it from the cutting room floor. And that, per Sherman’s catchphrase, “stinks!”

6 Mr. Show (1995, three seasons)

Before he broke bad as corrupt lawyer Saul Goodman, Bob Odenkirk was one half of a short-lived sketch comedy show on HBO that deserved a far longer run than its 30 episodes.

Mr. Show paired Odenkirk with David Cross, later of Arrested Development fame, in half-hour romps where arcane sketches ran into each other. Dialogue often creatively wove in punchlines repeated in consecutive sketches by different characters, one of many reasons the show was twice nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Writing in a Variety Series category.

The show’s helter-skelter approach served as a useful vehicle for the duo’s diverse comedy skillset, allowing them to play various roles often in the same sketches, such as one where a convenience store clerk goes up the management chain for permission to make change for a dollar.

Not all of the skits landed, but Mr. Show’s best sketches are among the funniest in TV history. In Monsters of Megaphone,^[15] the two flash back to a bygone era when megaphone crooning was the most popular form of musical entertainment, with Odenkirk and Cross competing to invent new gadgets and create on-the-spot jingles for a live audience. “Electric tie rack it’s so nice, moves ties from side to side,” Cross sings. “Electric tie rack, baby loves it, rackin’ up electric tiiiiies…”

In 2015, Netflix produced a Mr. Show revival^[16] featuring four new episodes in which the pair are as sharp as ever.

Top 10 Ways Hollywood Ruined Your Favorite TV Shows

5 The (UK) Office (2001, two seasons)

OK, OK, so Ricky Gervais basically cancelled the show himself.^[17] I’m still including it on this list. And unlike Dave Chappelle, who bolted without warning^[18] after signing a huge extension for his uproariously funny Chappelle’s Show, Gervais walked away a winner who went on to superstardom.

The UK Office is basically everything that the 170-episode US version of the show is, except Gervais is more talented than the entire American cast combined. Watching the American Office is like drinking generic soda: it’s fine, but having tried the real thing something is sorely lacking.

The reason is simple: The UK Office is a talent vehicle and, all apologies to Steve Carell, that talent is Ricky Gervais. Smarmy, self-assured and semi-competent, Gervais nails the sort of small-business pencil pusher so many of us find ourselves answering to. The mockumentary style, combined with Gervais’ awkward dickishness, gives the show an uncomfortable edginess that the derivative US remake decidedly lacks.

The silver lining: leaving the show freed Gervais up for stellar standup comedy, the podcast-turned-animated series “The Ricky Gervais Show,” and his current project, the widely acclaimed Netflix dark comedy, After Life.^[19]

4 Firefly (2002, one season)

How can a space Western set in the year 2517 possibly go wrong?

Firefly follows nine passengers on a spaceship, the Serenity, exploring what for humans is a new star system. On its face, the show sounds like a cheesy Sci-Fi adventure series, something the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 would ridicule from a movie theater in a galaxy far, far away.^[20]

But the show… well, it just worked. Writer/director Joss Whedon initially pitched the program as “nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things.” The result is a series whose fantastical science fiction is balanced by a grounding humanity that, at its core, thrives on character development.^[21] Its premise – all alone in uncharted territory – provides more than a layer of uncertainty to the collective crew’s fate; it also allows Whedon to demonstrate how people from separate backgrounds – several had even fought on the losing side of a recent civil war – deal with fear, isolation and stress.

The show also takes a practical approach to futurism. Fast-forwarding 500 years, Earth’s resources have been used up (a near certainty considering where we are now), prompting mankind, through technology, to colonize new fertile planets and moons throughout the galaxy. The central government is a fusion of two modern-day superpowers, China and the United States, and has a decidedly expansionist mission to continue finding new celestial homes for humans. The result is a pioneering, “boldly go” mindset that often belies the experiences and bravado of the Serenity’s crew.

Unfortunately, the show didn’t receive sufficient time to develop nine characters, as Firefly was sucked into Hollywood’s black hole after just one 14-episode season.

3 Sleeper Cell (2005, two seasons)

At a time when the Western world was still reeling from 9/11, the London transit bombings and other high-profile acts of terrorism, Showtime premiered what was originally billed as a ten-episode miniseries with the tagline “Friends. Neighbors. Husbands. Terrorists.”

An undercover FBI agent, himself a practicing Muslim, infiltrates a terrorist cell planning a major attack in Los Angeles. While a bit PC preachy at times – the show seems to go out of its way to make sure the wannabe terrorists are racially diverse, a veritable Burger King Kids’ Club^[22] of radical Islamists – the show succeeds in exploring the dichotomy of Western life and the deceptions of religious violence, juxtaposed against an array of individual life experiences.

Through flashbacks and fast forwards, viewers see how each terrorist-in-training became disenchanted with America and determined to die for Allah. For a no-name cast, the acting on the show is noteworthy and helped lead to an Emmy nomination.

The show excels in its anti-action, intricately dropping the scattered breadcrumbs that take characters on their unique journeys toward martyrdom, and the deceptions and loyalty tests meted out by their guarded, shifty leader along the way. Sleeper Cell makes the unimaginable vividly imaginable – a creepy, “who can you really trust?” drama designed to spook an already-scared populace. Considering its premise and the limitless potential plotlines, the program’s departure after just two successful seasons sold it far short.

2 Timeless (2016, two seasons)

A history buff’s delight, Timeless was a complex show with a simple premise: save the world, one time period at a time.

There is a “man destroying itself with technology” bend to Timeless that makes it highly compelling. A genius invents a time machine, and an evil corporation steals the spare. A trio of do-gooders – a US Army Delta Force operative, a science engineer and, of course, a historian – are tasked with chasing agents of a mysterious, globally-pervasive secret organization across time and space, foiling various plots to alter history for the worse.

Immersing and intelligent, viewers find themselves in historical settings as familiar as the American Civil War to as obscure as the “Murder Castle”^[23] built by serial killer H.H. Holmes during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. All the while, the protagonists must not only prevent history from being transformed for the worse, but also refrain from changing events for what they perceive might be the better; the Hindenburg must still crash and burn, the Alamo must still be fought and lost, and JFK cannot be spared his date with destiny.

Above, a best-of montage showcases how captivating Timeless was and, unfortunately, a reason for its premature demise: period pieces are extremely expensive to produce. Combined with sub-par ratings in a world more attuned to Dancing with the Stars than using its slowly vegetating brainpower, Timeless was nearly cancelled after just one season, and eventually ran out of time after two.

1 Mindhunter (2017, two seasons…?)

In a world where “Law & Order ran for 20 seasons and prompted no less than six spinoffs, and where the NCIS franchise has aired nearly 800 episodes,^[24] how the hell hasn’t Mindhunter been renewed after just two seasons by a carrier, Netflix, worth more money than Disney?^[25]

Inspired by the true-crime book “Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit,” the show takes viewers inside the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in the late 1970s, where two agents and a criminal psychologist interviewed incarcerated serial killers in an attempt to understand what drives them to compulsively kill. Eerily, many of the prison scene dialogues were transcripts of actual interviews.

Mindhunter is a slow sink into a serial killer’s cerebral cortex. Among other narratives, its addiction motif – murder by compulsion, which in turn fuels that compulsion further – is especially captivating. At a time when mega-monsters like Ted Bundy and the Son of Sam roamed the streets attempting to satiate their uncontrollable urges with innocent blood, Mindhunter has a period-piece urgency to it that goes above and beyond the played-out whodunnits currently permeating prime time TV.

In January, Netflix released the cast of Mindhunter from their contracts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s cancelled, but is not a good sign. Perhaps the streaming service can reallocate some shekels from the oh-so-riveting Fuller House, or stop giving every third-rate comedian (I’m looking at you, Ali Wong) standup specials? There are serial killers to catch. Priorities, people.

Top 10 Must-See Recent TV Shows With A Dark Side

It’s just a fact of life that, eventually, every food product the world is absolutely crazy about will be discontinued. Some fans still hold a grudge against the food manufacturer even decades later. The rest of us shake our heads and wonder what kind of insanity overtook our otherwise refined palates. We ask ourselves how we were duped into thinking these foodie fads were not only delicious but nutritious as well. Here are ten discontinued food items that seem questionable at best.

10 Weiner Wrap

Weiner Wrap was conceived as a way to oven-bake the hot dog and bun together in one step. The can of six flat sheets of dough made by Pillsbury easily wrapped neatly around the individual hot dog. You placed them on a cookie sheet, and twenty minutes later, out came a plump, hot juicy hot dog in a flavorful warm bun. Weiner Wrap came in three flavors, plain, cheese, and onion. 

These were an instant favorite in kitchens all across the country because it was an item teenagers could prepare all by themselves. An entire generation of people in their fifties remembers when Mom and Dad quit cooking for two years and let the kids eat Weiner Wraps every night after they joined the bowling league or went out drinking with their friends. 

If one of your peers in the cafeteria had a cold Weiner Wrap in their lunch box, you’d be sure they were either very lucky or completely neglected. Like so many heavily processed items of the seventies, Weiner Wrap went the way of the dog as the aerobics movement fueled a trend towards healthier eating.

9 WOW

Frito Lay marketed and produced WOW Potato Chips and WOW Doritos from 1998 to 2002. These junk food items contained the newly developed Olestra, a fat substitute that contains no calories, thereby lowering or eliminating the fat content of a food item completely. 

WOW products were wildly successful in the first year of production, with an initial sales haul of $400 million. However, it didn’t take long for WOW consumers to be turned off by the horrendous side effects reported as “abdominal cramping, diarrhea, and anal leakage.”

One can imagine these gross side effects did nothing to bolster the reputation of this new product. “Thank you, Jane, your party was marvelous! Bob and I woke up with a mean case of diarrhea, and we had to throw out our underwear. Otherwise, your snacks were the bomb!”

8 Pizza Spins

Pizza Spins were a General Mills junk food item invented in 1968 and discontinued in 1975. Consumer surveys of the sixties showed pizza to be the number one flavor profile all Americans craved, and so the race was on to perfect the ultimate crunchy pizza-flavored snack food. 

General Mills printed this phrase on the back of each box of Pizza Spins: “All the true delicious pizza flavor in a munchy, crunchy, mouth-sized snack.” What they didn’t include but probably should have, was a precaution stating that Pizza Spins had all the flavor of an acid indigestion burp fueled by sawdust and your great aunt Matilda’s seven-day-old spaghetti sauce. 

Not even the healthy digestive tract of a ten-year-old boy could escape the painful burning sensation in the gut after consuming a handful or two of these little imitation pizza wheels.

7 Freshen Up Gum

Freshen Up Gum, marketed as “The Gum That Goes Squirt” was first offered for sale to the public in 1975 and discontinued in 2019. It was available in cinnamon, spearmint, peppermint, and bubblegum flavors. The inexplicable selling point of this chewing gum product was that when you bit into the gum, it burst forth with a creamy gel that allegedly “squirted your breath with refreshment.”

If your first experience with Freshen Up Gum was being offered a piece that had been carried around in someone’s pocket or sitting on the center console of a hot car, you were treated to the most unpleasant surprise of a hot, unusually flavored semi-liquid goo exploding in your mouth. Your brain then had to decide whether to gag, choke, swallow, or assimilate the hot goo into the chewing gum for a most unpleasant twenty seconds or so.

6 Jell-O 123

Jell-O 123 was a dessert of convenience that touted itself as a “dessert with two toppings.” In television commercials, Jell-O 123 was portrayed as being a source of fascination to watch as it developed in the individual serving dishes it was poured into after being prepared. 

The fruit-flavored powder was mixed in a blender with hot water. What initially appeared as a cloudy liquid mix soon separated and settled into three distinct layers. The first layer was gelatinous, while the second layer was loosely similar to a creamy custard and the third layer was somewhere between a mix of damp sponge and foam.

One box made four meager portions, each barely filling a custard cup. It’s quite possible that ingesting a larger amount of this strange chemical mix orchestrated in a laboratory would cause imminent regurgitation. Jello- 123’s colorful hues bore a striking resemblance to the contents of a child’s stomach after a day at the fair eating too much cotton candy.

5 Oscar Meyer Sandwich Spread

Oscar Meyer Sandwich Spread was a product sold in a plastic tube in the hot dog section of the grocery store. It was made of chicken, pork, and beef by-products ground up into a paste with added seasonings and pickle relish.

If you weren’t a fan of sliced baloney sandwiches with all the fixins’, or it was just too much work to put one altogether, then Oscar Meyer Sandwich Spread was a culinary dream come true. 

Step one, slice open the plastic tube. Step two, slather the baloney paste on bread. Voila! In under 30 seconds, you had a powerfully aromatic sandwich that was practically already chewed for you. Apparently, cooking a hot dog or separating pieces of baloney was too tough a task for a lot of folks. Unfortunately for Oscar Meyer Sandwich Spread devotees, this product was discontinued a few years ago.

4 Easy Squirt Ketchup

Heinz’ Easy Squirt Ketchup, introduced in 2000, was a line of brightly colored ketchup designed and marketed for children. The first color ‘Blastin’ Green’ rolled out as a promotional gimmick timed for the release of the movie “Shrek.” By the end of the slow and steady rollout of Funky Purple, Passion Pink, Awesome Orange, Stellar Blue, and Totally Teal colored ketchup, over 25 million bottles had been purchased. 

Easy Squirt Ketchup’s fall from grace occurred when it was discovered the process by which red tomato ketchup magically turned a bright, unnatural hue. The red tomato color had to be stripped, and the chemical colors introduced to the mix. This process altered the flavor requiring the addition of other tangy ingredients.

Legally the product could no longer be called traditional tomato ketchup. Moms and Dads everywhere were already queasy from watching their children squirt this brightly colored product on everything they could eat. The fact of it no longer being legitimately able to call itself tomato ketchup was the final straw, even for those who patently refused to acknowledge that nutritional content matters.

3 Space Food Sticks

Space Food Sticks were introduced to the public by Pillsbury in 1970 at the height of interest in NASA. People were fascinated by the science of astronaut survival in space, and there were no shortage of toys, clothing, books, and space flight marketing gimmicks patented and produced for public consumption aimed mostly at children. 

Space Food Sticks were an item everyone could get on board with and they were marketed with the entire family in mind. Since there was nothing more concrete than mere speculation at what an astronaut’s food should look, feel and taste like, the public was perfectly positioned targets for this enterprising marketing campaign. The television commercials sounded and looked official as if the director of NASA himself were instructing all of us to become consumers of astronaut food. 

After all, look how healthy and brave these men were.

For several years, children and adults alike convinced themselves that the chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter flavored foil-wrapped rods were actually palatable. The public was successfully convinced Space Food Sticks were an energizing, superior way to recharge their batteries even though they looked like something the dog left behind in the backyard. 

Eventually, the collective delusion lifted, and Space Food Sticks blasted off to the great failed food product graveyard in the sky in the early 1980s.

2 Figurines

Figurines were a crunchy wafer-like bar, the marketing of which preyed upon women’s diet insecurities. Introduced in 1974, Figurines were available in a variety of flavors and were full of fat and sugar. The psychological rub was that “Figurines are full of added vitamins.”

Although not explicitly stated, these 300 calories per pouch bars were meant to be used as a meal replacement. Along with the heavy consumption of cigarettes, Tab diet soda, and caffeine pills — a popular mix in the 1970s — teenage girls followed in their mother’s shoes by starving themselves of real food while consuming products like Figurines in order to achieve an impossible standard of beauty. 

Ultimately the Figurines diet bar craze ended up as just another diet food fad in the arsenal of weight loss tools the average American woman kept in steady supply. As the consumers of Figurines aged out, so did the wafer’s popularity, and they were discontinued in the early 80s.

1 Sugar-Free Gummy Bears

How can you tell the taste difference between a gummy bear and a sugar-free gummy bear? You can’t. Until somewhere between minutes to hours after consuming a handful or two of the Haribo sugar-free gummy bears, you are overcome by the curse of Maltitol, a sugar alcohol used as a sugar substitute in many confections. 

Maltitol acts as a seriously powerful laxative in almost everyone who is unfortunate enough to consume it unawares. Who would have thought the pleasurable act of indulging non-stop in a package of cute little gummy bears could lead to the agony of visiting the porcelain god indefinitely with explosive diarrhea? 

In no time at all, Haribo wisely made the decision to remove these vindictive little bears from their candy lineup. Beware: other companies have not been quick to do the same.