Saving its bad news for the waning hours of Friday when both shows are less likely to cause a scene, ABC has called Last Resort and 666 Park Avenue into its office and informed them that it's time to let them go. The two freshmen dramas had both under-performed since the very start of the season despite the endorsement of critics—or, in 666 Park Avenue's case, a Sunday evening time slot that took advantage of those who dozed off in a wine-soaked stupor after Revenge. Even with that leg up and Terry O'Quinn squinting menacingly at things, 666 continued to struggle, averaging only around 5 million viewers a week.
The Shawn Ryan-created Last Resort, meanwhile, had the historically terrible-for-ABC Thursday time slot where Charlie's Angels, My Generation, and Missing all went to die, and somehow its rave reviews it earned did not translate into stellar ratings he said sarcastically, as though this did not happen again and again in television. Anyway, both series will be allowed to play out the rest of their 13 episodes, and their deaths will surely prove to be a lesson for ABC about trying this sort of weird, ambitious stuff again, and to get back to the travails of sexy wealthy people post-haste.