CBS drunk-dials another season of already-canceled S.W.A.T.
It's like when your friend keeps getting back together with their ex, except its between a TV network and a guy named "Hondo"
Look, you know how it is. It’s late, maybe you’ve been partying a little, and then that urge hits you. It’s a bad idea, sure, but the great thing about bad ideas is that they’re usually tomorrow’s problem, right? So you pick up your phone, scroll through your contact lists… and order another season of the long-running cop show S.W.A.T., even though you already actually broke up with it, like, a year ago.
Such is, as far as we can tell, the situation facing TV network CBS today, when it walk-of-shamed out a press release announcing that, despite having already made a pretty big deal about the current run of the Shemar Moore-starring procedural being its “final season,” it’s gone ahead and ordered itself another. Even CBS executives seem mildly embarrassed about this one; per THR, network president Amy Reisenbach put out a statement today noting that “Here at CBS, we always ‘stay liquid’ and love a good dramatic twist, especially when it leads to an eighth season of S.W.A.T.”
This is, in fact, the second time CBS has pulled this “will they, won’t they get back together” move on S.W.A.T., having previously done the exact same thing with the show’s sixth season, killing the series before giving in to temptation and bringing it back for another tumble. The network appears to be pulled back and forth between two poles here: On the one hand, S.W.A.T. does solid ratings year-in and year-out, with Moore a mainstay of the network for nearly two decades at this point. (Having come over to the series after departing Criminal Minds in 2017.) On the other hand, the series is facing the usual salary increases that come with extended age, and has a complicated licensing situation due to being a co-production between CBS and Sony Pictures Television, which might explain some of the weird back-and-forth.
Anyway: CBS and S.W.A.T. are very happy together, and we’re all going to just hold tight and keep pretending that’s true until the next break-up’s come and gone, alright?