Lately it seems that things aren’t going so well for all our comedian cronies who are looking to collect a network paycheck: First Patton Oswalt found himself booted from NBC’s Beach Lane after a single table read; now it appears Bob Odenkirk has been replaced in the CBS pilot Team Spitz after rating poorly with test audiences. Producers say that the high school comedy starring Rob Riggle doing his vein-popping shout-y thing as a “bombastic” coach at a ritzy high school tested fine in all areas except Odenkirk’s, whose portrayal of the school principal as a “complete jerk and a sanctimonious bureaucrat” apparently turned people off so much that the creators were forced to tweak the character. According to Deadline, Odenkirk was recovering from surgery and thus unavailable for reshoots—and because they couldn’t wait for him to get better before pressing forward with the pilot (and totally not because they just decided they didn’t like Odenkirk after all), they immediately swapped him out for Kurtwood “Bitches, Leave” Smith, whose complete jerk-itude is apparently more marketable.
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