After an abbreviated freshman season during which nothing much of interest happened, CBS has pulled The McCarthys from its Thursday night lineup. The sitcom, which stars Tyler “Son Of John” Ritter as an openly gay man who accepts a job as an assistant high school basketball coach from his dad, was originally scheduled to go on hiatus after its February 12 episode, with the one-hour Two And A Half Men series finale taking over its 9:30 p.m. time slot the following week. However, CBS decided to yank it from the schedule a couple of weeks early when it noticed that the ratings for Elementary dropped precipitously when it had new episodes of The McCarthys for a lead-in.
Elementary did pretty well when it had an old episode of The Big Bang Theory as a lead-in, though, so CBS has decided to go with what works and replace the remaining McCarthys episodes with Big Bang Theory repeats—inching that show ever closer to complete and utter ubiquity. This is similar to what happened with Will Arnett vehicle The Millers, which CBS cancelled after it started “dragging down” freshman drama Scorpion. As it happens, Big Bang Theory repeats were also the solution to that problem.
Four of the 15 filmed McCarthys episodes have yet to air, and while the show hasn’t been officially cancelled, it seems unlikely that they’ll ever see the light of day. After February 19, CBS’ Thursday night block will consist of a new Big Bang Theory at 8:00 p.m., followed by a new episode of the Odd Couple remake, an old Big Bang Theory, and an episode of returning series Mom.