After eight seasons of capturing fleeing felons and smothering them with Christ's love and bear mace, Dog The Bounty Hunter is coming to an end, Variety reports, with final episodes scheduled to begin airing next month. The show featuring mercenary mullet Duane "Dog" Chapman and his "colorful"-in-the-sense-that-it-refers-to-people-you-would-never-want-to-actually-meet-but-you'll-watch-them-yell-at-each-other-on-TV family as they tackled fugitives and shouted excitedly into walkie-talkies was a benchmark in A&E's evolution from "Arts & Entertainment" into its more modern, "Asinine & Extroverted" programming, pointing the way to a future of far more loud people and much fewer sleeves.
That no doubt helped the series survive its many controversies over the years—not least of them being pulled for several months after a tape surfaced of Chapman repeatedly slinging racial epithets about his son's girlfriend, for which he apologized, as well as Chapman's arrest by federal marshals for illegally bounty hunting in Mexico. And under the circumstances, it's a little strange that A&E has offered no official explanation for why it has only now opted not to pick up further episodes—especially given that Dog enjoyed series-high ratings for its January premiere. Still, it's possible that A&E simply needs the space for more shows about people buying other people's garbage.