Netflix cancels Rob Lowe's son-based sitcom Unstable

Today, in absolutely shocking television news: Rob Lowe had a two-season sitcom running at Netflix! And, in slightly less shocking news—given our surprise at the first news—that series, Unstable, has now been canceled.

This is per Deadline, which reports that Lowe’s Unstable, which he starred in and produced with his son, John Owen Lowe, has gotten the axe after two seasons on the streamer. The show, about a young man living in the shadow of his far-more-successful, but also far-more-eccentric father, debuted in March 2023 and then ran its second season in August of 2024; viewing numbers for Netflix’s stuff are always a little suspect, but the show’s second season failed to break into the streamer’s own self-reported Top 10 at any point, which probably wasn’t a good sign for its future.

And while we kid Unstable for being completely forgotten (seriously, we do not remember seeing ads for this thing) in its dying moments, it does feel worth noting that the one thing the show seemed to offer to people not deeply invested in the idea of the Lowe family externalizing…something…here—i.e., seeing Better Off Ted creator Victor Fresco return to an absurdist workplace setting—got jettisoned in its second season, with Fresco replaced by new showrunner Andrew Gurland. Producers on the series have reportedly been “quietly shopping” it around, but selling off dis-used streaming comedies is hard in the first place, and the one linear network where Lowe has a decent amount of pull (Fox, where he has a development deal) has apparently already passed.