Netflix blows up Space Force

Netflix has canceled Greg Daniels and Steve Carell’s Space Force, a TV show you definitely remembered was still on the air.

This is per Deadline, which reports that the series—which grew out of widespread mockery for Donald Trump’s whole “Space Force” ramblings and then, somehow, John Malkovich got involved—will not be picked up for a third season. The show ran for two seasons on the streaming service, with the latter set of episodes allegedly arriving in February of this year—although not even Netflix’s typically suspicious “Everyone in the world is watching our new show!” numbers reporting seemed to measure that second run as much more than a blip.

It’s just the latest data point, really, in our pet theory that Space Force was some sort of high-level experiment to see how little an impact several of the funniest people in the world could have on the comedy landscape if they really, truly tried. Look at this creative roster: Greg Daniels. Steve Carell. Malkovich. Ben Schwartz. Tawny Newsome. Lisa Kudrow. Jimmy O. Yang. And that’s, just, like, main and recurring cast! The list just keeps going, all amazing comic performers, all somehow adding up to a show that was fascinatingly, massively less than the sum of its parts.

Anyway: Space Force has now been decommissioned, like so many aimlessly floating and useless satellites; it will presumably crash back down to Earth once its orbit finally destabilizes, maybe wiping out a Datsun when it does.

Daniels, at least, remains a going concern at Netflix, despite the general belt-tightening that’s presumably been accompanying that disastrous earnings call earlier this month; he’s currently attempting to eke an animated TV show out of the Exploding Kittens card game franchise of all things, and also has that Bad Crimes show starring Nicole Byer and Lauren Lapkus in the works with his old King Of The Hill buddy Mike Judge.