TBS celebrates Chad's season premiere by canceling the show

Cancel culture has finally come for Chad, one of TBS’s last scripted television shows. The network, which announced in April that it would dismantle the costly process of writing television before producing it, canceled Nasim Pedrad’s awkward teen comedy just ahead of its second season premiere on July 11. Hey, that’s today! Classy move, TBS.

The completed second season of Chad is in search of a new home and now resembles its lead character, standing against a wall, hoping that some lonely streamer as desperate as he will offer a dance. Perhaps hanging a sign around its neck that reads “full season of television ready for ad placement” will be enough to attract a ‌FreeVee, a Pluto, or even a Tubi. On the other hand, maybe Netflix wants to revive the age-old practice of buying a show off another network and christening it “a Netflix original.”

TBS, for its part, offered no explanation or reasoning behind the sudden cancelation. However, TBS’s statement does explain that canceling Chad before audiences could see the thing is merely a part of how Warner Bros. Discovery “assess content and implement a new strategy for our network.” That’s probably how they landed on canceling the show on the day of its second season premiere: carefully strategizing and assessing content. Say what you will be about this corporate, penny-pinching logic that suppresses earnest creativity in favor of yet another 90 Day spin-off, but it is soulless, heartless, and callous, particularly to the people that made the show and the people who wanted to watch it.

Thankfully, the statement let Chad-heads know that they are “proactively exploring various options to find the right home for it” because one of the many television networks owned by Warner Bros. Discovery ain’t it, chief. Nevertheless, despite what you may assume based on its actions, the network does, in fact, “celebrate and thank Nasim Pedrad” and her “bold, unexpected coming of age story” that has no place on TBS. Nothing says “we celebrate and thank our creators” by unceremoniously dumping their hard work in the trash and “proactively” posting “does anyone else want this trash” on Deadline.

In a statement to Deadline, Pedrad was much more magnanimous in the face of a professional setback (read: some complete and utter bullshit). She writes:

I recognize the landscape of our industry is changing so quickly. Did I expect my show to get caught in the crosshairs of a corporate restructuring and merger? No. I’ve spent the last year making a season of television I’m really proud of. From the writers room to production through the edit, a team of very talented and dedicated people came together to tell a story we believe in. A hard comedy that portrays Middle Eastern characters from a place of empathy and humanity. I feel so lucky that Chad has an incredibly loyal fanbase. I know they’re going to love this season and I’m excited for the show to find a new home.

This is the latest in a series of cancelations for scripted shows at Warner Bros. Discovery, and it does not bode well. Earlier this year, following the massive merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, the company announced that it would no longer develop scripted television for the TNets (the horrible internal nickname for the formerly Turner-owned stations TBS, TNT, and TruTV). The move effectively frees Big Bang Theory reruns of the burden of having to sell viewers on Animal Kingdom. Since the announcement, TBS canned The Last O.G. in April, while fellow TNet, TNT announced it would offload its last remaining scripted series, Snowpierecer, after its fourth season.

Good luck to the American Dad rerun that gets Chad’s timeslot.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]