Over on The Wire this week, David Sims writes about the failure rates of midseason replacements of late. It hasn’t been going well, especially for comedies. In the last three years, there have been basically four midseason comedies to make it until their second season, and of them, only Bob’s Burgers is still around (the others were Happy Endings, Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23 and Breaking In, each of which barely survived their first seasons).
It doesn’t look any better this year, which is a shame because Enlisted is brilliant, but will no doubt be cancelled and Mixology doesn’t have a shot in hell. However, both Growing Up Fisher and About a Boy are performing well for NBC and could see second seasons, so it’s not completely unheard of for a midseason replacement comedy to succeed today.
Historically, however, midseason replacements have had a decent track record. Some of our favorite shows, in fact, were midseason replacements, such as Moonlighting (5 Seasons), Quantum Leap (5 Seasons), The Wonder Years (6 Seasons), Parks and Recreation (6 Seasons so far), Malcolm in the Middle (7 Seasons), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (7 seasons).
Here, however, are the 20 midseason replacements that survived longer than 8 seasons.
20. Laverne & Shirley — 8 Seasons
19. Perfect Strangers — 8 Seasons
18. Walker, Texas Ranger — 8 Seasons
17. Three’s Company — 8 Seasons
16. The Practice — 8 Seasons
15. Falcon Crest — 9 Seasons
14. Night Court — 9 Seasons
13. The Office — 9 Seasons
12. Dynasty — 9 Seasons
11. Grey’s Anatomy — 10+ Seasons
10. American Dad — 10 Seasons
9. Jag — 10 Seasons
8. The Jeffersons — 11 Seasons
7. Happy Days — 11 Seasons
6. Married … with Children — 11 Seasons
5. Family Guy — 12 Seasons so far
4. King of the Hill — 13 Seasons
3. Dallas — 14 Seasons
2. Knots Landing — 14 Seasons
1. The Simpsons — 25 Seasons, so far
