I write this post with a heavy heart because Comedy Central has officially canceled ‘The Jeselnik Offensive‘ and FXX followed suit by giving the boot to “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.” It’s sort of like my world has caved in on itself and I no longer have any real purpose. I’m empty inside.
Jeselnik himself announced his own cancellation following a performance at The New York Comedy Festival on Saturday, which Comedy Central would confirm on Monday. The show featured a variety of offensive and “edgy” bits ranging from ragging on cancer victims to joking about the Boston Marathon bombings, so basically classic comedy.
It joins a long line of shows that haven’t made it in the Comedy Central lineup, sort of giving a boost of confidence to recent success “Key & Peele.” It’s tough existing in a time slot that has been a revolving door since the end of “Chappelle’s Show.” At least we know that Daniel Tosh will have another show to belittle before commercial breaks on “Tosh.0” next season.
Over on FXX, “Totally Biased” also faced hard times after the still confusing FX network split and an expansion into a nightly late night program. It seems like only yesterday that I was sharing it to rave reviews and now it’s on the way out.
“Totally Biased” was a fairly humorous program when it aired one night a week in some sort of late night tango with the jumbled mess that was “Brand X.” This is also when it followed strong lead ins like “Louie” or “Always Sunny.” However, the show had a hard time adjusting to the new network and nightly format according to The A.V. Club:
The audience for the expanded Totally Biased was as low as 12,000 viewers in late October—an audience that was necessarily limited by the fact that FXX is available in 26 million fewer households than its parent network.
I’d say a bigger reason is the already packed late night lineup vying for that 18-49 magic at 11 pm. Aside from Leno, Kimmel and Letterman on the networks, there’s Conan on TBS, Stewart and Colbert back to back on Comedy Central and little thing called the Internet consuming our attention spans. It’s hard out there for a late night host who may or may not be comically pleasing.
So pour one out for these fallen programs that will soon be replaced with “Mad About You” reruns. I’m sure someone will miss them.
