News came in last night that more TV series’ have been cancelled, this time by Paramount+. The shows are Star Trek Prodigy and, brace yourself, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. I haven’t bothered with either of these but I do remember all the fuss the producers made about the diverse cast in Rise of the Pink Ladies, so its cancellation will shortly no doubt be our fault. It is a wonder why they keep trying with this.
I just had a quick look on IMDb and Shill Central Rotten Tomatoes and Rise of the Pink Ladies has decent scores. This leads us to believe the only people watching it were the types who constantly cry about this sort of thing once cancelled.
The problem is, there aren’t very many of these people in reality. They just make a lot of noise. The majority audience just wants a good story and doesn’t really care about inclusion, diversity, or whatever else is being preached for virtue points. If a good story has inclusive characters, great. If they don’t, great. If an inclusive character doesn’t have a good story, forget it. If many people aren’t watching the show, why would they renew it? It’s not going to make them any money and, at the end of the day, that’s what this business is about.
Gone But Not Forgotten
Is the cancellation of Prodigy and Rise of the Pink Ladies that big a deal? The people that worked on these shows all got paid, from the carpenters on set to the directors. They did their job, they got a pay cheque, and everyone was happy.
When the show gets cancelled is it disappointing those working on it? Yes, but apart from the writers, everyone gets to keep their job and move on to the next show. How many pilot shows are made each year? With maybe hundreds of people working on them, for the show to never to see the light of day?
I randomly clicked on a name from Rise of the Pink Ladies of one of the crew, Elke Winters is a makeup artist. She has 39 credits to her name on the IMDb. Some of the shows she has worked on are pretty big and still running. Some of the shorts she made I have never heard of and probably will never see.
Elke will still find work after Rise of the Pink Ladies is cancelled. She’ll go on to the next series, work with some big stars and she’ll get a paycheque at the end of it. In the future, she might work on another show that gets cancelled. Disappointing? Yes, but she’ll move on again. It’s the nature of this business.
Is It Funny?
When the cancellation of Rise of the Pink Ladies was reported, I responded on social media with this.
An appropriate response I thought. Well, some people didn’t like it and thought it was disgusting that I should be laughing that shows are not only cancelled, but will be entirely taken off the streaming service. As I explained above, these people were paid and will find work again. It’s not that big a loss. I’ve worked on videos for the LMO, spending weeks on writing, editing, and producing something, only to have 100 views and then it fades away. Is it gutting? Yes, but it’s not the end of the world. I’m happy to carry on making them. In fact, I never get around to finishing some scripts I have started at all.
The people that made Prodigy and Rise of the Pink Ladies made something they personally can be proud of. What is funny, though, is seeing a show made for the virtue signaller and cry babies on social media get cancelled after they made such a big deal out of it. It ionce again shows just how completely out of touch they are with the bulk of the potential audience. Of course Pink Ladies was going to cancelled. It’s a prequel about a musical from over 45 years ago, set in a high school in the 1960s that had more diversity than a modern-day Disney movie.
Pink Ladies was simply pandering to a small group of people with no interest in the original source material, they just wanted to show how inclusive and diverse they were. Like many other companies at the moment during Pride Month, they were just pandering. Because it was pandering to such a small crowd, it didn’t make money, so it was cancelled.
Rant over.
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