By Kate Emswiler
Welp. That was short-lived. No sooner had I declared my love and loyalty to the female-led comedy “Best Friends Forever” than NBC pulled the plug on the fledgling series. Interestingly, however, “BFFs” is one of the few lady-centric casualties of the 2011-2012 season. Other new female-led series have fared better, with many picked up for second seasons (“New Girl”, “Two Broke Girls”, “Smash”, and even super-newbies, “Veep” and ”Girls“) and others showing promise for renewals (“Up All Night“, “Revenge”).
New dude comedies (like “How to Be a Gentleman”, “Man Up!” and “Work It”) had bleaker fates this year, having all been rather quickly dismissed by their networks. Perhaps some of the folks upstairs overestimated the interest in the imaginary “War on Masculinity” plaguing American men (specifically young men, those brave soldiers). Masculinity can be hard to define and, according to these short-lived shows, even harder to hold onto, what with women running things so much (oh, we run everything now, by the way).
Because it’s amusing to examine what network executives think is a trendy Thing that will resonate with audiences, let’s take a look at these three series that swiftly met their maker.
Got a Kate-
