25 Signs That Your Favorite Show Is Going to Get Cancelled

We live in a nation gripped by fear. The morning after we watch our favorite TV show, we read our favorite blogger, and then head to Twitter to see if the series has been cancelled. This fear is well-founded. In this crowded marketplace, very few programs have truly good ratings. If the title isn't a military and/or medical acronym, odds are that it's on the chopping block.

How can you tell if your favorite program is being shipped off the Land of Misfit Shows? There are, for better or worse, a number of tell-tale signs. You always see it coming, and not just from the ratings. The writers' room might start making desperate moves to spice up the show. Circumstances outside the show itself can be enough to bring a powerful program to its knees.

You may not want to admit it to yourself, but there are always signs of impending doom. Forewarned is forearmed, TV lovers—these are the 25 Signs That Your Favorite Show Is Going to Get Cancelled.

Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)

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The people have spoken, but the networks continue to not listen. Beginning with Lone Star in 2010, a rash of shows about people leading double lives for one reason or another have hit the airwaves, and they have all been promptly cancelled.

If you didn't get your fix of these shows after Awake, The Ringer, and the historically low-rated Do No Harm, don't worry, history tends to repeat itself. Just don't expect the next one to hang around for very long either.

Though niche programming is slowly becoming a possibility, that hallowed 18-49 demographic is still all-important to advertisers. Shows like Prime Suspect have been axed for failing to perform in the demo. But no show has suffered for the sin of old age quite like Harry's Law.

At the time of the show's cancellation, Harry's Law was the second highest rated drama on NBC. Several weeks prior to its cancellation, the Kathy Bates-led cast was pulling almost double the audience of The Office. Unfortunately, 6.4 of 7.6 million viewers were over 50.

"Showkiller" is a harsh term to apply to a single person, and it brings us no pleasure to slap the label on someone as funny as Will Arnett. But there is no hiding from the truth.

You're probably familiar with the trials and tribulations of Arrested Development and Up All Night, but you probably forgot Arnett's stints on the quickly cancelled shows Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, Sit Down and Shut Up, and Freak Show. Arnett is not the only actor out there offing shows in their prime: some other notable showkillers include Blair Underwood, Krista Allen, Aidan Quinn, and Donnie Wahlberg.

Pop culture tends to overstate the effectiveness of fan-led campaigns on behalf of struggling shows. Rarely do these calls to action work. Usually a third corporate party (Subway for Chuck and DirecTV for Friday Night Lights) is required to get a deal done.

If a show does receive a miraculous intervention, lightning won't strike twice. After a show is saved by a grass roots campaign, the most fans can expect is two additional seasons, and even that requires extenuating circumstances, like NBC's abysmal ratings.

Nobody likes to be bullied, particularly network executives. When the buzz on a show is bad, even if the ratings are good, dark skies are often on the horizon. Smash debuted as the highest rated drama on NBC, but has seen a steady decline in ratings as early viewers fell out of love and the hate-watching snark-machine started tearing into the show's numerous holes.

Everybody loves a guilty pleasure, but sometimes a show gets stuck in a space where it isn't good enough to like and isn't campy enough to be enjoyed ironically. Odds are, if Ryan Murphy isn't running it and people are hate-watching it, you'd better get your sarcastic tweets in before it's too late.

Twitter loves an underdog (unless it's Mitt Romney). If your favorite show hasn't been making too many social media waves, but then all of a sudden, in the middle of season two (*cough*Enlightened*cough*), the series starts trending, that likely means #trouble.

The chronically hipper-than-thou twitterati love being able to look at their timelines and know that they defended a little-watched show before it bit the dust. That way, once the show gets axed, they can tweet at the network angrily, because, you know, there isn't enough anger on Twitter already.

International shows have a different concept of longevity than stateside programs. Most of them aren't built to be older than your dad (except Doctor Who). Perhaps it's the demanding audiences of Britain and her former colonies; maybe it's the artistic temperament of showrunners hailing from overseas.

Whatever the cause, we've seen many of the best shows from elsewhere including Slings and Arrows (Canada), The Office (U.K.), Summer Heights High (Australia) and Absolutely Fabulous (U.K.) bow out after only a handful of truncated seasons. We know that you TV Angophiles are plentiful and growing in number with each new episode of Downton Abbey. We encourage you to treat your fandom of these shows just like your semester abroad: Don't expect too much and you won't get your heart broken.

Showrunners of today seem to have learned from the past mistakes of TV history. A laundry list of the great shows of yesterday, including The Brady Bunch, All in the Family, Murphy Brown, The Cosby Show, and Mad About You were brought low by the addition of cute kids and babies.

It's not hard to see why the addition of toddlers can topple ratings behemoths. Think about your friends who've had kids. Are they nearly as interesting now that they're parents? And just think—those people you don't have to see every week.

Sending the cast on a vacation is the writers' room equivalent of shouting out "no más" just before falling to the canvas. It's a confession that the scribes have run out of fresh ideas. Sorry to pick on the big-eared mouse, but ABC sent over a half-dozen of its '90s sitcoms to Disney World and only a couple of them came back to tell the tale.

Out of eight shows that did a Disney World episode, only two (Boy Meets World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch) would last more than a couple seasons beyond the Florida vacation.

The problem with kids is that they get older. Shows starring high schoolers eventually have to pass the torch to a new set of teens or we have to follow the original cast into college. This scenario is a catch-22. Nobody wants to watch the characters we love sitting in their dorms eating ramen and smoking pot, but there is little worse than turning on one of your favorite shows to see all new actors.

Friday Night Lights pulled off this transition gracefully, but most shows aren't so lucky. Save By the Bell tried both, with The College Years and The New Class. These attempts are shining examples of why shows are better off calling it quits.

Sometimes a show's performance has nothing to do with its cancellation. From the death of horses in real life on Luck to a child pornography investigation on Skins, to Bill Maher getting politically incorrect on Politically Incorrect, there is plenty of precedent for shows getting canned for producing the wrong type of headlines.

As it turns out, there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Lots of viewers don't think about it when they tune in, but every network has a brand that they diligently protect. Fox is a little edgier than ABC. CBS is far broader and middle-of-the-road than its fellow networks. USA's brand is so defined that most of their shows feel like carbon copies of each other.

In hindisight, shows like Twin Peaks, The Ben Stiller Show and Community were doomed from the start. No matter how much business they did, they could never do the kind of business that would fit their networks. What if Twin Peaks had been created today under the banner of HBO? How would things have gone if Community had found a home at FX? You can't help but wonder how these shows would've performed in a more compatible home.

Life isn't fair. Shonda Rhimes and Chuck Lorre churn out shows that run forever, like Grey's Anatomy and Two and a Half Men, while Bryan Fuller and Shawn Ryan seem destined to produce amazing shows that don't make it past a season or two.

Since The Shield and The Unit, Shawn Ryan has createdLie to Me, Terriers, The Chicago Code, andLast Resort, none of which made it to a second season.

Though Bryan Fuller is known for saving Heroesfrom cancellation, his showsDead Like Me, Wonderfalls, andPushing Daisies met early ends. We're not saying you shouldn't watchHannibalandBeverly Hills Cop, we're just saying don't say we didn't warn you.

Beware of the teen show that lacks hardbodies of either gender. The greatest of all teen series, Freak and Geeks, made this mistake, and even the show's unmatched brilliance couldn't overcome this age-old truth. James Franco wasn't yet studly enough to carry the burden all on his own, and it's taken until right now, 2013, for Linda Cardellini to unleash her sexuality.

More recent shows like Huge have also fallen victim to the shallow realities of teen TV. Give it up for the smarts of the creative team behind Pretty Little Liars—they let the world know that beauties would abound in the title.

There's been much debate as to the actual existence of the Moonlighting Curse. The demise of the hit show came about quickly after the leads, played by Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, had a steamy hook-up. Conventional wisdom dictates that you can never get rid of that UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension) and keep your show afloat. After series as varied as Wonder Years, Cheers, and Battlestar Galactica survived character hook-ups, it was time to rethink the curse.

What kills a show is not the sex itself, it's death of the spark, the end of the explosive chemistry that drove the show. It's hard to argue that The Office got better after Jim and Pam tied the knot. No one's most treasured memories of the X-Files came after Mulder and Scully got together. Characters can hook-up, it just can't be at the expense of their chemistry.

Having too much talent seems like a good problem to have, but sometimes a star can outgrow a show. Though 30 Rock had a nice, long run, we all knew there would come a time when the immensely gifted Tina Fey would put her mind to other projects.

By the same token, we could only expect Bruce Willis to continue Moonlighting, Tom Hanks to bear with Bosom Buddies, and Will Smith to remain The Fresh Prince for so long before they moved on to bigger and better things. You might point to Bryan Cranston and Jon Hamm as examples of break-out performers who have stuck around. And we would remind you that their contracts include firm series' end dates.

Form is just as important as content. There is a reason that the last-ditch effort to save a sitcom often involves switching from multi-cam to single-cam or vice-versa, as we've seen with the never-ending saga of Up All Night. If a script offers nuance and subtlety, a laugh track or studio audience will feel out of place. A naturalistic single-camera approach does no favors to a broad, joke-a-minute slap stick comedy.

Sports Night was the poster child for a failure to marry form and content. Though Sports Night was a single camera show, the network treated it like a traditional sitcom, complete with a laugh track. Sorkin's nuanced patter and cultural commentary combined with a laugh track doomed the show out the gate. Even after the laugh track was axed, the damage was done, and Sports Night was cancelled after two seasons.

Some shows can replace their showrunner and continue on unfazed. Walking Dead remains one of the highest rated shows on the air despite the revolving door installed in the showrunner's office.

There have been many instances, however, when replacing the showrunner has been incredibly detrimental. Post-Amy Sherman-Palladino Gilmore Girls is unwatchable. The current iteration of Community feels like self-parody at best and frontal lobotomy at worst. It's a shame that the demanding voices creating unique shows often belong to people who's utter dedication to their personal vision has a way of getting them fired.

Two shows with the same premise have a difficult time co-existing. By far the most famous example of this is Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip coming out the same season as 30 Rock. We remember that scenario best because then-unknown Tina Fey slew Goliath by besting Mr. West Wing and Coke, Aaron Sorkin.

A portion of the responsibility for Wonderfalls' quick demise has to be laid at the feet of Joan of Arcadia. Sometimes, neither show makes it out of that gate. 2002's Do Over and That Was Then were two identical shows that helped precipitate each other's demise.

This rule does not apply to police and medical procedurals, unfortunately.

Viewers have grown accustomed to critically acclaimed shows hanging around for a while. Series like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos have enjoyed longevity. With the recent demise of Enlightened, we've been reminded that just because a show makes a fair number of year-end top ten lists doesn't mean that it has staying power—it often means the opposite.

Everyone talks about the golden age of TV we're experiencing, but we would do well to remember that the fate of Terriers, Dead Like Me, andMy So-Called Life is still far more common for critical darlings than a full run.

Not every show can be Game of Thrones. To justify a program of that magnitude, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have to produce crazy ratings. The flip side of that coin is that shows likeLouieandGirlscan post modest numbers and stay afloat.

A series likeCarnivále, however, is sure to become a casualty. Though the show lacked the action of aGame of ThronesorBattlestar Galactica, maintaining a full-size Depression-era carnival wasn't cheap; HBO only cancelled the show after the producers were unable to get costs below $2 million an episode.

A number of shows have survived the departure of the lead character through the years, but those shows are the exceptions to the rule. More often than not, when a series loses a main player, things go the way of Northern Exposure and That 70s Show—the show will limp along until an executive takes that it out back for a mercy killing during summer hiatus

The Office made a valiant effort to soldier on in the absence of Michael Scott, and we will remember Dunder Mifflin for making a solid yet futile attempt at the near-impossible feat of replacing the irreplaceable.

As is the case with any workplace, the untimely death of a cast member creates a dark cloud. Their aren't millions of people watching you plug numbers into spreadsheets as you grieve, though. If a character's part is small enough, or if they're on a show where death is somewhat common, like police procedural Hill Street Blues, a character death won't necessarily sink a show.

Still, there are cases proving the opposite to be true. Eight Simple Rules, NewsRadio, and the recently departed Buckwild are just a few examples of shows that couldn't withstand that passing of a key cast member.

The so-called "Friday Night Death Slot" has a long and storied history. Fox's been known to tuck shows away on night-out nights to let them die in peace since 1993. Other networks followed suit.

Over the last several decades, many of your favorite shows have been left unwatched while you were at the bar. Firefly, Ugly Betty, and even WWE Smackdown were all exiled just before they found their way to TV Valhalla. For those of you who don't know, Happy Endings has just been sent to Friday night in a burning canoe. Critics estimate the show will be finished by May; happy or no, the show will have its ending.

Roy, pictured above, obviously didn't lead to the cancellation of The Simpsons after his brief appearance in season eight. The character was added as one-off gag in direct mockery of a Fox executive who suggested that a new character be added to live with the Simpson family and "spice up" the show.

Unfortunately, many series, from The Andy Griffith Show to The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, have actually resorted to moves like this when things grew stale. Characters who were once hilarious, brash, cute, or sexy, are put through the ringer by seasons of plot, and new characters are brought in who possess the qualities that the show's original characters once had.

Lost overcame their Nikki and Paulo blunder in season three, but most shows are never the same after resorting to desperate character additions. Rather than going to live with "two sexy ladies," like Roy did, they usually stick around to put the final nails into a show's coffin.