In what will probably become a new series of posts about television, I explore a short-lived show I enjoyed that, had it continued to run for years to come, might have changed television dramatically. Or at least, you know, a little bit.
The Class (CBS, 2006-2007)
All the way back in the Fall of 2006, CBS debuted a new sitcom, about young people, called The Class, to pair with an acclaimed but still on the bubble sitcom about young people, How I Met Your Mother. It focused on a group of seven people in their late twenties who are all connected by the fact that they were all in the same third grade class. After a party thrown by Ethan Haas (Jason Ritter) brings them together, their lives start to intersect once again.
After this cute jumping off point for a hangout comedy, The Class (which was created by David Crane, of Friends, and Jeffrey Klarik) combined entertaining writing with a great cast, giving CBS a solid, but not spectacular (ratings-wise, anyway) one-two punch in the rough Monday Night 8-9 PM slot (other shows that were in this timeslot include NBC’s juggernaut Deal Or No Deal and FOX’s Prison Break.
Despite the difficult competition, the fact that the show was younger than what CBS at the time was pulling (a problem that HIMYM also struggled with at the time), and the fact that they had to spend part of the season launching the night (rather than being protected by an established show), The Class did reasonably well, pulling in numbers similar to the show that has just completed its eighth season and is headed for a victory lap next year.*
Then, despite reasonably good press, solid creative direction, and season-long story arcs that developed over the course of the season, pointing toward an interesting second season, the show was canceled.
But what if the show had endured, and grown into another CBS hit? Paired alongside HIMYM, it’s not hard to envision the show finding a decent amount of success, which means that potentially…
…Andrea Anders would never have gone on to the amazing (but also short-lived) show Better Off Ted.
…Jon Bernthal would never have gone on to embody Shane on The Walking Dead (a job that also likely led to his next, as he’s working again with Frank Darabont on the upcoming Lost Angels).
…Lizzy Caplan probably wouldn’t have had time to show up on True Blood. She definitely wouldn’t have been in Party Down.
…Jesse Tyler Ferguson wouldn’t have become Mitchell on Modern Family.
…Jason Ritter wouldn’t have tried to save the day in The Event, or earned an emmy nomination for Parenthood.
In television, shows are canceled all the time. Roles are recast, characters are brought in or removed. The failure rate is so high, doing any kind of real “what if…” over one’s career would probably drive someone nuts. We always wonder what might have happened, if we had just been allowed to keep doing what we were doing a little bit longer.
But we forget, too often, what wouldn’t have been.
*I have to admit, I didn’t watch The Class when it aired – a friend of mine suggested I catch up on it later and provided me with VHS tapes (yes, tapes! Remember those?). Part of me was very worried that, with the numbers so close, they might keep this show over HIMYM, which was probably my favorite sitcom at the time. Considering that CBS had not yet expanded comedy to two nights, and that the next season’s development brought The Big Bang Theory, it seems like it was always going to be one or the other, but not both. Ultimately it’s hard to argue that CBS didn’t make the right choice.**
**A footnote in a footnote? Yeah, sorry. But it’s interesting to point out that both The Class and How I Met Your Mother did worse that season, ratings-wise, than Rules of Engagement, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and The King of Queens.
Although to be fair, all of those shows spent at least part of the season behind 2.5 Men, which no doubt goosed their ratings up some.
