Not every show can be as entertaining as Entourage or Wipeout, in fact, some can be pretty atrocious. As a result, many shows don’t last very long on the air. It is not uncommon to hear of shows being cancelled after their first season, or even halfway through a season. Those shows were pretty bad, but they were bearable. At least kind of. We don’t need to talk about those shows, as there are very many of them. What we will talk about are those shows that were so atrocious that they couldn’t make it past a single episode. Somebody somewhere came to work drunk and gave these shows the green light. One can only assume that somebody lives in a cardboard box these days. These are absolute train wrecks of shows, but at least we can look back on them and laugh.
Secret Talents of the Stars
Secret Talents of the Stars was a game show that featured celebrities showing off little know talents. Contestants in the first, and only, episode included George Takei, Sacha Cohen, Clint Black, and Ben Stein. Takei performed a country song, and did decently. It also led up to a very controversial moment. One of the judges made a comment about George Takei looking like one of the stars of Brokeback Mountain. When you realize that Takei is openly homosexual, it becomes clear that this was not a very appropriate comment to make. Worst of all none of the stars’ talents were very entertaining, and the show was cancelled after a single episode. The biggest surprise was that audience members actually took the time to vote on performances.
Osbournes: Reloaded
The Osbournes are a very odd family. That is why so many people watched the Osbournes’ reality show. The next step was to give them a variety show called Osbournes: Reloaded. The family did such outrageous skits as showing Sharon Osbourne working a real job instead of rolling in piles of money. Seeing as this was one of their best ideas for a skit, it is not surprising that Osbournes: Reloaded didn’t make it past a single episode. The show was on Fox, but many local stations cancelled it before an episode even aired due to the fact that the Osbournes were a little too vulgar for most American families.
Emily’s Reasons Why Not
Heather Graham is very attractive. Emily’s Reasons Why Not was a show based on Heather Graham’s character Emily not being able to find a guy. Basically she made lists of why guys weren’t right for her, even though most guys would gladly change whatever they could to make it on her list. Remember that guy we previously mentioned who now lives in a box? That was most likely the fate of everybody who gave this show the thumbs up, as apparently nobody even bothered to watch the pilot before giving it the OK.
Turn-On
Turn-On was a variety show that aired in 1969. It has the rare distinction of actually being cancelled halfway through the premier of the first episode. This was due to the extremely offensive nature of many of the skits shown. One of the skits was simply scrolling homosexual messages across the screen, while another featured a firing squad propositioning a woman before shooting, and a third featured a diagram for a table shaped as a swastika. It is actually shocking that sketches like those were approved in the first place. This show should have been cancelled before a single episode was aired.
Liza Minnelli is a very entertaining woman, but her former husband David Gest was just a pain in the ass. Liza and David was a reality show proposed by VH1 that would follow the couple around as they did things that were assumed to be entertaining. The only problem was David Gest had made it his mission in life to make everyone around him miserable. He would constantly cancel filming at the last second, and abused the camera crew whenever they did something he didn’t like. He didn’t like much of anything. Eventually VH1 got tired of Gest and scrapped the whole show. The pilot episode never even made it on to the air.
