It seems no-one learned their lesson from that first attempt at reviving Full House. Though, to give them credit, the creators of 2016’s Fuller House did have John Stamos and the gang from the original series on board. 90s kids the world over rejoiced, as Netflix built up the hype for their official reboot. However, this ended up being another case of too much hype with nothing substantial to deliver. Fans became annoyed with the excessive carrying on about the reunion.
Time magazine captured the feelings of critics and fans alike: “Fuller House has nothing more to offer than a look at what an old show’s actors and format look like in the present day.” Points have to be given to the producers for perfectly recreating the original set. They were also able to convince all of the original actors, apart from the Olsen twins, to take part. However, the old jokes just didn’t fly in the new setting, and there’s only so many times you can sigh and reflect on how much things have changed, before it just gets tedious.
2015: Dr. Ken
Having enjoyed great success, and an ardent following of fans, from shows like Community and The Hangover, Ken Jeong seemed an obvious choice to take on a starring role in his own show. Seeing the hype that was building around the comedian, ABC decided to capitalize on it with the creation of a show in which Jeong would play the lead. Dr. Ken seemed perfect for Jeong, especially since (and trust us, we were as shocked to learn this as you’re about to be) the cocaine-guzzling crazy man who demanded “but did you die?” in The Hangover is actually a fully qualified doctor in real life.
What caused Jeong’s sitcom to fail was, strangely, the very thing that caused him to be so successful in all his other ventures. The Louis Post-Dispatch explained what the problem was: “ too much Ken Jeong. His manic energy takes over every frame of the pilot, at the expense of anything and anyone else in the show,”
2015: The Unauthorized Full House Story
Lifetime: a network famous for its overly dramatic, straight-to-TV movies, and for ruining the much-loved teen sitcom, Saved by the Bell, by creating a behind-the-scenes version of it that sucked all the comedy out and turned it into drama. While we have to admit, Lifetime movies can be a guilty pleasure, it seems the network can’t be trusted around our favorite shows. In 2015, they aired The Unauthorized Full House Story, a show drawn from the memoirs of the late Bob Saget. Unfortunately, no one from the original series was down to participate and the stand-in actors just had nothing on the original cast.
Then, of course, there was the writing. As New York Daily News explained, “Unauthorized captures the feel-good part. Unfortunately, it misses the “written well” part. Like, completely.” Lifetime failed to do Full House any justice and Unauthorized was more like a Full House-themed fever dream.
2017: Marvel’s Inhumans
While Marvel may be breaking box office records with the insane levels of success it enjoys with its comic-based films, they somehow managed to fail miserably when they tried to translate their talents into TV. Maybe the small screen just isn’t big enough for all their oomph? That seems to have been a concern for the producers, anyway, because they actually aired the first episode of their made-for-TV series, Marvel’s Inhumans, in IMAX theaters. The 2017 series was then shifted to what was supposed to be its permanent home on ABC. Even with this epic introduction, Inhumans just failed to impress.
Ken Tucker, of Yahoo TV, perhaps put it best: “I’d like to say that Marvel’s Inhumans is so spectacularly awful, it’s worth tuning in just to witness the superhero train-wreck. But alas, Inhumans does not even yield sarcastic pleasures–it’s just bad. Bad in a dull way, bad in an irritating way… Marvel’s Inhumans is just inhumane.”
2018: Jean-Claude Van Johnson
While it had a massive star in the titular role, the satirical comedy, Jean-Claude Van Johnson, was canceled by Amazon just a month after its premiere. While it seems obvious to blame the quality of the episodes for the failure of the series, many people leaped to the show’s defense, claiming it wasn’t about the show per se. Rather, Amazon had made a strategic move to cut back on original comedies, replacing them with a focus on dramas. The pilot, after all, was solid; yet many point out that the episodes that stretched out after it was just that: stretched. Critics felt the storyline was so basic it barely warranted a full series. After just six episodes went to air, between 2016 and 2017, the show was canceled and Jean-Claude Van Damme sadly had to seek out new avenues for sharing his martial arts skills with the world.
What you’ve just witnessed were the worst of the worst: those shows TV viewers and critics agreed were the most heinous offerings of the 2000s. Coming up are the more controversial ones. The shows that had people divided, including some that were so bad they were weirdly hypnotic, and one that comedy genius, Steve Carell, wishes you never found out about.