Name That One-and-Done TV Show! A Quiz About the Quickly Cancelled

Matt Webb Mitovich

Sometimes a TV show is cancelled so quickly, you not only barely get to know the characters — you’d be hard pressed to recall its very name!

The other day, I was listening to The Rewatchables (a highly enjoyable podcast for movie lovers), and they were breaking down The American President. During that deep dive, they of course brushed up against Michael J. “They’re so thirsty, they’ll drink the sand” Fox’s TV career, and that got me to thinking about when I last talked to the Family Ties (and Back to the Future) star. It was at an NBC Fall Preview party, he was with his wife/Family Ties sweetheart Tracy Pollan, and we of course talked about Billy Vera, even though he was there to tout his new sitcom…. Ugh, what was its name?

I couldn’t remember the NBC comedy’s title with the podcast playing in my ears, and I couldn’t come up with it later, even when a bit more focused on the task at hand. It wasn’t until I went to make it a part of this quiz that I checked IMDb and… did a facepalm.

The point of this story (and I do have one) is that I bet any number of us would have a hard time placing the name of a blink-and-you-missed-it broadcast-TV show, even if we had watched an episode (…or 13). I mean, I could probably invite you to match a half dozen midseason ABC sci-fi dramas to their titles, and some of you would score a goose egg. (Oooh, there’s another idea, a mix-and-match quiz….)

So here’s the drill: Take this multiple choice quiz, which invites you to choose the correct name for the show shown in the photo, accompanied by a snippet of plot. We are starting off easy, pulling only from one-season shows that aired during TVLine’s 10-year (and two weeks) existence. Depending on how this goes, we’ll do another one, going back a bit further, where the difficulty will increase and the prize money will double. (Disclaimer: There is no prize money, nor awarding of TVLine Power User points.)

Dive on in, and let us know how you did… including which ones you epically goofed up on.

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