The Office and Seinfeld Almost Didn’t Make It

I’ve been listening to The Office Ladies podcast about the TV series The Office. Throughout the first two seasons of the show, there was no guarantees it would get picked up. It wasn’t a runaway success right off the bat. In fact, it was picked up in small batches of episodes and most of the cast was making contingency plans if and when it would get cancelled. Something similar also happened with Seinfeld.

This brings up a few thoughts:

• When something is new, revolutionary, and brilliant, it will take some time to sink in and gain mass appeal.
• How many other brilliant shows did we miss out on because they were cancelled before they were understood?

These shows wouldn’t have been any less brilliant had they been cancelled but they would have been remembered (or not remembered) as failures.

Narratives are funny.