Whenever the name Norman Lear is invoked, one way or the other, I get downright evangelical. As I’ve mused on numerous other occasions, getting the chance to rub shoulders and actually collaborate with him was one of the highlights and bucket list items of my career, and I dare say of numerous others’ far more prominent than I. And if you happen to be anyone of a younger generation who perhaps isn’t familiar with his body of work, particularly in light of the climates in which he created many of them, if you have any aspirations at all of being a creative—or merely a quality human being—I strongly suggest you at least peruse his Wikipedia page for the myriad of reasons I have such a strong opinion. One can only hope you might be motivated to at least watch a few clips of some of his more enduring works, even the ones now more than a half-century old, hold up both for comedy and for social relevance.
So the fact that a story like this from THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s newest recruit Tony Maglio dropped yesterday was more than a bit upsetting to me:
Amazon Prime Video has canceled Clean Slate, which was television legend Norman Lear‘s final completed project, after one season. Series stars Laverne Cox and George Wallace, as well as their fellow co-creator Dan Ewen, broke the news in a guest column on Deadline. Clean Slate premiered on Prime Video on February 6; by “the end of March” it was canceled, the trio wrote. Cox, Wallace and Ewen called the series a “labor of love,” and a “seven-year effort” that “was gone in a puff of server exhaust.” Perhaps a little bit of a shot there on how Amazon conducts its business.
Oh, Tony, how respectful you opted to be by hedging your feelings with the word “perhaps”. Maybe that’s why you’re being now paid slightly more for your words than am I. Or maybe you have superiors that either demanded that you add it or you, sensing the especially emotionally charged times we find ourselves in, chose to slip it in yourself.
Cox, Wallace and Ewen were only slightly less nuanced in their column. In wonderful detail, they described the kind of thrill that I know I felt when they were sitting down with Mr. Lear (as you know, I’ve always felt he deserves such a courtesy title):
The room was dead quiet for a moment. Norman Lear sat alongside his Sony penthouse window, cane in hand. “Look at this regal wockaflocka,” George thought. Wallace has tried to maintain a reputation as a clean comedian and had borrowed a rapper’s name as a PG-friendly word substitute. It would become the cast and crew’s favorite word, alongside his trademarked “whatnot.” Norman shook his head in amazement. He looked at us, collecting his thoughts before asking, “I’m almost a hundred years old. How have I just learned so much about something so important?”
Laverne, one of precious few Alabamans to appear on both the cover of Time magazine and British Vogue, had spent the prior 90 minutes entertaining dozens of questions about transness from the ever-curious Norman. It was a fantastic conversation, and we would wager it was Norman’s first meeting where he would find himself addressed as “guuuurl” 17 times.
Some of Lear’s questions were too personal, some overly medical. Laverne’s retort, “That information is between me and my doctor and my boyfriend,” would end up in the pilot script. But Norman’s questions were evidence of a mind that had remained open, decades after most people’s have welded shut and whatnot.
As someone who still can’t quite shut up about how that same unsinkable curiosity allowed me to reeducate him on the worthiness of focus groups done right, the rest of their column brought back some truly wonderful memories. And I totally get how difficult it must have been for them to write these words as their coda:
We’re not gonna sit here and pretend we’re the first show to get canceled. Hell, four shows were zapped while you read this. We humbly thank those at Sony and Amazon who worked on and on the behalf of Clean Slate. It is a privilege and a joy to make a living in the creative sphere, let alone while telling a story of import. You helped make it all possible.
I’m honestly sorry the concerns I expressed when the show was dropped in February proved to be more prescient that I would have hoped. But I’ve been through many of the same emotional roller coasters that the CLEAN SLATE team shared, none more relevant than the ones I shared with Mr. Lear’s team and mine when Netflix was hemming and hawing about the fate of ONE DAY AT A TIME. As was apparently the case here, the platform was reluctant to share concrete data with any of us, and what they chose to consider relevant to their decision seemed to change depending upon how the Santa Anas were kicking up. When the show was up for a fourth season renewal the KPIs they had cited in previous seasons’ discussions had yet again changed; we had moved the needle in LatAm countries where the show had been underperforming, but we apparently lost ground among U.S. Latinos. When Lear and Miller finally did get some digestible data, we helped them parse it. We had data from other sources that countered it. Our executives got quite worked up and urged that we enhance our pitch deck with it.
Mr. Lear himself ultimately weighed in and asked that it not be included. He shared a similar sage reality check to the one that our nuanced friend Rick Ellis of TOO MUCH TV shared in his newsletter last night:
(R)eading the news reminded me of a text I received from someone on the show who had been complaining to me that Amazon didn’t seem to really believe in the series: “This is the most meaningful and funniest show I’ve ever worked on. And we’re just fucked.”
It’s become more and more clear, especially in the wake of streamlining with the recent deserved departure of Jen Salke, that Amazon is becoming more focused on growing its own. Witness the news that VARIETY’s Joe Otterson shared last week:
The “Carrie” TV adaptation at Amazon Prime Video has officially been ordered to series, Variety has learned. Amazon has ordered eight episodes, with production slated to begin this summer in Vancouver.
“’Carrie’ is an iconic story that has withstood the test of time with continued cultural relevance,” said Vernon Sanders, head of television for Amazon MGM Studios. “With Mike Flanagan at the helm and the accomplished team assembled including executive producer Trevor Macy this provocative series is sure to captivate our global customers.”
Perhaps that internal jockeying contributed to the decision on CLEAN SLATE. Maybe it was simply the fact not enough people watched. But as Maglio lamented,
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Amazon Prime Video with a request for comment on the cancellation news; we did not immediately hear back.
Which makes the concerns expressed by the CLEAN SLATE troika at the end of their piece all the more justified:
(W)e mourn our baby. We mourn for the jobs that disappear with this news. We mourn the continued demise of non-IP creations (for the record, we would’ve gladly thrown some dragons into Harry’s car wash, or made Desiree a secret agent). We mourn full seasons. We mourn Norman, and his bravery, and his not infrequent cursing. We mourn sister projects that face a similar fate. We mourn the characters being scrubbed from storytelling out of fear.
And given where the mindset of the guy who still ultimately signs the checks at Amazon is these days, especially in light of the non-IP being greenlit, one can only wonder why there is nothing but silence from the Culver Studios lot.
Maybe it’s a little harsh to think that that dude is actually weighing in on little matters like this. After all, between wedding planning and keeping his fiancee safe in his rocket ship, he might be a tad too preoccupied these days.
Which then begs the question where the front line Amazonians felt about CLEAN SLATE. And why. Did they, perhaps, take a similar approach that one would take by adding a “perhaps” to a supposedly objective writeup? Out of an abundance of caution trying to please a boss with grace concerns about political perception?
Were Mr. Lear still around, perhaps he might counsel those in mourning the same way he did when Netflix bid adieu to ODAAT. But at that point the streaming and, for that matter, the media landscape was opportunistic enough where a more willing and empowered new partner eventually emerged via Pop TV and CBS. They moved mountains to create a fourth season, one sadly aborted by COVID and the ensuing economic fallout. That’s clearly not an option for Sony and Act III now, and it’s honestly hard to imagine where any other one might.
And without Norman’s sage experience to tap into, it’s all the more incumbent for someone at Amazon to at least have enough decency or huevos to at least explain what drove their decision. At least own up to or empirically refute some of what many are clearly thinking. Given what and how Vernon Sanders has championed to rise through the ranks, his thoughts might be a good place to start.
This is absolutely not the time for him or his colleagues to go full Gretchen Whitmer on us.
Until next time…