Fans Know the Exact Reason For Not Dead Yet Cancelation After Season 2
Not Dead Yet was a show about ghosts. The main word is "was."
Comedy has also long been a haven for ghosts. Not Dead Yet gained popularity thanks to its premise – the woman starts working as an obituary writer and begins to see the ghosts of the people she writes about.
Not Dead Yet Season 1 Was a Perfect Mix of Supernatural with Personal Stories…
Not Dead Yet followed the successful formula in its first season, which is why fans loved it – the characters were well thought out, their motivations were reasonable, and the ghosts were not just an enticing element for fans of supernatural projects, but actually enriched the story and moved it forward.
The result? 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and unconditional love from fans.
…But Season 2 Ditched That Formula
In the second season, however, the formula changed – not only did the characters become flatter, but the ghosts almost completely lost their importance to the plot. Many fans felt that the creators had deliberately moved away from the supernatural aspect in order to change the format of the show.
“It seems like there was an effort to broaden the appeal of the show by making it more of a workplace comedy in season 2. [...] The goal was presumably to boost ratings, but all they really managed to do was alienate some of their original fans,” Reddit user QuiltedPorcupine wrote.
The result of such a drastic change? 50% rating from viewers of Not Dead Yet's second season on Rotten Tomatoes, total disappointment from fans and cancellation of the show before the third season.
Ghosts is The Show That Not Dead Yet Should Have Take a Cue From
In 2021 the sitcom Ghosts was released, which tells the story of a couple who move into a haunted mansion. In order to maintain peace in the house, the main character will have to take into account the interests of not only her husband, but also the dead.
Ghosts is a classic sitcom about the paranormal: there are a lot of jokes about the afterlife, the variety of monsters (among the phantoms who have become hostages of four walls there are both Vikings and hippies) and personal boundaries. Of course, a comedy about a difficult life with ghosts eventually turns into a story about the vicissitudes of family life: sometimes a wrong life partner can turn out to be worse than any ghosts.
The success of Ghosts, which has earned an impressive 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, is actually quite simple – it strikes the perfect balance between the personal problems of the main characters and the setting of various ghosts that become both the backdrop and the engine of the story.
Maybe this should be a lesson to the creators of Not Dead Yet that if the formula works and more and more viewers fall in love with it, then maybe it's not worth changing it.