After six seasons of hilarious, cartoonish buffoonery of the very highest order, it was announced on Thursday afternoon on Twitter by Thomas Lennon that "Reno 911!" has been canceled. The news arrived as a shock to many, who considered "Reno" to be one of Comedy Central's very few long-running comedies that had broad appeal and consistent originality.
Thursday afternoon, Lennon posted this tweet "Reno 911! was canceled at 1:30 P.M. today. Won't be wearing the shorts again." Lennon, of course, is better known as Lt. Jim Dangle, the overtly gay ringleader of Reno's lovable crew of complete idiots and
A rep for Comedy Central made the following announcement on Friday: “We can officially confirm that we won’t be making any more new episodes.” Then, to add a dash of insult to the roast of injury, Comedy Central devoted its Saturday night prime-time slot to the Reno 911!: Miami film, which made just over $20 million on its run in 2007.
Fellow creator Ben Garant (who also plays redneck idiot deputy Travis Junior) had a bit more to say. "To tell the truth, getting dumped by Comedy Central feels kinda like a wake-up call,” Garant told Knoxville.com. "If they hadn't fired us, we honestly never woulda quit. I love doing Reno. It was fun."
The relationship with the network wasn't always a barrel of laughs, however. "I feel like I was in an abusive relationship that we were never gonna walk out of, and then I got dumped. It feels shitty," Garant confessed. “The last season was the best by far, and the funnest, and it was gonna keep getting better. But honestly I'm glad we're forced to move on.”
Fans shouldn't mourn too much, however. This is just another chapter closing for the group, who are already in talks with another network for a new show.
"We had a great run on Reno - 87 episodes and a movie," he said. "Not too shabby. I do feel bad for the fans. They feel gypped. They're expressing that already, but our next show is gonna be better, and it's gonna have a lot of the same faces from Reno. The Reno family will live. In the TV.”
We'll miss Dangle's homoerotic flair and short-shorts, as well as Deputy Wiegel's (Keri Kenney-Silver) childlike, mildly-racist, schizophrenic antics. We'll never forget Deputy Jones (Cedric Yarbrough), who valiantly fought off Dangle's sexual advances (except maybe that one time) and managed to hold the anchor as the one sane member of the cast - while bearing the brunt of the racial jokes. And of course, there's Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash), the perpetually man-hungry endomorph who played up the "soul sister" angle at every given opportunity.
Nor can we ever forget Terry (Nick Swardson). Perhaps the single best character in the history of television, Terry was the flamboyantly gay male prostitute (who happens to have a record deal and a private jet) that the Reno police force would encounter in every third episode or so. A perpetual "fifth Beatle" to the central cast, Terry's on-screen antics brought the hardest laughs of any bit on the show, and he will be sorely missed.
Of course, there have been a few casualties in the force along the way, most notably heading into the sixth season: characters Garcia, Johnson and Kimball all fell by the wayside after season five, replaced but never forgotten. A growing percentage of fans felt as if the show had lost its spark once it started cutting members from the force, but the new avenues taken allowed fresh blood to be pumped into a spectrum of material that had been nearly exhausted.
So why the cancellation? It's clear that Comedy Central is cutting costs in every way that it can; for proof one needs only look to the latest crop of shows popping up, or the upswing of repackaged comedy clips from the early '90s made into "specials" (if I see Paula Poundstone and her shoulderpads on my screen one more time...). So while Comedy Central loads on the extra helpings of the unwatchable bullshit that is "Tosh.0," as well as reruns of "MadTV" and "Scrubs," they're dropping the axe on the funniest and most popular series the network has seen since "South Park".
