It was announced Feb. 27 that “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” will return for a seventh season on NBC. “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” has gone through a lot in the past year. In May 2018, it was announced by Fox that “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” would not return for a sixth season. People were outraged on social media and started multiple petitions for Fox to renew it.
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” was first pitched to NBC back in 2012 by Michael Schur and Dan Goor (both assisted with the development of “Parks and Recreation,” another sitcom hit on NBC.) Fox won the bidding war, and the show aired in the fall of 2013. The series revolves around Jake Peralta (played by the hysterical Andy Samberg,) a highly immature but clever detective in Brooklyn’s 99th Precinct. The supporting ensemble cast features Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero, Joe Lo Truglio, Chelsea Peretti, Stephanie Beatriz and Andre Braugher, who plays the stern Captain Holt. The show is known to be a quick-cut single-camera comedy, and has won Creative Arts Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes (one for Samberg and one for Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy.) The series handles the portrayal of serious issues with an effective blend of humor.
It just didn’t add up why a beloved sitcom would be canceled, and why that would be a smart move for the network. Shortly after there were rumors that Hulu, TBS, NBC and Netflix possibly wanted to revive the show for a sixth season. Hulu passed on the series, but NBC decided to pick it up. Within 32 hours, NBC put it up for 13 more episodes for their sixth season (later boosting it to 18 episodes), after social media outrage by many fans and celebrities such as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Seth Meyers and Mark Hamill, to name a few.
This isn’t the first time a show got changed around networks, and is actually becoming more popular with the plethora of choices in television these days. CBS picked up another comedic sitcom, “Scrubs,” in the 2000s after it hit a bump with ABC. Mindy Kaling’s show, “The Mindy Project,” was canceled also by Fox in 2015, but was picked up by Hulu for two more seasons. A low rated but beloved sitcom, “Arrested Development,” was shifted around for awhile, but soon was picked up by Netflix.
Networks tend to cancel shows that are seemingly doing well, typically for financial reasons. For instance, “Arrested Development,” delivered low ratings and the network believed it was not worth producing it further. It took awhile for a fifth season to finally premiere, and even though it had subpar ratings, like most good shows that get cancelled too soon, it now has a big cult following.
Even though ratings have been a struggle for “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” declining each season, people have enjoyed it on other platforms such as Hulu, Amazon Prime, Youtube and iTunes. It currently airs on Thursdays on NBC at 9 p.m.