As TV Land's last remaining original series nears its finale, fans are grappling with some tough news. Teachers won't return for Season 4 — it was announced in November that TV Land had canceled the series, and it doesn't appear that any other network made moves to keep it alive in a new home. Now, Teachers viewers can only hope that the show's Season 3 finale will offer a fitting goodbye.
The series is fronted by members of comedy ensemble The Katydids, and focuses lives of a group of elementary school teachers, exploring everything from funding issues to the gang's personal relationships. It has an 84 percent positive score among audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and has received good reviews throughout its run, so this cancellation is definitely a bit of a disappointment.
The Hollywood Reporter's Tim Goodman wrote ahead of Teachers' second season that it was "one of the bright lights of 2016," and that "when a show makes the grade for a second season and has no loss of either ambition or ingenuity, it's time to get on board." And Variety's Brian Lowry speculated that Teachers, along with the hit comedy Younger, would help usher in a new generation of viewers to TV Land. "Teachers takes an awfully familiar-sounding log-line and makes it feel fresh through sheer execution, thanks to the writing and wonderfully droll tone," he wrote.
But alas, it wasn't meant to be. Despite excitement surrounding the series, TVSeriesFinale.com reports that its third season was down 27 percent in ratings and 29 percent in viewers, so perhaps the numbers just didn't do enough to keep it on the air.
Deadline also reports that particularly after multiple TV Land shows, including Younger, have found new homes on the Paramount Network, there has been talk of TV Land returning to its original bread and butter: classic sitcom reruns. Despite those rumors, nothing has been confirmed. It is worth stating, though, that TV Land has gone from seven original series to zero after Teachers' cancellation, Deadline continued.
Regardless of the rationale behind Teachers being pulled, fans are definitely upset about it:
One of the stars of Teachers, Kathryn Renee Thomas, wrote a thank-you message to fans in a tweet following the news that Season 3 would be the show's last. "Thank you all so much for your love and devotion from a little web series that we started writing in January of 2012, to January 2019 when our final ten episodes of our fifty episode cable show will air!" she wrote. "I promise you'll love these last episodes!"
They really seem to have wanted to capture the experiences of teachers, and it appears that they've done just that. "We actually received tons of responses saying the show is hilarious," another star, Katy Colloton, told the Huffington Post. "Many also told us how they could individually relate. They’d say ‘that’s what I wanted to say. I wish I had handled things that way,’ or ‘I had a coworker who actually did that!’ It made us feel good because we wanted this to be a show that people relate to….and can laugh at (the exaggerations)."
Even if this is goodbye for Teachers, fans can take solace in the three seasons of outstanding comedy they were able to enjoy before it was over.
