We're entering the holiday slump, when there's not much on besides holiday specials (yay!) and sports (meh). This was the week in TV Land:
• ABC has pulled Man Up! from its schedule, which is news for many people who didn't even know Man Up! was even airing, or a real thing. But it was. Revolving around a group of privileged white men for whom the greatest challenge in life was finding enough time to play Modern Warfare, the series was one of the fall's class of bro-centric sitcoms that also featured How To Be a Gentleman and Last Man Standing. Gentleman was canceled a few weeks back, while Last Man Standing soldiers on thanks to the nostalgic feeling older viewers get watching Tim Allen complain about lady parts and station wagons. (Last Man Standing typically draws about 9 million viewers and change, about 2.5 times the audience for Community or Parks and Recreation. Your parents watch more TV than you do.) With Man Up! gone, we are once more safe from the threat of a universe in which Dan Fogler is popular. We were too close this time, people. Don't let it happen again.
• Comedy Central released its latest development slate last week, but let's be honest: There's not much room on the network that isn't staked out by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Daniel Tosh, the surprisingly tenacious guys from Workaholics, or the latest D-list celebrity roast starring slightly-above-D-list comedians. Who knows how long these new shows will last, regardless of quality? (Demetri Martin, we hardly knew ye.) Still, the slate's got some promising titles, if they can make it to air and stay there. Rob Delaney, who tweets as @RobDelaney, will star in @RobDelaney, and just in case you need me to draw you a map, the show will be a kind of sketch/stand-up show that revolves around Delaney's way with words and 140-character punch lines. Another one with potential: Key & Peele, a sketch show starring Keegan-Michael Kay and Jordan Peele. Take a look:
• Harry Morgan died the other day at the age of 96. The reported cause was pneumonia, but at 96, it's anything and everything. Morgan was a towering figure in TV history thanks to central roles on a pair of iconic series: Dragnet, on which he played Det. Bill Gannon from 1967-1970, and M*A*S*H, on which he played Col. Sherman Potter from 1975-1983. Born in Detroit and reared in Muskegon, Michigan, before getting into acting, Morgan had that perfect Midwestern look -- real, unassuming, expressive when he needed to be, reserved when he didn't. In addition to those roles and a host of other supporting parts before he broke out, he appeared in more than 100 movies over the span of his career. Yet it was M*A*S*H that earned him an Emmy, and M*A*S*H that most fans think of when they see Morgan's face or hear his voice. He had one hell of a career. Goodbye, farewell, and amen.
• Greg Daniels, co-creator of Parks and Recreation and executive producer of The Office, is expanding his empire into animation with writers from both of those shows. One of the shows will be written by Office's Mindy Kaling and revolve around a high school girls' volleyball team, while the other will come from Parks and Recreation's Alan Yang and revolve around a group of dudes sharing a house in a rich L.A. neighborhood. Kaling's comic voice is ideally suited to a story about catty and insecure little girls, which bodes well for that show. Meanwhile, if there's anyone who can make a cartoon about bored rich white dudes work out, it's a writer who helped bring heart to small-town civil service.
• The best thing about Katy Perry's latest visit to SNL was ... every part that didn't involve Katy Perry. Hands down, the strongest bits were the Weekend Update sketches with Stefon and Alec Baldwin:
