Running Down Every Canceled Fox Show From The 'Family Guy': "North By North Quahog" Cold Open: Are They Streaming? (PART TWO)

It's time for round 2! Let's see if any of these shows are watchable.

It didn’t make sense for them to get thumbnails of barely different frames from the same scene…

At the start of the month, I started chronicling the streaming status of all the canceled Fox shows Peter Griffin listed off in the cold open of “North by North Quahog”, the first episode of Family Guy following its revival on Fox, kicking off the fourth season. The first part covered Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That ‘80s Show, Wonderfalls, and Fastlane, where only Titus and Action were found to be streaming legally. Now it’s time to continue through the list and check on another batch, and whether they’re available to find audiences all these years later on streaming.

Andy Richter Controls The Universe was a vehicle for actor and comedian Andy Richter, off of his departure as the announcer and sidekick for Late Night With Conan O’Brien, in pursuit of film and television roles like this. His character (with his name) is an aspiring Chicago writer, specifically writing short stories. However, he is making his living as a technical manual writer for megacorp Pickering Industries. His co-stars include Criminal Minds and DuckTales’s Paget Brewster and General Hospital and The Penguins of Madagascar's James Patrick Stuart. Sean Gunn plays a character who lives in Richter’s building. It ran on the network for two seasons and fifteen episodes from March 19, 2002, to January 12, 2003, with five episodes that would eventually air on HDNet, which has been AXS TV since 2012. Those episodes aired a year and a half later, from June 14 to July 12, 2004. It is not streaming anywhere and is not on digital marketplaces for streaming purposes either.

Skin was a short-lived drama described as a modern turn on Romeo and Juliet where “Two mismatched teens fall in love with each other despite the family feud between their fathers, one a pornographer, the other a district attorney, trying to bring each other down.” It was not well-reviewed, watched, or received, and starred Ron Silver, Kevin Anderson, Pamela Gidley, Rachel Ticotin, D.J. Cotrona, and even Olivia Wilde as Silver’s character’s daughter, before her stint on The O.C. or her breakout as Thirteen on House M.D.. Three episodes aired on the network on October 20, 27, and November 3, 2003 before cancellation, the first of that season. The show’s five other episodes aired on SOAPNet in May and June 2005. It is not streaming anywhere and it’s not on digital marketplaces in that capacity either.

Girls Club managed to fare even worse. It was about three young, female lawyers with a strong friendship and wish to leave their mark on the legal system. In San Francisco, they find employment in the same firm and attempt to break through the barriers of the male-dominated workforce. It starred the likes of Giancarlo Esposito and Supergirl’s Chyler Leigh. Greenlit to directly replace creator David E. Kelley’s just-concluded Ally McBeal, it premiered on October 21, 2002, and only managed to air its second episode the following week before being canceled and pulled from the schedule. From what I can tell, the remaining seven episodes didn’t get a run on another network like the previous entries are. However, its current digital availability does match in that it has none.

The cast of Cracking Up

Cracking Up was a sitcom from the spring of 2004 created by Mike White, who is known for having written films such as Orange County, School of Rock, Nacho Libre, and even The Emoji Movie before receiving awards acclaim for having created The White Lotus for HBO. The series is about a student named Ben, played by Jason Schwartzman, who moves into a Beverly Hills family's guest house. While they look picture-perfect, each family member seems to act crazier than the next. The parents are played by Saturday Night Live alum Molly Shannon and Hacks and Happy Gilmore’s Christopher McDonald. Six episodes aired from March 9 to April 5, 2004, while six episodes went unaired and still remain unreleased without a physical release nearly a decade after PopOptiq gave the series the spotlight. This means indeed, the show isn’t purchasable or streaming anywhere either. However, this isn’t the only appearance of a White creation on the list, but covering it requires jumping a few slots ahead.

Pasadena was a primetime soap opera that aired four episodes from September 28 to November 2, 2001. White went to elementary and high school in Pasadena, California. It’s about Lily McAllister, played by Alison Lohman, who witnesses a stranger's suicide and begins to probe into the secrets of her own extremely rich California family, the Greeleys. Dana Delany and Martin Donovan also starred as Lily's parents, Catherine and Catherine McAllister, while the Greeley family heads George and Lillian were played by Philip Baker Hall and Barbara Babcock, while Mark Valley played Robert Greely, Catherine’s brother. Once again, SoapNet gave the show its full run starting in the fall of 2005. The series is not available for digital renting, purchasing, or streaming.

The Pitts was created by The Simpsons showrunner and eventual Duncanville creator Mike Scully and his wife Julie Thacker. It was a live-action sitcom about the zany, absurd, and fantastical adventures of a family with the worst luck. Probably trying to come off like a live-action cartoon, it starred Dylan Baker, Dr. Curt Conners from the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, as Bob Pitt, with Kellie Waymire as wife Liz Pitt. The kids, Faith and Petey, were played by Lizzy Caplan, before Mean Girls, Party Down, Masters of Sex, and many other roles she’s become known for, and David Henrie, before he started appearing as Larry on That’s So Raven, and before he was cast on How I Met Your Mother and Wizards of Waverly Place. Five episodes aired from March 30 to April 20, 2003, leaving two unaired, and they still haven’t. It was apparently a replacement for Titus. An animated revival attempt with Baker and Caplan reprising developed from late 2007 to mid-2008 but didn’t impress so it stopped.

The next show is Firefly, no doubt the highest-profile, most-remembered series Peter listed off. Joss Whedon’s 26th-century space Western about the crew of the spaceship Serenity. The only two superpowers to survive the world’s civil war, the United States and China merged to become the central federal government, the Alliance, and the two cultures combined as a result. The series stars Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, Gina Torres as second-in-command Zoe Alleyne Washburne, Alan Tudyk as her husband Hoban "Wash" Washburne, the ship’s pilot and the show’s comic relief, Morena Baccarin as Companion Inara Serra, Adam Baldwin as mercenary Jayne Cobb, Jewel Staite as Kaywinnet Lee Frye, nicknamed "Kaylee", Sean Maher as trauma surgeon Simon Tam and brother of child prodigy and stowaway River Tam played by Summer Glau, and Ron Glass as Shepherd Derrial Book, a pastor equivalent with an unexpected profound knowledge about criminal activities, police corruption, and military strategy, tactics, and weapons. Infamously, the show was aired out of order after its two-hour pilot, and canceled by episode 11 of 14, running from September 20 to December 20, 2002. It became a huge cult hit through home video sales, enough to get a theatrical film, Serenity, released on September 30, 2005, when “Jungle Love” was the most recent Family Guy episode. Firefly is streaming on Hulu, while Serenity is only on digital marketplaces. There’s also a page for Firefly on Tubi but of course is not available there, and the series did stream on Netflix in the US until April 2017, departing with other Whedon 20th Century (Fox)-produced series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

And that’s another seven series from the list complete! Just about halfway through. It will be a straightforward march going forward. Hopefully you enjoyed this section and will be back for more.

Sources: Gothamist, PopOptiq, IMDB