Running Down Every Canceled Fox Show From The 'Family Guy': "North By North Quahog" Cold Open: Are They Streaming? Part Four: Final Update

We made it! I finally made it! The two year journey is complete!

Here we are, May 1, 2025. It’s the 20th anniversary of Animation Domination, Fox’s all-adult animation Sunday night block, fortified by the revival of Family Guy and the regular timeslot debut of American Dad!, both shows created by Seth MacFarlane. Two years ago exactly, on the 18th anniversary, I began exploring the streaming statuses of the 29 short-lived series namedropped in the cold open of the first episode of Family Guy’s revival “North By North Quahog”, even calling out when a show shouldn’t have been included for falling outside the window, starting with Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, Fastlane, That ‘80s Show, and Wonderfalls. A second installment covering Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Skin, Girls Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Pasadena, and Firefly, was released just four weeks later, and I still hadn’t figured out my format. A third edition happened in November 2023, over 5 months later, commemorating 500 articles and covering Get Real, Freakylinks, The $treet, Luis, Wanda At Large, and Costello. It’s kind of quaint now, being at over 1650 today. So obviously things got even busier. Despite Action falling out, Fastlane is now streaming on Tubi, maintaining a 2/7 success. Firefly is still the only one streaming from part 2, but its footprint has expanded to include Disney+ thanks to Hulu’s integration, as well as the CW app. Serenity isn’t streaming anywhere still. The Pitts, as one may or may not expect, has been supplanted in search results by this year’s acclaimed, similarly-named Max medical drama The Pitt starring Noah Wyle. Had the former not been so obscure to begin with, that probably wouldn’t have happened.

We start with The Lone Gunmen, which was a spinoff of The X-Files created by mothership creator Chris Carter and writers Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz. The Lone Gunmen were were allies of Agent Mulder, and are Melvin Frohike, played by Tom Braidwood, John Fitzgerald Byers, played by Bruce Harwood, and Richard Langly, played by Dean Haglund. They serve as private investigators who run a conspiracy theory magazine and deal with secret activity that isn’t paranormal or supernatural such as government-sponsored terrorism, surveillance society development, corporate crime, and Nazi hunting. Running 13 episodes from March 4 to June 1, 2001, a strongly-rated premiere couldn’t hold up, and the remaining episodes tended to be left with half to a third of that initial audience. The cliffhanger the series was left on was resolved in a ninth season episode of the mothership. It is not streaming anywhere, though to my recollection the mothership is quite the mover. Peacock, Prime, Hulu and Disney+, it’s all been there in recent years (currently the latter pair).

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

Fox was so in on Chris Carter that even before The X-Files managed to spin off, they got two other series out of him, the first being the three-season drama Millennium, starring Lance Henriksen, which ended in May 1999. That fall, Fox premiered Harsh Realm, loosely based on a comic book by James D. Hudnall and Andrew Paquette, who had to sue when they noticed they weren’t properly credited. The series is about Lieutenant Tom Hobbes, who is entered unknowingly by his superiors into Harsh Realm, the virtual reality training simulation game created and programmed by the U.S. Army to replicate the real world. However, in-game New York City is freshly nuked, killing four million people, bringing players into a post-apocalyptic scenario. His mission is to kill "General" Omar Santiago, the game’s highest scorer who has taken over the game as its dictator. The cast includes D. B. Sweeney and Lost’s Terry O’Quinn. Obviously, by the fall 1999 premiere date alone, it doesn’t qualify for the namedrop. However, it clearly stuck as one of the biggest failures going back five seasons because it only lasted three episodes (October 8-22) before being canceled, and subsequently burned off six remaining episodes on FX. The inclusion is therefore understandable.

A Minute with Stan Hooper starred Norm Macdonald, one-time voice of Death who plays title character Stan Hooper. He co-created the series with Barry Kemp. Hooper is a famous newspaper columnist turned television commentator with a weekly minute-long segment, moves his family from New York home to Waterford Falls, a small, folksy and strange Wisconsin town, in order to broaden his audience since Middle America hasn’t caught on. The series also starred Penelope Ann Miller, Garret Dillahunt, Daniel Roebuck, and Fred Willard. It aired eight of its thirteen episodes from October 29 to December 12, 2003 before being canceled. It’s had no home releases but a full series airing has been documented for Australia.

Normal, Ohio was John Goodman’s first series regular role after Roseanne originally ended, where he played William "Butch" Gamble, a gay man returning to the titular Midwestern hometown of Normal, Ohio. The cast also included Joely Fisher, Anita Gillette, Orson Bean, Mo Gaffney and Charles Rocket. While having many masculine traits, the way Gamble’s gayness was displayed was mostly through stereotypes, likely compounding any “How dare there be gay characters” from conservatives and the disappointment in the lack of depth from progressives, leading to much derision. Likely no one was happy. Airing only 7 of its 12 episodes from November 1 to December 13, Normal, Ohio still hasn’t seemingly been seen to conclusion, which means no, it’s not streaming. On another level of pertinence, only fits in with Family Guy’s purported cancellation after season 2, which aired until August 2000, not the second cancellation after season 3, which began in July 2001.

Diane Simmons’s Last Appearance Before The 'Fewer’ Murder Spree Was As An April Fools Prankster

Keen Eddie is a police procedural dramedy ythat was pushed out of the 2002-2003 season bounds and aired during the summer from June 3 to July 24. It basically got the Firefly treatment by being aired out of order, with a splash of cable burnoff, this one on Bravo. It stars Mark Valley as Eddie Arlette, brash NYPD detective who goes to London following a botched drug bust and remains to work with New Scotland Yard to recoup and continue the investigation. Also in the cast are Sienna Miller, Julian Rhind-Tutt, and Colin Salmon, who might be best known to my audiences as Doctor Moon in the Doctor Who episodes “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” as well as Walter Steele in early Arrow. It’s not streaming, but it did have a DVD release.

The American Embassy was probably one of the soonest failures after Family Guy ended its original run, premiering on March 11, 2002 and airing just four episodes before being pulled after April 1. Apparently 6 were produced. Young Ohio woman Emma Brody (played by Arija Bareikis) enters U.S. Foreign Service to get away from her dysfunctional midwestern life and is assigned as a vice consul to the U.S. Embassy in London. There as a Foreign Service Officer, she is faced with new problems found within the work, as well as personal issues including a love triangle. Yippee.

Cedric the Entertainer Presents, referred to in the scene simply by the presenter comedian’s name, is the only sketch comedy series in the entire list, and probably the fullest series since Titus. Created by Cedric, John Bowman and Matt Wickline, Jane’s dad, it premiered on September 18, 2002 and ran a full season of 21 episodes and had its second season revoked just as it was about to air. It even earned Emmy and Teen Choice Award nominations. In addition to Cedric, the cast included several performers including Wendy Raquel Robinson and J.B. Smoove. Smoove would very quickly move onto writing for Saturday Night Live before he truly blew up.

'American Dad! Greatest Hits' Release Reveals Two Surprise Fan-Favorite Tracks

The Tick might be the best-remembered series of this batch at the very least. The live-action sitcom based on Ben Edlund’s comic book was television’s second, after the beloved animated series that ran for three seasons from 1994-1996, and reportedly led to not having the name and trademark rights on certain characters that Disney now did. Because this series, starring Patrick Warburton in the title role alongside David Burke as Arthur, Liz Vassey and Nestor Carbonell, began November 8, 2001, just months after Disney bought Fox Family Worldwide. Being a sitcom, it eschewed the extravagant villains most of the time and action scenes even more of the time that require special effects and stunts like a certain young Superman show that just premiered on the WB would and instead sees The Tick being tricked into moving to and protecting The City after being too bothersome to employees of his previous assignment, a remote bus station. Aimed at adults, that meant including and prioritizing innuendo and adult situations. A nine-episode run concluded on January 31, 2002, mere weeks before Family Guy’s original run did. Which means it probably shouldn’t be here because it wasn’t an instead. But it’s a good thing it was included because it at least has some documented streaming history on Crackle, as well as on Prime Video, featured alongside the then-new remake starring Peter Serafinowicz in the title role. However it’s not there anymore.

Finally, to cap off this series, we have Greg the Bunny, starring Chris’s voice actor Seth Green. Probably to get a jab in the same way the writers would eventually use Robot Chicken down the road (it premiered in February 2005). However, he didn’t create the show, Steven Levitan, Spencer Chinoy, and future Robot Chicken writer and Glitch Techs co-creator Dan Milano did. Greg, performed by Milano was the co-star of a children's television show called Sweetknuckle Junction in a world where puppets are alive and considered people in a Muppety way but treated as a racial minority, and explores their hardships. Green played Greg’s roommate, Jimmy, son of Sweetknuckle Junction producer Gil Bender played by Eugene Levy, and becomes production assistant. 11 episodes aired from March 27 to August 8, 2002, finishing with the last two on IFC in October 2004. It is there where 20 11-minute episodes would begin releasing just four months later until November, and then over the next November and December. It is not streaming.

And that’s it! Every show mentioned has been covered. In the 20 years since that one, Family Guy has watched so many shows have gone down the tube, yet it remains. It even moved into the same renewal pool as The Simpsons. American Dad! has too, returning to Fox after an 11 year stint at TBS, and all three and Bob’s Burgers have been renewed through 2029. By then there will have been five seasons of highly-touted Hulu-exclusive episodes for Family Guy, a far cry from the several shows covered here that had to burn off on cable. What’s next? My usual coverage. Could there be a successor series in the racehorse lineup from “Family Gay”, as a commenter proposed? Maybe. Happy 26th anniversary to SpongeBob SquarePants, and happy tenth to Avengers: Age of Ultron! Oh yeah, and a month after part 3 released, "The Return of the King (of Queens)" went meta poking fun at how committed to the list gags, especially show-listing gags the show could be.

Paul Bettany Is Definitely Watching 'Agatha' Again, Readies For Vision Series Shoot