Despite lots of investment, both in production (how else can you wheel in Christian Slater?) and promotion, My Own Worst Enemy has been ultimately cancelled.  It's just an indicator of the hard times NBC has gotten itself into: this season is proving to be its biggest failure in a while, with new shows not getting the ratings it is expected to have, and old reliables not performing as well as they should be. Despite the cancellation, however, fans can still catch the last episodes on the network tonight, as nine episodes have been produced before the ax fell.

So what went wrong?  There's been quite a lot of speculation about it, at least within the industry. Ratings, of course, are the most obvious culprit.  Last week, the show fared third in its Monday night time slot, pulling in 4.25 million viewers—a poor performance compared to CSI: Miami's 13.67 million viewers and Boston Legal's 8.83 million viewers.  Fans will contend, however, that My Own Worst Enemy should have been given a chance to, at least, finish out the entire season.  Some will even contend—and I'm one of them, I'll admit—that not all people are watching television shows on television anymore.  There's no way for us to know how many have actually watched the series, be it live on TV, on a delayed basis through a DVR, or online.

Then again, it could be the show's time slot which doomed it from the start.  Heroes, for all its fan base and good ratings, is struggling.  Ratings have not been as good as its first two seasons—7.83 million viewers for last week's episode—and there are many reasons for that.  Some say it's the show getting complicated, and some say it's just lost its spark.  My Own Worst Enemy was scheduled precisely to benefit from the many people watching Heroes, but in the end, it's been the domino effect getting the best of both shows.  Then again, all the shows which were aired immediately after Heroes—Journeyman last year, for instance—got cancelled after less than a season.

Some has also speculated that the culprit was in the promotion itself.  During the fall previews, much play has been made on Christian Slater being the star of the spy drama, and for most it's a wow factor.  “Ooooh, a movie star,” you might've said.  Later reviews haven't been all that positive, and it was surely a blow for NBC, which seems to have put a chunk of its hopes on the show.  Four episodes later, some people have taken a look and liked the show, but alas, it was too late.

Inevitably, online petitions have made their rounds, calling for NBC to bring back My Own Worst Enemy, but while the fate of these efforts remains up in the air, let me assure you that there are still some episodes to be shown.  On tonight's episode, “The Night Train to Moscow”, Henry (Slater) starts to believe that his wife Angie (Madchen Amick) is an enemy spy, while Edward (Slater) strikes a dangerous deal to uncover his past.  My Own Worst Enemy hits screens tonight from 10pm on NBC.  Looks like it'll be one of the last times I'll say that.


-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: NBC, TV By The Numbers, SF Universe
(Image courtesy of NBC)