CBS announced that they picked up SEAL Team, S.W.A.T., Madam Secretary, Bull, Hawaii Five-0, MacGyver, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours for another season. The news programs make sense. The dramas are a little surprising because they are all ratings duds except for Hawaii Five-0. However, we all thought after the Eliza Dushku story came out about her saying that Michael Weatherly sexually harassed her that they would have cancelled the show. Especially since they paid her a huge settlement ($9.5 million) because of it.
The story broke when the show was on hiatus, and many of us thought it would not return in the #MeToo era. But it did. In fact, it stayed around the same in the ratings which were not nearly as good as when it followed NCIS for its first two seasons. Therefore, CBS, the network who fired its boss over sexual harassment claims, had a way out. Yet they did not take it.
Which dumbfounded a lot of us. No one as much as Steven Speilberg and his company Amblin Entertainment who produce the legal drama. Or should I say produced as in the past tense? That is because a rep for the production company told Deadline, “Steven Spielberg, Amblin Television, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are no longer attached to Bull.”
That should mean that CBS is the sole producer of the show. Something networks like more and more these days. But will they want to produce it by themselves? Yes, Michael Weatherly was one of their biggest stars on NCIS, but is he worth keeping around when so many women lost respect and interest in him after we all found out about Eliza Dushku? I honestly thought they would take the loss, boy was I wrong.
I guess the #MeToo movement has come and gone, and now it is OK to harass us again. It is not and the only way to keep the momentum going is to fire and not work with people that have to been proven to be harassers. It is not only about us. It is about the next generation and the generation after that and so on. For too long we stayed quiet. Not anymore. I am woman, hear me roar!
BTW I guess you can say I am calling bull on Bull being picked up for another season.
