Well, after months of keeps the writers, actors and fans in limbo MTV finally announced this week that it would not renew Sweet Vicious. While it’s certainly disheartening considering we are fans of the show, MTV not seeing the value in the program is more upsetting.
The cancellation was expected given the low number of viewers each week. However, the show’s content is certainly not at fault. Every person I mentioned Sweet Vicious to would return my praise with confused looks. They had never heard of it. For a show that tackled such an important subject matter, especially during a time when the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses is still not getting the attention it deserves, MTV disregarded its significance by not promoting it enough. Sweet Vicious followed Teen Wolf, one of the network’s shows with the biggest fanbases, yet it only had a small promotional campaign featuring some of the actors from the sci-fi drama. The crime fighting show lacked an impactful social media campaign and was barely promoted anywhere else besides a few commercials on the channel.
MTV seems to be restricting its programming and responding to complaints about it no longer showing music related content. With Teen Wolf’s last season set to air this summer, there will not be many scripted shows left on the network. The millennial station recently revealed it will be rebooting TRL with a new name but similar content. This would somewhat explain MTV abandoning Sweet Vicious if the channel wasn’t also premiering new mindless shows. The infamous My Super Sweet 16 will also return to MTV. Compared to Sweet Vicious, the gaudy show highlighting spoiled teenagers has had multiple ad campaigns to make viewers excited for its arrival. Along with these two reality shows, a program called Promposal will be added to the lineup (with that title there is only one guess what this premise of this groundbreaking show is).
With so many senseless new shows, MTV definitely can’t use the excuse that the network wants to focus more on music now. The originality, rave reviews and necessity of Sweet Vicious should have been enough for the channel to take a chance and give the show a second season with better marketing to attract more attention. Creator Jenn Kaytin Robinson and main actress Eliza Bennett expressed their disappointment the cancellation and MTV on Twitter.
While this is a loss, it is not the end. Petitions have been created to get the show picked up by another network. Fans are particularly looking to Netflix to support the show. The link to a petition can be found here. Maybe there still is hope for a second season.