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Every time Jada Pinkett-Smith’s name came up the news, they casually mentioned that she was starring in a drama called HawthoRNe, a show that IMDB has no outline for (it only gives the show’s tagline: “Every patient needs a hero.”) and Wikipedia describes thusly:
Hawthorne (sometimes stylized HawthoRNe) was an hour-long medical drama on the TNT television network starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan.
Now this show, which appears to be relatively premise-less, has been canceled, causing some to cry sexism. Yahoo’s Pamela Gifford argues that the cancellation came as a result of the “rumor mill” and accusations of infidelity between Marc Anthony and …
… Jada Pinkett-Smith — both on the show and off. On the show, Smith was cheating on her husband with Anthony’s character. Apparently, the show’s audience was “outraged” by this turn of events, a turn of events that seemed to spill off into the actors’ personal lives as Marc Anthony filed for divorce and tabloids argued trouble was a-brewin’ in the Smith household.
But aren’t rumors usually a recipe for ratings success?
Gifford thinks that HawthoRNe lost viewers because people couldn’t stomach a cheating female lead. Gifford points out that a show’s audience being up-in-arms with an unfaithful character seemed awfully unfair, given how many male leads are shown having extra-marital affairs. But let’s take, say, Don Draper — a possible alcoholic, distant husband, philanderer, bad friend and all-around liar. Yes, he cheats on his wife, but the point of the character is that he’s set up as an anti-hero. From what I can tell with this show, Smith’s character was not meant to a “love-to-hate-her” type, and so while yes — Don Draper screws women he’s not married to — he’s also kind of a bad guy 24-7.
If there’s one thing you could claim is sexist, it’s the lack of publicity for the show. I feel like I’ve never seen a single poster, commercial or viral ad for this program once in the three years that it’s been on the air. But even that argument doesn’t necessarily hold water, as TNT also produced The Closer, starring a female lead, and you couldn’t escape ads for that show. If The Closer had been so successful for the network, I can’t see why they would suddenly be gunshy about advertising the hell out of a female-led drama.
Wikipedia explains that the third season renewal of the show was surprising, given its “mainly negative reviews.”
So is that sexist, or can we just agree that sometimes shows aren’t that good — regardless of the gender of the lead?
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think the show was cancelled due to racism and artilcles like this, This show was very popular whether ugly bitches like yourself who write articles realized that or not. Your lying if you go on imbd you will see it has full cast and crew credits you idiot!
And if you could read, you’d know she didn’t say there were no listings of cast or crew on imdb, just no outline for the show.
It was really popular? I’d never heard of it until I saw this article!
How much discussion has that been on this issue away from the site? I’m just curious if it’s something that has been picked up by the mainstream media.
I watched a couple of episodes. I thought it was just a bad show. Unoriginal, boring and I didn’t like her characters.
I actually rather enjoyed the show, as did many of my friends. I agree at it was very poorly advertised; as a fan of the show I was baffled by the fact that I had to practically research premier dates, show times etc. Considering that the lead role was a respected black professional woman who had managed to marry two white doctors (the first died) and was moving on to another non-black suitor, I can’t help but wonder if the show was a victim of that oher ‘ism–which could explain the lack of advertisement and distaste for the show among some viewers…