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The Girls on the Bus‘ journey has come to the end of the road: Max has cancelled the Melissa Benoist-fronted comedic drama after just one season, TVLine has learned.
“While Max will not be moving forward with a second season of The Girls on the Bus, we are grateful to have partnered with immensely talented Amy Chozick, Julie Plec, Rina Mimoun, as well as the teams at Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television,” the streamer said in a statement. “We are so proud of this powerful story of found family and the celebration of journalism, in all its forms. We thank them and our unrivaled cast for all their incredible work and collaboration.”
The series was inspired by a chapter in Amy Chozick’s 2018 novel Chasing Hillary, which was based on the author’s time covering Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign as a political reporter. Chozick and Julie Plec served as executive producers alongside showrunner Rina Mimoun, and Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter (for Berlanti Productions).
Supergirl vet Benoist played Sadie McCarthy, “a journalist who romanticizes the original ‘Boys on the Bus’ and who scrapped her whole life for her own shot at covering a presidential campaign for the paper of record. Sadie hits the trail and eventually bonds with three female competitors,” per the official logline. “Despite their differences, these women become a found family with a front-row seat to the greatest soap opera in town: the battle for the White House.”
Joining Benoist on the campaign trail were Carla Gugino (The Fall of the House of Usher) as veteran journalist Grace; Natasha Behnam (Mayans M.C.) as social media influencer/activist Lola; and Christina Elmore (Insecure) as conservative network reporter Kimberlyn. The series-regular cast also included Brandon Scott (13 Reasons Why, Dead to Me) as Sadie’s love interest/political staffer Malcolm.
In the season finale, which dropped on May 9, Sadie and her reporter pals discovered damning information about presidential hopeful Hayden Wells Garrett, aka Hot White Guy (played by Scott Foley), but that didn’t stop him from officially being named the Democratic candidate.
Elsewhere in the episode, Malcolm made a big, romantic speech to Sadie; Lola was offered a job at the Wall Street Journal after breaking a major donor scandal; Grace realized her daughter had a knack for investigative reporting; and Kimmy got fired from Liberty News Direct after she called out her employer on air, leading her to start her own media company.
In a post mortem Q&A, Mimoun revealed that Season 2 would have followed the general election, during which the girls get off the bus and onto a plane.
“We finally meet the incumbent Republican, so that would be a piece of the story,” Mimoun shared. “The girls are, essentially, trying to dig up the dirt on Hot White Guy and find out all of his deep, dark secrets.”
“One of the things that I was very excited about was we would be adding Grace’s daughter to the bus,” Mimoun continued. “We’d finally have [Malcolm] and Sadie trying to maintain some sort of a relationship now that he’s out of the business and it’s no longer a conflict of interest.”
Plus, Season 2 would have found Kimberlyn potentially starting a family while also trying to launch her own company. As for Lola, she would be “not hating every part of this corporate world that she has been attacking in Season 1 and trying to wrestle with that in her own way,” Mimoun said. (Get even more Season 2 scoop.)
The Girls on the Bus fans, hit the comments with your reactions!
Not unexpected the way the streaming bubble has burst but I enjoyed the show. The lack of any real promotion of it’s one season was also a dead giveaway that it was unlikely to be renewed.
Great, another different and fresh series gets prematurely axed. Shouldn’t be surprised coming from the sour and dull Zaslav administration of WBD. TBH I also wished they stopped giving these protocolar “statements” where they praise back and forth the showrunners and cast despite having cancelled their project. Gross. Oh well, their freaking loss as per usual of these “genius” execs.
Announced in 2019, going through 2 streamers before finally premiering 5 years later just to get buried in the slate amongst other buried shows and axed in 2 months. The TV industry is on autopilot.
Well, that was quick!! I really like Melissa & hope she finds a great show for her talents.
Just what I was waiting on so I don’t have to finish
I really liked this show. There was zero buzz around it so I’m not surprised. When I first started watching, I read that the ratings were okay, not great- they must have dropped off. Maybe starting it a little later in the summer more people would have found it?You’d think with such a good cast they would have promoted it a bit more. I’ll miss it.
This show should be on Netflix.
I really wish this show would have gotten more promotion, so disappointed to hear this!
Crazy. I really like Melissa but had no idea this show even existed.
I didn’t know this wasn’t a limited series until the finale when I realized they weren’t wrapping up any plot threads.
I think the pilot doing the flash forward bit to the finale really hurt this show – it gave it a serious vibe when that wasn’t truly accurate, and it made the show feel small rather than enlarge the canvas.
I really enjoy shows about principled journalists and the ideals of journalism so I’m sad this isn’t continuing – but like I said, I never knew that was a possibility. The marketing could have been better and that terrible poster had zero appeal. But I enjoyed the show itself, and the music, especially another couple themes from Blake Neely.
Shame. Benoist was far better on this show than she ever was on Supergirl.
Another day another streaming show cancelled after one short season.
Damn, as much as I love FOLEY, I couldn’t wait to see the women ultimately make all the dirt public so Foley’s character would get booted as the Democratic candidate and the woman candidate (I’m so bad with characters’ names) would, I assume, become the candidate just before the election and have another kick at the can. (I’m canadian, if that isn’t legally possible I put my wish down to my ignorance of American political rules). I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Scott playing a bad guy for a change and felt all the female leads were really well cast. Very disappointed there won’t be a season 2. Ms. Gugino has always been a favorite of mine and I will enjoy following the careers of the other three talented actors. Good luck to all. (suck it Max….did I say that? yes I did. why? because no decent amount of promotion, that’s why)
“I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Scott playing a bad guy for a change”…
— Scott Foley has gotten so good at playing secret villains (Scandal, Scream 3, SVU, True Blood) that HWG had me on high alert from the get go. Every time he had an awe-shucks moment or mentioned his “grassroots, small dollar donations,” I felt like it was intentionally manipulative.
Plus “man bad, women good” and these tropes are very well known by now, especially coming from a Hillary lover.
Sadly I’m not shocked. I wanted to love it. But I couldn’t get past 2 episodes. 😒
Same. It just wasn’t very good – I’m not surprised it was cancelled. It felt just quite hollow.
So disappointed in what’s happening at HBO
Sorry to see it go. This decision was made too quickly. Give these shows time to find their audience.
Very, very disappointing. Great show!!!
Really disappointed, love this show. Such a great cast
I wanted to like this show so much. There were definitely promising elements but it still felt quite flat most of the time. Still, would have been interesting to see if they could have improved for S2. I’m not gonna miss Sadie’s boyfriend though, him and Sadie had zero chemistry 😀
Totally true. There were no chemistry at all. Too forced the kisses… not natural. I really loved the Melissa’s acting.
Unfair, they didn’t even give it a chance. :(
How could you possibly cancel this clever, truly interesting gem? What are you thinking?
of course any show led by women and about women gets canceled. Sad because this was a fabulous show and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Mistresses revival please!
Major bummer. This was a great show. Shame on Max.
Finally found a program I looked forward to each week. Intelligent, relevant, woman centered. No wonder it is cancelled. Another good move MAX or HBO or whatever you call yourself. Netflix see if you can pick it up!