Some sitcoms have short lives, but NBC's Mail Order Family may have just set a record. Only two days after it was announced that the show was in development, NBC decided to officially kill it.
Mail Order Family was described as a show about a widowed father who buys (you guessed it) a mail-order bride from the Philippines to help him take care of his daughters. It is loosely based on the life of the show's writer and co-executive producer Jackie Clarke, whose father really did order a Filipino bride from a catalog when her mother died while Clarke was in first grade.Â
Prior to this show, Clarke helped create the sitcom Superstore, along with director/executive producer Ruben Fleischer and executive producer David Bernad, both of whom were set to join her on this venture. Clarke had previously shared her father's story in print and on the radio.
But this iteration of the tale was not to be. When NBC announced on Wednesday that they had put the show in development, the backlash on social media was immediate. People of Asian descent in particular were very critical.
Clarke initially attempted to defend the project, saying that she intended to make the show's mail-order bride "a fully realized strong activated character" who would be a "bad ass" and "invert the stereotype"
Despite Clarke's defense, the criticisms continued. On Friday, NBC issued a statement saying that they decided to nix the project.
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