Laverne Cox’s Clean Slate Gets Disappointing Season 2 Update After 89% RT Success

Prime Video’s Clean Slate has been canceled after one season, in spite of its great reviews. Led by Laverne Cox and George Wallace, and involving the late Norman Lear in his last completed project, the series followed an estranged father named Harry and the return of his child, who is now a proud trans woman named Desiree. Clean Slate season 1 found itself largely praised for its mix of social commentary and comedy, currently holding a Rotten Tomatoes score of 89% from critics and an 82% from viewers.

Per Deadline, Prime Video has cancelled Clean Slate after only season 1. Co-creators Cox, Wallace, and Dan Ewen have written a heartfelt open letter that was released by the outlet, chronicling their journey. In the introductory graph, they wrote that “A seven-year effort was gone in a puff of exhaust,” and the paragraph ends with, “This **** (writing the open letter) was cheaper than therapy.” Read the full letter in the link attached to Deadline and selected snippets below:

Cox talking to Lear about trans people:

Laverne, one of precious few Alabamans to appear on both the cover of Time magazine and British Vogue, had spent the prior 90 minutes entertaining dozens of questions about transness from the ever-curious Norman. It was a fantastic conversation, and we would wager it was Norman’s first meeting where he would find himself addressed as “guuuurl” 17 times.

Some of Lear’s questions were too personal, some overly medical. Laverne’s retort, “That information is between me and my doctor and my boyfriend,” would end up in the pilot script. But Norman’s questions were evidence of a mind that had remained open, decades after most people’s have welded shut and whatnot.

Official reasons for the cancellation remain undisclosed in the open letter, though Cox, Wallace, and Ewen showed a collective awareness of the unfortunate frequency of shows being cancelled and thanked everyone involved in their journey. The letter opened with their presentation to Lear and an honest and much-needed conversation about trans people, reflecting the need for more transgender stories being told. In an intentionally repetitive paragraph, they mention sister projects that could have happened and call out that “the characters (were) scrubbed from storytelling out of fear.” Read what they had to say in full below:

We’re not gonna sit here and pretend we’re the first show to get canceled. Hell, four shows were zapped while you read this. We humbly thank those at Sony and Amazon who worked on and on the behalf of Clean Slate. It is a privilege and a joy to make a living in the creative sphere, let alone while telling a story of import. You helped make it all possible.

Of course, we mourn our baby. We mourn for the jobs that disappear with this news. We mourn the continued demise of non-IP creations (for the record, we would’ve gladly thrown some dragons into Harry’s car wash, or made Desiree a secret agent). We mourn full seasons. We mourn Norman, and his bravery, and his not infrequent cursing. We mourn sister projects that face a similar fate. We mourn the characters being scrubbed from storytelling out of fear.

Conversations will continue about where and how Desiree and Harry’s journey might continue … We will push to keep the story alive, for the sake of the kind of people portrayed in it, the kind of people being legislated out of existence, or erased from history books.

What This Means For Clean Slate

Its Creators Are Looking For A New Home For The Show

While Clean Slate’s RT scores remain impressive, there were a few criticisms regarding its tone and approach to its heavy themes. Its feel-good atmosphere, though admirable, was at times seen as too “safe” for some viewers, who wanted to see the series delve into deeper societal issues. This, combined with the seeming limited promotion of the series and the tough landscape of streaming overall, the series’ cancellation, while disappointing, could have been expected with a brief look at its numbers.

Prime Video hasn’t released the internal numbers for Clean Slate’s viewership, but the number of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, while impressive in quality, isn’t promising in quantity. At the time of writing, there are only 28 reviews from critics and 13 from viewers, which could reflect the low viewership of the series. That aside, fans of the series should keep in mind that its creators are looking for a new home for Clean Slate‘s cast, which might be found by a streamer more willing to promote it and align it with mainstream viewers without losing its charm and important stories.

Our Take On Clean Slate’s Cancellation And Its Creators’ Response

An Important Story That Might Need To Be Told With More Ambition

The feel-good nature of Clean Slate, while ambitious in its own way, proposes an idealistic setting full of LGBT and transgender affirmation that modern audiences still aren’t used to yet, and this may have been its downfall. Some denoted that the series seemed to casually assume transgender rights and agency in a world where that’s not the case. I don’t find anything wrong with this proposal, as it’s a refreshing response to the other side of the scale, in which trauma-focused storytelling is more meant for shock value than palpable depth.

While I do think that Clean Slate brings forth a concept of affirmation towards transgender rights in a bold, heartwarming way, I wonder if adding a bit of balance to its wholesome nature would have helped. Adding the impact of the unfortunately realistic refusal towards equality and progression would have not only aligned the series with reality but also added more depth. However, as it can be with storytelling, I don’t think that realism was Clean Slate’s intention as much as potential was, giving modern viewers a taste of what’s possible rather than rehashing the struggle we’re stuck in.

Source: Deadline