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Thursday, May 4, 2006

ABC's 'Chief' is no longer in command

By MELANIE McFARLAND
P-I TELEVISION CRITIC

Winning a Golden Globe in your first season does not necessarily make your series unimpeachable.

That's the hard lesson Geena Davis, who took home the Globe for best actress in a TV drama for "Commander in Chief" in January, learned this week. ABC confirmed that the remaining three new episodes of the presidential drama have been yanked for sweeps, with no solid air date in sight. (The word from the network is that they'll show up during the summer, tentatively in June, to be burned off.) "Primetime" will air in its place for the remainder of the season.

Whether "Commander in Chief" made viewers more open to electing a female president is debatable, but one thing is certain: Television history will look back on it as a textbook example of how to sink a decent show.

Under the direction of its creator, Rod Lurie, "Commander" started out as the most watched new drama of the season. However, Lurie was a little slow to deliver new episodes. Instead of hiring an experienced TV writer who could assist him, which would have been the smart thing to do, ABC bumped him and hired Steven Bochco, who doesn't play well with series he didn't create.

Along came new writers and Mark-Paul Gosselaar; there went a substantial portion of the audience.

Bochco's abrupt tonal change and a slew of other flubs -- keeping it in competition against "American Idol," another showrunner switcheroo (exit Bochco, enter Dee Johnson), an additional hiatus and a move to a murderous timeslot (Thursdays opposite "E.R." and "Without a Trace") -- all conspired to put a bullet in this series.

Granted, it's not officially dead. ABC announces its fall lineup May 16, and who knows? The writers could create a premiere in which Mac Allen wakes up suddenly and says to the First Husband, "I had a dream ... a horrible, horrible dream."

But don't count on it.

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