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‘The Carmichael Show’ Renewed For Season 3: Jerrod Carmichael Credits Fans For Renewal

By Jonathan Franks
Published on: 08:49 PST, May 15, 2016

The Carmichael Show has been saved from the NBC chopping block!

Variety reports that The Carmichael Show has been renewed by the network for a third season. It apparently was not an easy decision. According to the report, there were “back-and-forth negotiations between NBC and 20th Century Fox Television” which eventually led to the decision to save the show for at least one more season.

News of the finalized decision started circulating merely hours after NBC Entertainment Chair Bob Greenblatt confirmed that the sitcom starring comedian Jerrod Carmichael was still in limbo.

“I was hoping we would have it by now. We’re just going back and forth with the studio about the number of episodes and just haven’t come to terms. Hopefully we’ll resolve it soon.”

Variety reports that the agreement led to the network and studio settling for a 13-episode order for Season 3 of The Carmichael Show – the same order that was placed for the show’s second season (which is scheduled to end later this month).

Jerrod Carmichael
(Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Actor Jerrod Carmichael shared his reaction to the news of The Carmichael Show being renewed by NBC with his fans and followers on Twitter. Instead of just thanking them for their support, Carmichael made it clear that the fans played an instrumental role in the show avoiding cancellation.

The Carmichael Show, which was co-created by Jerrod Carmichael, is inspired by the actor’s stand-up comedy and personal life. The show focuses on Jerrod’s strongly-opinionated southern family as they try to adapt to modern-day America when it comes to a wide range of different topics and issues.

During the show’s relatively short run so far, The Carmichael Show has already tackled such issues as gender identity, politics, religion, mental health, sex and the “Black Lives Matter” slogan.

The show has not performed very well when it comes to ratings. Throughout the second season, it averaged a 1.2 rating among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. It also only generated 5.1 million viewers based on Nielsen’s “live plus-3” estimates. However, the critical acclaim and overall fan support for the show have apparently kept it on the radar.

The Carmichael Show perhaps drew the most attention this season when it tackled the Bill Cosby controversy. In an interview with Fresh Air on NPR, the 29-year-old comedian explained exactly why they decided to go there in the first place. According to Jerrod, “it was more so a mirror” than “making any accusation.”

“I respected him as an artist and respected his work and that’s what I’m talking about in the episode. I’m saying ‘Hey, but this work is still good.’… But I wasn’t holding anything back and saying ‘Oh we have to protect…'”

Carmichael further explained that he intended to find a truth from his own life and apply it to the show.

The bottom line of the episode was to focus on the difficulty involved with separating the artist from his art.

“It’s about the difficulty. It’s about looking in the mirror and saying, ‘Alright well, now knowing these things, how do I compartmentalize and should I and is it right to?’… Do you burn the [Bill Cosby] records? Is that experience ruined? They’re just so many questions around it.”

Jerrod Carmichael has built a reputation with his stand-up comedy for not shying away from any topic — regardless of how controversial it may seem. For instance, Jerrod has a joke about “starting to appreciate slavery” — a remark that many critics may not expect to hear from an African-American comedian.

Carmichael opened up about the logic and reasoning behind that particular joke during his NPR interview.

“The thought behind [the joke] is that without slavery I wouldn’t be in America. That’s a guy dealing with taking this heinous, horrible thing that is slavery and trying to find a silver lining, which is [the fact that] we are in America with a lot of opportunity. The question begs: Would I trade slavery for this experience? Or was slavery — and even the pain you can use to motivate you and what’s left over from it — do I take that and use it as fuel?… It’s a very real thought and a really real question.”

Whether The Carmichael Show makes it to a fourth season or not is an issue that will likely be discussed once that time arrives. Most fans and critics of the show are probably wondering more about which issues and topics Jerrod Carmichael and the cast will tackle during their recently ordered 13-episode third season.

[Image Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]

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