"Fans demand Joan, fight CBS over cancellation," the Google headline said.
It seems supporters continue to rally behind Joan and her friends who live in the fictional town of Arcadia. The letter-writing campaign goes on, and maybe, just maybe, Joan might still be permitted to stroll the corridors of Arcadia High School and into our living rooms every week.
Now if this "cause" isn't something to take up sucking your thumb about, I don't know what is.
Would you go to extraordinary lengths to keep a family show on the air? Maybe so when the alternative is either more unrealistically stupid reality TV or more blood-letting, slice-`em-and-dice-`em violence.
Think about it. "Joan of Arcadia" was one of the few family-oriented shows still on television. Yet the show was chosen for the TV graveyard over disgusting bugs on "Fear Factor" and pompous megalomaniacs on "I Want To Be A Hilton." The mystery is best left to Jordan Cavanaugh to dissect on "Crossing Jordan."
The Girardi family have problems like all families. Beleaguered Joan must get to the bottom of issues much the same as an impressionable teenager tries to do in any close-knit family. Despite difficulties, everything seems to turn out well by the time the final credits roll.
And oh, yes, I almost forgot. Joan talks to God, or I should say lots of Gods, because every single one of the Supreme Beings is portrayed by ordinary people Joan meets every day in school or on the street.
There's even a character drifting in and out of the plot by the name of "Little Girl God," played by a geeky kid complete with large round glasses and frizzy hair who approaches Joan with proclamations beyond her years.
These average people in the persona of The Almighty give Joan advice that both confuses and guides her as she goes through a normal day. Amber Tamblyn handles the lead role with marvelous facial expressions of a teenager confronting these people and the issue of religion without being preachy nor taking sides.
The untimely demise of the show just goes to show even God is susceptible to low ratings.
Problems aside, Joan and her close family are as normal as yours and mine. Her brother, Kevin, is confined to a wheelchair after a car crash. Her mother is a schoolteacher, and her father is a detective on Arcadia's small-town police force.
The show has all the characters of Boston Public, Law and Order, and ER -- schoolteachers, students, detectives, and a medical mystery (will Kevin ever walk again? Now we'll never know) -- but without the violence. Joan's "in" with The Almighty is the perfect opportunity to ask for a small favor for her brother.
Joan's other brother is a brain at Arcadia High, where bizarre students with hair spikes and Mohawks walk the halls as extras while she and her oddball friends shuffle along discussing mundane issues.
I don't know why that's appealing, but my wife and I are among 10.1 million other viewers, respectable numbers for a Friday night, unless you count the drop to eight million at the end of this final season.
Ratings was the last straw for CBS before sending "Joan of Arcadia" where old TV shows and elephants go to die. The network ignored parents who wrote saying Joan was one of the few quality shows on television that they felt comfortable watching with their children. The show even won an Emmy nomination.
According to the internet, the show's problem was as obvious as the science lab at Arcadia High. The show couldn't get beyond a dwindling number of supporters.
I think a few things could have been tried before pulling the plug. Why didn't TV executives test the waters in another night and time slot? That has saved many other shows that floundered after a season or two.
Maybe another ratings solution would have been to sell Joan to another network and let fresh minds pick the airing time and day. Neither suggestion was tried.
Want to save one of the last family shows on TV? If you enjoyed Joan, drop a note to Sony Pictures Entertainment, 10202 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232.
(Retired editor George Robinson can be reached online at yrdezdoesit@comcast.net)
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