(Photo: ABC/Christopher Willard)
Tipsy the Panda won’t be back to wreak more havoc this summer. ABC has reportedly cancelled The Final Straw so there won’t be a second season. The first season of 10 episodes debuted in July and finished airing last September.
A primetime game show, The Final Straw TV series is a larger-than-life Jenga-style competition hosted by Janelle James. Four teams of contestants compete in a battle against gravity and physics. They attempt to remove items from life-sized themed stacks chock full of household objects, ranging from basketballs to small kitchen appliances. The host is sometimes joined onstage by the mischievous Tipsy the Panda, who is hell-bent on destroying the stacks. If the tower falls, that team is eliminated. The last team standing will compete against The Mega Stack for a chance to win the grand prize of $250,000.
Airing on Sunday nights, the first season of The Final Straw averages a 0.30 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 2.09 million viewers in the live+same day ratings (including DVR playback through 3:00 AM). It was one of the alphabet network’s lower-rated series last summer.
The fates of Holey Moley and To Tell the Truth have yet to be announced by ABC, but they weren’t among the network’s summer plans. In January 2022, Truth host Anthony Anderson said that seven seven had already been filmed but those episodes have seemingly been rolled into the sixth season of 27 episodes.
What do you think? Have you checked out The Final Straw on ABC? Are you sorry that this game show has been cancelled and won’t be back for a second season?