Fox had a weird habit in the late 2010s. They’d find a comedy that actually felt dangerous—something with teeth—and then they’d pull the plug just as it started to get really interesting. The Mick TV show season 2 is the poster child for this specific kind of heartbreak. If you haven't seen it, the premise sounds like a standard fish-out-of-water sitcom: Mackenzie "Mickey" Murphy (Kaitlin Olson) is a degenerate grifter who ends up raising her ultra-wealthy sister’s kids after the parents flee the country to avoid federal fraud charges.
But it wasn't standard. It was mean. It was messy. Honestly, it was one of the funniest things on network television.
The second season took everything that worked in the first seventeen episodes and cranked the volume. We saw Mickey trying—and mostly failing—to navigate the upper-crust world of Greenwich, Connecticut, while dragging the kids down to her level. By the time we hit the finale, the show had carved out a niche for being unapologetically dark. Then, the lightning strike happened.
That Graduation Finale Nobody Can Forget
Let's talk about "The Graduate." Most sitcoms end a season with a wedding or a cliffhanger about a relationship. The Mick ended its second season by having the eldest daughter, Sabrina (Sofia Black-D'Elia), get struck by lightning while holding a katana. It sounds like a gag from a cartoon, but the way the Chernin brothers (the show’s creators) directed it was visceral.
It wasn't a "shaky-cam" Hollywood zap. It was heavy.
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Sabrina hits the pavement like a sack of bricks. In the hospital, the doctor tells the family she’s alive, but she’s lost a toe and, more importantly, her cognitive functions are a total question mark. The screen fades to black on the family staring at her unconscious body. It was supposed to be the bridge to a third season that would’ve fundamentally changed the show's DNA.
Instead, it became the series finale. Fox cancelled the show on May 10, 2018.
The Season 3 That Never Happened
People still ask what would have happened next. John and Dave Chernin have been pretty open in interviews with outlets like TVLine about their scrapped plans. They were "blindsided" by the cancellation because, internally, everyone told them they were coming back.
The plan for Season 3 was bold:
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- Sabrina’s Recovery: The show was going to jump forward a few months. Sabrina would be struggling to relearn how to walk and talk.
- The Power Shift: The creators loved the idea of Mickey having to care for a version of Sabrina who couldn't fight back. They even joked about Mickey taking a wheelchair-bound Sabrina to a club in Manhattan for her 18th birthday just to "force" some fun back into her life.
- Alba’s Romance: Alba (Carla Jimenez) was going to get a real subplot involving a love triangle between a Yale alum and her usual foil, Mike O'Malley.
- Jimmy’s Evolution: Jimmy (Scott MacArthur) spent most of Season 2 being Mickey's doormat. The plan was to flip the script and make him the "jerk" in the relationship for a while.
Why The Mick TV Show Season 2 Was Peak Comedy
Kaitlin Olson is a physical comedy genius. We knew that from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but here she had the lead role. She wasn't just "The Girl" in a group of guys; she was the engine. Whether she was accidentally getting high on "clown medicine" or trying to rig a private school's admissions process, her commitment to the bit was total.
The chemistry with the kids was the secret sauce. Chip (Thomas Barbusca) was the perfect punchable-yet-lovable prepé child. Ben (Jack Stanton) was the weirdest kid on TV, often used as a vessel for the show's most surreal humor. Season 2 leaned into these dynamics hard.
Viewership vs. Reality
The ratings for the mick tv show season 2 weren't actually "bad" in the traditional sense. It averaged about 3.1 million viewers per episode. In the 2026 streaming landscape, that would be a massive hit. But back in 2018, Fox was undergoing a massive shift. They had just acquired the rights to Thursday Night Football and Last Man Standing. They needed to clear room on their schedule, and unfortunately, their weird, dark, single-camera comedies like The Mick, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Last Man on Earth all got the axe at the same time.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine got saved by NBC. The Mick wasn't so lucky.
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How to Watch and What to Do Now
If you’re looking to revisit the chaos, both seasons are usually available on Hulu or Disney+ (depending on your region). It’s 37 episodes of high-octane, low-moral comedy that hasn't aged a day.
If you’ve already binged it and feel that Sabrina-shaped hole in your heart, here is the move:
- Watch "The Incident": Season 2, Episode 12. It’s arguably the best distillation of why the show worked—complete chaos, accidental injuries, and Mickey’s warped logic.
- Check out "Hacks": If you want more Kaitlin Olson being brilliantly messy, her recurring role in Hacks on Max is the closest spiritual successor we have.
- Read the Chernin Interviews: Search for the post-cancellation interviews from 2018. Hearing them describe the "Sabrina learning to talk" jokes makes the cancellation feel a little less like a dead end and more like a lost piece of art.
The reality is that The Mick was probably too "cable" for network TV. It was mean-spirited but had a huge heart hidden under layers of cheap beer and stolen jewelry. It ended on a cliffhanger that we'll likely never see resolved, but honestly? There’s something perfectly "Mick" about the show ending with everyone's lives in a complete, irreparable shambles.