Is This Really The End For 'A To Z'?

Poor Cristin Milioti. By all accounts she's delightful to watch, but her characters keep getting the short end of the stick. She out-charmed Robin on How I Met Your Mother, only to — spoiler alert — croak right when her character was starting to get interesting. Her Wolf of Wall Street role was also quickly dispatched. And, now, it looks like A to Z is ending on Jan. 22 right around the "M"-mark. But is this really the end of A to Z ? Won't anybody save it?

It's not looking likely. According to Entertainment Weekly, the "Z" should stand for "zombie," since it's basically the walking dead, with NBC not ordering any more episodes beyond its original 13. "Since [both A-to-Z and Bad Judge] will still be on the air, there’s always the chance that ratings could go up and NBC could change its mind," Entertainment Weekly explained in a follow-up article. "It’s like in The Princess Bride: There’s dead, and there’s mostly dead. A to Z is mostly dead. NBC has signaled its intention 'to cancel' the series by deciding against picking up the rest of the season. But it’s still on the air, so…things can happen. They just very rarely do."

For one, crazy split second, it looked like the ratings for A to Z might've gone up, reports the Franchise Herald, but it was a one-episode anomaly (for the episode "F is for Fight, Fight, Fight!"). Since January, though, the numbers have only sunk further. The last episode that aired had a miserable 1.73 million viewers, according to TV By the Numbers — the second-lowest ever for the show. The episode that garnered the worst ratings might be "the lowest rated in-season rating ever for a network series," HitFix reported.

It's not really enough to make NBC call in the cavalry. And it's not likely that there's even enough of an audience to be picked up by another network, the way Cougar Town was. (So far, there's not even a whisper of a rumor about another network taking interest.) So if you were to ask me if the episode airing Jan. 22, "M is for Meant to Be" (oh, the cruel irony of that title), is going to be the series' last, I'd say, mmmmmmyes.

Still, there's one person who's still holding out hope: producer Rashida Jones.

She keeps using the #SaveAtoZ hashtag, so she hasn't given up on the show yet. Let's hope she's successful, because the end of Parks and Rec is quickly approaching, and Jones doesn't deserve to lose two shows in such a short span.

Images: Darren Michaels/NBC/Warner Brothers; Giphy