Friend Me (partially found unaired CBS comedy series; 2012-2013)
Title card to Friend Me.
Status: lost
This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its reference to suicide.
In 2012, CBS ordered the pilot episode for Friend Me, a comedy series focusing on two twentysomethings working at the e-commerce marketplace Groupon. The show was created by Alan Kirschenbaum and Ajay Sahgal. Originally planned to premiere during CBS' midseason 2012-2013, it was announced that the show was cancelled due to the suicide of Kirschenbaum and the pilot episode and any other produced episode has never been seen on television or anywhere else.
History
Friend Me was planned to be about two best friends Evan and Rob moving from Bloomington, Indiana to Los Angeles, California to work for Groupon.[1] The show was to star Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Evan and Nicholas Braun as Rob, with Amanda Lund playing the neighbor Amanda Baxter. Parveesh Cheena, Dan Ahdoot, and Steve Talley were also announced as cast members.[2][3]
Despite spectulation, in a statement to Forbes, Groupon announced that they had no involvement with the show.[4] In May 2012, it was announced that the show was picked up as a series for CBS' 2012-2013 midseason lineup.[5]
Cancellation
On October 26th, 2012, Alan Kirschenbaum was found dead at the age of 51. The Los Angeles County Coroner called it an "apparent suicide".[6] Because of the sudden death of Kirschenbaum, CBS opted not to include the show in their mid-season schedule.[3]
Availability
After it was announced the show was cancelled, the series was not shown on CBS to "burn off" the remaining episodes. Because of this the pilot nor any of the unspecified amount of episodes that were produced for the show were shown on TV. On December 27th, 2022, the pilot was uploaded onto the Internet Archive along with hundreds of other TV pilots that were taken from a terminated YouTube channel tv_channel.[7] The pilot had since been remove from Internet Archive
References
- ↑ Vanity Fair article on Friend Me. Retrieved 03 Dec '21
- ↑ Deadline article on Friend Me. Retrieved 03 Dec '21
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 TV series finales annouces cancellation. Retrieved 03 Dec '21
- ↑ Groupon statement on Friend Me. Retrieved 03 Dec '21
- ↑ Friend Me gets picked up for series. Retrieved 03 Dec '21
- ↑ Entertainment Weekly on the death of Alan Kirchenmbaum. Retrieved 03 Dec '21
- ↑ Friend Me Pilot on Internet Archive by tv_tunnel. Retrieved 29 Dec '22