Even though Chuck Lorre has managed to have some of the highest-rated comedies such as, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory in TV history, he is not without mistakes especially with certain productions or scripts. In spite of the fact that, generally speaking, Lorre’s series are long-living and nothing can disturb it, there are still some series that face an unexpected end sooner than they were supposed to.
Such example is B Positive, a sitcom that aired in 2020 and was created by Marco Pennette with a writer and executive producer Chuck Lorre. It was an interesting concept but as time went on, the show could not hold its own anymore leading to a huge change to try and avert it from being cancelled.
The first season centers on Drew (Thomas Middleditch), who finds out that he has a kidney problem and is in the possession of a medical rarity, a rare blood type. He hears of a high school friend, Gina (Annaleigh Ashford) who is willing to donate a kidney to him.
This kidney transplant was at the center of the first season’s main storyline and, more importantly, was successfully concluded in the season finale where both characters head to the operating room where the long-waited operation takes places. Nevertheless, as this moment of great importance came, Lorre, Pennette, and the gang were faced with what to do for a second season.
The first idea which instead had pulled in many viewers, whose inspiration was Pennette’s own stories, wore thin towards the onset of season two that highlighted the success of the operation. This saw the show looking for a new course in the development.
It is not the first time Lorre was attempting to do this with a series which previously happened in Mom and the program that featured Charlie Sheen after he is cut off. In due course, the attention turned to Gina who after finding herself an heiress, chose to put her money on the old people’s house she was working in. Lorre described this change as a means of preserving the emotional core of the program:
“It was a humanitarian character in the 1 season of a show that characterized the unwavering satiety and joy by bringing humanitarian relief to others and hunting for pleasures for oneself. He is well aware that buying out things will not give him the pleasure and egoistic satisfaction that even he had when he was with selfless giving. In the very first A middle aged woman is a buyer who wants to change all of the care facilities for the better and in this way reward women who work in such places.”
This shift really altered the life and orientation of the series as it was also helped by the accusations of sexual abuse allegations against actor Thomas Middleditch around then which let to the actor being largely missing during the promotions of the season.
Though its format evolved considerably by the end of the second season, B Positive still couldn’t win a bigger audience and CBS cancelled the show too after that. That was not the only casualty for Lorre that year, for United States of Al was also cancelled.