Why CBS Canceled Walton Goggins' The Unicorn

Though he started acting in the late '80s, Walton Goggins has slowly worked his way towards stardom and, today, he's verging on becoming a household name. "The Unicorn" isn't one of Goggins' best-known projects, but it had its fans and received positive reviews from critics during its 2019 to 2021 run. Sadly, the show was cancelled following its second season and it seems this one came down to a plain old lack of viewership, with CBS pulling the plug after linear ratings failed to pick up in the second season.

Created by Bill Martin, Mike Schiff, and Grady Cooper, "The Unicorn" saw Goggins play Wade Felton, owner of a landscaping company and recent widower who suddenly finds himself confronted with the responsibility of raising two daughters solo. After being encouraged by his friends, he ventures into the hellscape that is modern dating, where he is, evidently, considered to be a one-of-a-kind, or "unicorn," by his many admirers.

The show premiered on September 26, 2019, and according to Deadline, was liked well enough by certain CBS execs that it gained a second season renewal, only to be dropped at the conclusion of that second run after Goggins' comedy simply couldn't pull in the viewership it needed.

In March 2019, it was announced that Walton Goggins was set to play a single dad in "The Unicorn,"  ahead of the show debuting in September of that year. The second season arrived on November 12, 2020 and wrapped up on March 18, 2021. Two months later, it was confirmed that the show had been cancelled, with Deadline reporting that "The Unicorn" had — somewhat fittingly given its title — been an outlier since the beginning. According to the outlet, "The Unicorn" didn't quite fit in with the network's more traditional sitcoms, and when its linear ratings (i.e. viewers who watched it as it aired on TV) came in as among the lowest on CBS for the season, things weren't looking good. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the second season averaged 5.05 million viewers, which represented the lowest ratings for any CBS scripted series of that season.

As Deadline notes, the show actually outperformed the then-recently renewed "S.W.A.T." (which has actually been cancelled by CBS three times) in terms of live and same-day viewership, and its streaming deal with Netflix helped offset some of the production costs. There were even attempts to keep "The Unicorn" going by changing its production location in order to create some savings. Alas, the show still couldn't snag another renewal, likely due to the difficulties networks have with selling single-camera comedies internationally and what Deadline described as "limited off-network earning potential."

After 32 episodes, then, "The Unicorn" was done, but it went out with its head held high, sporting an average critic score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes.

After "The Unicorn" was cancelled, Walton Goggins posted a heartfelt message to Instagram, writing, "Our story was about learning how to live again after losing a spouse, a mother ... a friend. I wanted to tell this story because I've been thru it ... one of our creators went thru it ... I've had upwards of ten friends go thru this very thing and given what has transpired in the last year so many around the world find themselves in similar situations." He also thanked CBS, the cast, and the crew for their efforts and reassured fans, "More than anything, those of us behind this show wanted you to know that you're not alone."

While "The Unicorn" wasn't Goggins' most popular show, it did give him a chance to show off his comedic chops and his ability to strike a believable balance between humor and drama, which evidently impressed a lot of critics. Many viewers' first exposure to Goggins was either via his portrayal of Detective Shane Vandrell on FX crime drama "The Shield" or the Timothy Olyphant-led "Justified," where he played cunning criminal Boyd Crowder. Goggins also had a scene-stealing guest spot on "Community" alongside roles in "Sons of Anarchy" before playing Captain Chris Mannix in Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" in 2015. After that, he gained even more exposure via HBO comedy "The Righteous Gemstones," in which his typically committed portrayal of televangelist Baby Billy Freeman showed off his comedic sensibility and his irrepressible passion. By the time he played Rick Hatchett on the third season of Mike White's hit HBO series "The White Lotus" and became the hideous (but somehow still handsome) Ghoul on Prime Video's "Fallout," Goggins had started to move from character actor into star territory, with his hosting of "Saturday Night Live" further cementing his newfound stardom. But "The Unicorn" is a hidden gem in the man's filmography that is unlike any of his other projects, and is therefore well worth a watch if you missed it during its all-too-brief run.