ABC has decided not to move forward with The Good Lawyer, a planned spinoff of their long-running series The Good Doctor. While The Good Doctor deals with a young, autistic surgeon, The Good Lawyer would have centered on a lawyer who struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a condition McMann says she actually lives with. A backdoor pilot aired on The Good Doctor in the spring, but the network had delayed their pickup decision until after the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike. The Rookie: Feds, another spinoff in limbo at the network, was also cancelled yesterday.
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The options on the The Good Lawyer cast were up August 15, so in ordinary circumstances, the decision would have to have been made before now. The options were extended due to the strike, giving the network extra time to mull their decision, according to Deadline.
The series isn’t going forward for a reason seemingly unrelated to the pilot’s quality: ABC has brought so many of its existing shows back for next season that there isn’t space in the schedule for new shows. The only new series that has been picked up is the Kaitlin Olson vehicle High Potential, and even that won’t air until Fall 2024.
“I could say a million things,” McMann posted to Instagram when she was cast. “Thank you to my incredible team. Thank you to my parents and my husband, who have been by side through my lifelong journey with OCD. Thank you to all of you who have made me feel safe enough to talk openly about it. To be working on a project like this, to be a part of a representation of OCD in media that is genuine and true, is all I have ever wanted, and more than I could have ever hoped for. To do it with this team is even better.”
The series would have also starred Felicity Huffman, whose last significant screen appearance was in 2019’s Tammy’s Always Dying, which was directed by Mighty Morphin Power Rangers star Amy Jo Johnson. Also in 2019, Huffman pled guilty to federal charges pertaining to the nationwide college entrance exam cheating scandal. After admitting that she bribed a proctor to increase her daughter’s SAT score, Huffman served an 11-day prison sentence, was fined $30,000, and had to complete 250 hours of community service and one year supervised release.
