The short answer is that different shows are different.
OBX has an adult cast, which means a cast being vaccinated earlier and also fewer worries about their cast aging up. There was always a ticking clock on JatP because their leads are rapidly maturing.
I haven’t seen OBX, but my understanding is that s2 doesn’t have a massive number of crowd scenes? whereas JatP needs a crowd scene in almost every episode, which are difficult to produce effectively when you need extras to socially distance.
They also have different budgets. JatP was clearly made on shoestring budget, and the main thing you need to produce a show during covid is more money. Especially when social distancing is in effect, productions take longer so that crew members can take turns doing their jobs so they’re not all on top of each other. More time requires more money. And any series that has to suspend production–as so many shows that have been produced during the pandemic have had to–takes a financial hit.
OBX, to my (admittedly fuzzy given I don’t watch the show) memory, was one of the top trending shows on Netflix, something that JatP didn’t do. Which means OBX had a much bigger audience and was therefore a higher priority to Netflix for extra resources like money.
They also filmed in different locations. Vancouver, where JatP films, was struggling to cope with the sheer number of shows that wanted to film there before the pandemic. It became a major film hub faster than sufficient facilities could be built and local crew members could be recruited, and there were already issues pre-pandemic where if a production didn’t get facilities or vital crew members locked down months before a show was meant to film, the production would have to be delayed. I wouldn’t be shocked if the pandemic created a bottleneck in Vancouver as they try to deal with the backlog of shows that didn’t film during the shutdown and the shows that were scheduled to film post-shutdown. And sure, productions can move to different cities, but 1) many places will be dealing with similar bottlenecks, and 2) if the financial incentives for a certain city/province/state aren’t good enough, a show may not be able to be produced in a new location.
The tl;dr is that comparing renewals is rarely a helpful exercise because every single production has different needs, and those different needs will have been impacted in different ways by covid. And so much of this stuff is in private details or the quirks of a specific production. So unless we’re personally on both production teams and know the details of how they operate, we can’t fairly compare the shows.
The JatP creative team said multiple times that Netflix wanted to renew the show but were trying to figure out how to do it safely. And I believe them. My understanding of the situation is that Netflix waited as long as they could to see if they could make the season work, and Omicron might have been the final blow.
It’s just been a bit weird to me that fans have solely focused their rage at Netflix, rather than viewing this as covid cancellation. As one of many things we’ve lost in the past two years to a global pandemic.
I think perhaps one of the misconceptions people have is that the shows that started up production again have done so because it was safe to film, and that a single show going back into production meant it was safe to film everything.
But it hasn’t been safe. Several countries relaxed their covid restrictions specifically for foreign (often US) film and TV productions because there are tremendous financial incentives to do so. Shows have gone back into production because people needed paychecks and the industries needed to keep churning to avoid total collapse. Financial decisions, not health and safety ones.
Honestly, I’m angrier at the shows that have gone into production than I am at JatP’s cancellation. Crew members are horrifically exploited and subjected to incredibly unsafe working conditions when there isn’t a pandemic (something the aborted IATSE strike and the shooting of Halyna Hutchins highlighted this year. Something I am all too intimately familiar with because of my friends who are below-the-line workers who have been horribly injured on set or nearly died traveling home from work due to sleep deprivation.) The fact that crew members have been basically treated as essential workers who had to go back to unsafe sets that didn’t value their safety at all in order to protect the industry sends me into a rage spiral.
I’m angry that there haven’t been more covid cancellations.
I’m angry at the sheer number of fans I’ve watched complain about things like production delays as if there isn’t a deadly pandemic going on.
I am very sad about JatP’s cancellation–I love the show, the show has saved me in a very real way, and I’m disappointed that there won’t be more of it–but my priority is the safety of the people who produce it.
If the people who make it–who love it deeply and wanted to be able to make more of it–say that they couldn’t make it safely during the pandemic, I really wish fans would respect those priorities. Because I sure do.
annaxmalina
