The end has officially come for another NBC series, on the same day that saw the cancellations of Night Court and Suits LA: Jesse L. Martin’s The Irrational has been cancelled. The two-season drama’s finale aired all the way back in March, so cast and crew had been waiting more than six weeks to see if that last episode was strong enough to earn a Season 3. The unfortunate news reminded me of my conversation with The Irrational‘s showrunner about her optimism for a third season, as well as the musical episode that will go down as one of my personal favorite episodes of the entire series.
Regarding the cancellation, Deadline reports that the ratings drops from the first season to the second as well as a packed primetime lineup in the fall contributed to the drama getting the axe, although the decision was reportedly difficult due to former Law & Order cast member Jesse L. Martin’s popularity at the network.
When I spoke with showrunner/EP/writer Arika Lisanne Mittman ahead of the finale in March, she previewed the “really intense” episode that would end Season 2, which now goes down as the series finale. It didn’t end on a cliffhanger so much as a fresh start for Alec and Rose, which I was looking forward to as a big fan of what Legacies‘ Karen David brought to the show. At the time, I asked Mittman if the finale had been planned to double as a series finale just in case The Irrational was cancelled, and she shared:
It’s definitely planned as a season finale. We approach these things very optimistically. We love the show, and we would love to keep making it. I would love to keep making it, so we were definitely setting up the opportunity for it to come back.
While the finale ended with Rose deciding to give up the spy life, continue her relationship with Alec, and Alec discovering that he’s been followed, the most memorable element of Season 2 for me has to be the musical episode, called “Suddenly Alec,” that is now the second-to-last episode of The Irrational ever.
With Rent‘s Jesse L. Martin (who also sang in The Flash‘s musical episode) and former Galavant star Karen David in the cast, how could my musical theater-loving heart not swell at the stars singing Little Shop of Horrors in an episode? It certainly salts the wound of the cancellation, as Arika Lisanne Mittman had fun with it as well:
That’s up there with the most fun I have ever had in my career, so it’ll be hard to top that.
The origin of the musical episode goes back to Mittman being a big fan of Rent, which was Jesse L. Martin’s big break into Broadway back in the ’90s, and he reprised his role for the 2005 film adaptation in a tear-jerking performance. In fact, one of the showrunner’s goals from the start was to get him singing as Alec, so at least that happened before the NBC cancellation! Back in March, Mittman sasid:
From the moment I cast Jesse Martin, I was like, ‘How are we gonna get him to sing?’ Because he is such a good actor and takes his character very seriously, he didn’t want to do it unless it was organic to the character, and I agreed. We can only have Alec sing if it makes sense. Alec is not a musical theater actor, but I definitely had an eye for, ‘How am I going to come up with an episode where it makes sense for Alec to sing?’ Then obviously, when we brought Karen David into the cast, it was like, ‘How can I get both of them to sing?’ That was definitely on my mind, and then Jesse and Karen really loved the idea.
Apparently, Jesse L. Martin and Karen David brought the idea of Alec and Rose going undercover in a community theater production, which set Mittman on the path of figuring out if there was “any way that we can do this community theater episode.” She went on:
The question was really, ‘Can we afford to do a musical? Can we do a real musical?’ We definitely looked at cheaper ways to do a community theater episode. I’m like, ‘Oh, we’ll do Shakespeare. That’s free.’ And it was like, ‘Well, we can ask,’ and lo and behold, the powers that be at NBC gave us this gift of allowing us to spend the money and make a real musical. Everybody loved the idea of Little Shop [of Horrors], and Jesse loved the idea of doing the plant, and that’s how it came together.
Perhaps I would be better off not reflecting on the fun of the musical episode while processing the news of The Irrational‘s cancellation, but there is at least the sweetness of Arika Lisanne Mittman getting her wish for Jesse L. Martin to sing to go along with the bitter news this spring.
There are no reports of plans to shop The Irrational around to produce a third season on another network on platform, so this truly does seem to be the end of the line. If you want to revisit the two seasons (and/or skip to the musical episode), you can find the show streaming with a Peacock subscription now.