It’s a day to mourn for Kenny Powers, the outspoken and often out-pitched minor league baseball player, who for three seasons has brought outlandish humor to HBO in the form of Eastbound & Down. The Danny McBride-led comedy will return to the network for a fourth season, but the subscription cable network announced on Thursday that the series will be ending after Season 4 airs.
THR first announced the news, and while we know the series will be done after Season 4, we’ll have to speculate why. First, the show has never been a huge ratings crusher, but it has been a weird and wild comedy that shakes the network’s programming up somewhat. Still, HBO has plenty of new programming coming up and the network may have ultimately decided there was no more room for the comedy, with Veep, Family Tree and Girls already a part of the schedule, and other new comedies in development.
Beyond this, Eastbound & Down has never been a particularly reliable program for the network. In fact, way back in 2011, Danny McBride stated that the series would be done that year. The show has waffled in the seasons since, keeping fans on the edge of their seats about whether or not the show would actually produce new episodes. Since February 2009, the series has only put out 21 episodes, and they always come at erratic times in the schedule. There’s a good chance McBride finally pulled the plug like he’s been saying he wanted to do for years and there’s an equally good chance HBO just got fed up with dealing with the series.
There is some good news, however. HBO has also announced an official premiere date for Season 4. Eastbound & Down will be a part of the subscription cable network’s fall schedule and will premiere on Sunday, September 29 at 10 p.m. ET.
