Mozart in the Jungle, RIP

I just finished the fourth season of the Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle -- a wonderful comedy about the classical music world of NYC -- and was saddened to find out that this season is the last.

Amazon cancelled the show last month -- along with lots of others.

I didn't blog a lot about this show but it was an incredibly funny and warmhearted look at an industry (classical music) struggling to survive in the crazy world of 21st century culture and NYC. The characters were wonderfully realized, the writing was sharp, the stories were heartfelt, and it was a great look at a slice of life, a little world, in NYC. It was a show about artists, people who love what they do, and are willing sacrifice for it. It was a show about triumphs, disappointments, love, and everything else. It was wonderful.  

Most of all, it featured Bernadette Peters and Malcom McDowell, still going strong after decades in show business. It had a great cast. 

And now it's gone. 

It's gone because Amazon, after firing its previous programming chief in a #MeToo moment, hired a new person who's decided to cancel shows like Mozart (small, sophisticated boutique shows about real people and their struggles) in order to  spend  roughly a $1 billion to re-imagine Lord of the Rings. Apparently, Amazon wants its own Game of Thrones, its own Stranger Things, it's own big-time cultural buzzy hit. It wants a blockbuster.

Le sigh.

Forgive me, but can Amazon really do a better job with LOTR than Peter Jackson did with his movies? Does the culture really need or want this? And while I'm a HUGE fan of GOT and enjoy Stranger Things, I loved that Amazon had all these funky, small, literate shows -- like Mozart, Transparent and One Mississippi. These were original, groundbreaking, history-making shows, shows that truly pushed the art of television forward. 

But business is business, and this was probably inevitable. Still, it's disappointing. So let's just appreciate that for a brief, shining moment there was a place where shows like this could thrive. 

And, like all good things, like all great moments, they come to an end.