Marcel Winatschek

Lotta in Crisis

A new show called Lotta in Love premiered on German television and got cancelled by the internet within two days. There’d been this enormous advertising campaign, all the expectations, and then the schedule dropped and people saw it was replacing The Simpsons, and that was it.

The backlash was weirdly immediate. Thousands started calling for it to be pulled. ProSieben had set up an official forum for fans, but it just got drowned in people hating on the thing—so the actual fans stopped showing up. It was destroyed before the second episode even aired.

I felt for Janine Reinhardt, the actress carrying this thing. She didn’t choose to replace The Simpsons. That’s a brutal position: your show premieres and the internet’s already decided you’re the problem, before anyone’s even really watched it. This is television now—democratic right up until the moment the mob votes to kill you.