10 Decisions That Have Already Doomed Upcoming TV Shows

Because IP is king and original ideas are trash, of course Paramount are soon set to premiere Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.

The prequel series, set four years before the iconic movie in 1954, chronicles the origins of Rydell High's Pink Ladies, because the legions of Grease fans out there were evidently hankering for a deepening of the musical franchise's "lore."

But regardless of whether the series is actually any good, it already feels destined to flop ratings-wise because it's gotten swept up in exhausting culture war debates.

The decision to make this new iteration of Grease more inclusive and diverse sounds great on paper, though it might've also made sense to set the show a little closer to the present, rather than going backwards to a time that was even more bigoted and, well, aggressively white.

While there are a lot of bad-faith arguments against the Grease prequel series and its "unrealistic" depiction of 1950s America, one suspects it might end up suffering the same fate as 2016's female-led Ghostbusters reboot, where the "controversy" surrounding its existence overshadows the show itself.

That it feels like an original series that was basically retrofitted to be a Grease spin-off doesn't do it any additional favours. Good luck to those involved, but it's tough to see this one working out.