Another day, another widely beloved series ends on an unresolved cliffhanger, rendering the entire work of art an unsatisfying question without an answer. Netflix has undoubtedly permanently damaged its relationship with its audience and the creators who fill its catalog. After shutting down Inside Job, the company will alienate yet another crop of fans and set a new standard for cruelty within the industry.
The awful truth is that animation has always been treated as inherently less valuable than live-action media. Animated series typically cost a lot to make, so if they don't attain a comical level of financial success and cultural impact, they're as good as dead. Evidently not even being renewed for a second season will save them from Netflix's ire.
What is Inside Job about?
Shion Takeuchi, best known for writing several episodes of the beloved Disney series Gravity Falls, created this adult-oriented workplace comedy set in an underground government office. The series follows the employees of Cognito, Inc., a deep-state organization that manages the fate of the world from the shadows. The world of Inside Job is, in many ways, the one imagined by scores of conspiracy theorists. The president is a robot, the lizard people were real the whole time, and every notable event in history has actually been masterminded by a handful of powerful figures. At the center of it all, a group of diverse coworkers try to live their lives, keep their jobs, and save the world.
Lizzy Caplan stars as Reagan, a mad scientist with the noble goal of making the world a better place. She's as socially inept as she is intellectually gifted, but she's also the only person at Cognito who seems to care about the people outside its corporate ladder. Christian Slater portrays Reagan's dangerously unhinged father Rand, the former co-founder of Cognito who finds himself unemployed after nearly exposing its operations. Rand is a wild card, a man who has weaponized paranoia in others and himself. Reagan leads a team along with a fast-talking PR manager, a failed super soldier with dolphin DNA, a drug-addicted biochemist, and a psychic cluster of mushrooms. When Brett, a sycophantic political operative so bland his face can't be detected by recognition software, joins the team, hijinks ensue. It's a chaotic series with beautiful animation and a fascinating storyline. Unfortunately, fans of that story may never see its ending.
Why Was Inside Job Canceled?
Within its first nine days on Netflix, Inside Job was watched for a whopping 21,240,000 hours. The season lasts around 285 minutes, so it's safe to assume that at least 75,000 viewers chose to view the show within that period. The number is probably much higher, as many viewers likely didn't binge the series right away. The show has a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes, not the best score of all time, but it's a solid Fresh rating. The first season consists of 18 episodes, broken into two halves. The show originally received an order for 20. So, with solid viewership and critical appeal, why would Netflix pull the plug on Inside Job? The unfortunate answer is almost certainly analytics.
Inside Job was renewed for a second season back in June 2022. After the success of season one's first half, Netflix was ready to bring the creator on for another year. However, Netflix de-renewed the series order shortly after the release of Part 2. This is a rare occurrence, but the breakneck pace of streaming media is making it more common. The likely explanation is that Netflix got the analytics back from Part 2 and didn't like what they saw. The budget for Inside Job isn't public knowledge, but it's safe to say that it's fairly expensive. It undoubtedly doesn't hold a candle to a show like Stranger Things, but it's also not a hit on that show's level. Netflix has been canceling shows left and right, refusing to take a chance on anything that isn't a smash like Bridgerton or a cult hit like The Umbrella Academy. Inside Job didn't make the company infinite money, didn't create a merchandising empire, and didn't hit the right taste clusters, so Netflix isn't interested in it or its fanbase.
Inside Job is yet another painful lesson in Netflix's ongoing campaign of bad PR. Fans of 1899 recently learned that getting invested in any mystery series on the platform will only result in profound disappointment. Now, they'll learn that not even being picked up for a second season will save their favorite show. Netflix subscribers are getting the message. Nothing is safe, no original series is guaranteed the space to tell its story, and investing emotional stakes in anything that isn't already finished is a gamble. If Netflix users stop binging shows the instant they come out because they're sick of all of their favorite stories ending on unresolved cliffhangers, the system will only respond by canceling more shows. This vicious cycle only has one outcome; the slow or sudden death of almost every new piece of art picked up by Netflix. What happened to Inside Job is nothing less than a tragedy. There's an outside chance that it gets picked up elsewhere, but the fast-paced world of streaming entertainment leaves no room for moderately popular well-received media. Can Netflix kill itself one butchered series at a time? The only way to find out is to keep watching.