medical drama Grey's Anatomy, which premiered in 2005. Though Rhimes stepped down in 2015, the series is still airing to this day, currently in its 21st season, following the personal and professional lives of surgical interns, residents, and attending physicians at a hospital in Seattle.

Rhimes also created the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice, which ran for six seasons from 2007 to 2013, following Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh), who leaves Seattle Grace Hospital to a private practice located in Los Angeles. Outside medical dramas, Rhimes also created Scandal and, as the founder of Shondaland, has produced How to Get Away with Murder, Netflix's Bridgerton, its spinoff Queen Charlotte, Inventing Anna, and The Residence. In 2011, Rhimes produced another medical drama that was canceled after just one season.

Shonda Rhimes Reflects On Off The Map 14 Years Later

The Medical Drama Was Canceled After One Season

Shonda Rhimes reflects on Off the Map, which was canceled after just one season. Created by Grey's Anatomy writer Jenna Bans, with Rhimes serving as an executive producer, the ABC medical drama premiered in 2011, following a group of doctors from the United States who practice medicine at a remote clinic in the Amazon jungle in an attempt to rediscover their true reasons for becoming doctors. The show's cast included Martin Henderson, Valerie Cruz, Caroline Dhavernas, Jason Winston George, Zach Gilford, Mamie Gummer, Rachelle Lefevre, and Jonathan Castellanos.

During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Shonda Rhimes reflected on Off the Map's cancellation over a decade later. She says it was a strong show with a great cast that she believes would have succeeded if it had premiered at a different time, since it didn't fit the era's demand for "super appointment television," but she personally loved it and wishes it had lasted longer. Read her full comments below:

When I think about that, I definitely think about Off the Map. Off the Map was such a great cast. It was a really, really good show that I think if it started out five years ago, it'd still be running. But it was that particular time. how every single thing had to be super in television because everybody was trying to catch up with Lost and Desperate [Housewives] and Grey's? So it wasn't super appointment television enough, but it would've been a show that I would've made an appointment with television for myself, and I would've watched it. It was so good. I wish it had gone much further than it did.

What Shonda Rhimes' Comments Mean For Off The Map

Why Was It Canceled?

Off the Map actually enjoyed decent ratings, as it debuted with an audience of 7.57 million viewers, making it ABC's most-watched broadcast in the time slot at the time since the first two episodes of the Ashley Benson-led John Updike adaptation Eastwick in 2009. However, by the end of season 1, which ran for 13 episodes, Off the Map had already dwindled to 3.8 million viewers. Thus, it also followed in the footsteps of Eastwick, as that show had a similar dropoff after premiering with 8.53 million viewers and was cancelled after one season.

Eastwick was based on the novel The Witches of Eastwick, which had previously been adapted into a Jack Nicholson movie in 1987.

Additionally, Off the Map received bad reviews, as indicated by its 18% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics called it "dreadfully painful in its efforts to be dramatic and earnest." While audiences were kinder to the series, giving it a 67% score that is somewhat above the 60% threshold past which a project can be considered "Fresh," there nevertheless does not seem to have been enough enthusiasm to maintain strong ratings. As Rhimes its, Off the Map wasn't appointment television like the ABC sci-fi drama Lost, though it did use many of the same production facilities in Puerto Rico and Hawaii.

Our Take On Shonda Rhimes' Off The Map Comments

Her Assessment Of The Medical Drama Landscape Is Accurate

Though this is not unexpected considering her link to one of the most popular examples of the genre in television history, Shonda Rhimes' assessment of Off the Map coming at the wrong time is borne out by history. Of the more than a dozen new medical dramas that premiered on American television between 2010 and 2014, the majority ran for only one or two seasons. The longest-running shows to debut in that period were the four-season series Hart of Dixie, The Night Shift, and Masters of Sex as well as the three-season series Body of Proof.

Other medical dramas that were cancelled after one season during that period include Miami Medical, Combat Hospital, Do No Harm, and Black Box.

This streak continued unabated from 2010 until the 2015 debut of Chicago Med. The One Chicago universe show is still running and is currently airing season 10. The amount of long-running medical drama debuts slowly increased after that. iZombie, a supernatural spin on the genre which premiered in 2015, ran for five seasons, though Chicago Med was not truly rivaled by a straight medical drama until the late 2010s, when The Good Doctor debuted in 2017, kicking off a seven-season run that was followed by the 2018 debuts of the six-season The Resident and the five-season New Amsterdam.

The number of popular medical dramas continues to climb...

As Rhimes says, this makes it seem very likely that Off the Map could have thrived if it had been released half a decade ago. However, the number of popular medical dramas continues to climb, to the point that the show could have thrived if it had debuted in the past year. After all, since September 2024, American television has seen the debut of the buzzy medical dramas Doctor Odyssey, Watson, Doc, and The Pitt, the latter three of which have already been renewed for second seasons.

Source: EW