Relaunch effort fails for 'Sisco'

ZAP2IT.COM
The other tasteful high-heeled shoe has officially dropped for "Karen Sisco."
Despite public statements from ABC's top executives earlier this month that the network would try to relaunch the freshman series in March, "Karen Sisco" has been shown the door. Three completed episodes have not aired; it's unclear whether they'll ever see the light of day.
Based on a character from Elmore Leonard's novel "Out of Sight" (and played in a feature-film version of the book by Jennifer Lopez), "Karen Sisco" starred Carla Gugino as a federal marshal working in Miami. The series, despite a solid lead-in from "The Bachelor," regularly got creamed by "Law & amp; Order" on Wednesday nights and averaged about 7.6 million viewers a week over its seven episodes.
When "Sisco" was first shelved in November, ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne said it would undergo some "tweaking" to give the series more dramatic heft. Lyne said although audiences liked the lead character, the show's laconic pace didn't grab them.
At the TV Critics Association press tour in mid-January, Lyne and ABC chairman Lloyd Braun continued to tout the series. "We just got the first of the new 'Karen Sisco' scripts. It's really good," Lyne told the assembled reporters, while Braun said the show had "all kinds of potential."
Somewhere between then and now, however, the network decided to abandon the relaunch plan, reportedly because it was unhappy with the way the new scripts were turning out.