Browse links
US residents can opt out of "sales" of personal data.
Joel McHale's pop-culture-skewering clip show will air its final episode next month.
After 22 years on the air, The Soup has finally met its end.
E! announced today that the long-running pop culture clip show hosted by Joel McHale has been cancelled, with its final episode scheduled for Dec. 18.
"We are incredibly proud of the long-running success of The Soup,” said Jeff Olde, E!'s EVP of Programming & Development. “The Soup has delivered countless laughs and unforgettable episodes, and we are grateful to the talented team’s fearless wit and clever approach week after week. Joel took the show to new heights for more than a decade, and his irreverent humor and unique brand of comedy as captured so perfectly on The Soup will be missed."
The show began back in 1991, when it was hosted by Greg Kinnear and was titled Talk Soup. When Kinnear departed, the show employed a string of hosts — John Henson, Hal Sparks, and Aisha Tyler — before rebranding as The Soup in 2004 with McHale's arrival.
"After 11 life changing years working with the best production staff, group of writers and host any producers could ever hope for, it's time to go be funny and stupid somewhere else," Soup EP K.P. Anderson told BuzzFeed. "We'd like to thank Ted Harbert and Jay James who brought The Soup to life, as well as Gary Snegaroff at Wilshire Studios who has carried the flame for us these past few years. We'd also like to thank all of the passionate fans who watch the show, tweet about it and paid enough attention to stop calling it 'Talk Soup.' Personally, I look forward to being able to stop following the Kardashians on Twitter and getting back the part of my brain that remembers sports stats."
"Hope everyone joins us for these last few shows," added EP Edward Boyd. "We ain't got nothing to lose, baby."
The Soup will continue to air episodes Fridays at 10 p.m. through to the Dec. 18 finale with McHale, Lou, and Mankini in tow. However, this might not be the end of McHale's relationship with E!, as the actor/comedian still has a development deal with the network that spawned fellow comedy talk show The Comment Section.
Still, with the departure of The Soup, the world will have to look elsewhere for someone to mock the inanity of reality TV on a weekly basis...and nobody does it quite like Joel McHale and The Soup.