Hulu Cancels the Kaling Comedy Built for 10 Seasons

Hulu canceled Mindy Kaling’s Not Suitable for Work after nine episodes, two months after a New Year’s hallway kiss she had planned as the last image of season one. Warner Bros. Television, which makes the series, is shopping it. Showrunner Charlie Grandy said Kaling wrote the pilot wanting it to run for 10 seasons.

The comedy about five 20-somethings in Manhattan’s Murray Hill premiered June 2. Hulu has not issued a public explanation for the Aug. 24 decision.

Hulu Canceled a Show That Hit No. 1

Not Suitable for Work spent two days at No. 1 on Hulu after those first three episodes landed, then slipped. Its last Hulu chart appearance was No. 15 on July 14. On Disney+, where the series ran outside the United States, it spent six days at No. 1 and last charted on July 16.

HOW THE CHARTS MOVED

Luminate counted a modest 800,000 viewers in the first 11 days, when only five of the nine episodes were out. Television Stats logged a 16.3 Attention Score when the last two episodes dropped in late June, then a 2.6 score by the week of the cancellation.

Those two numbers sit next to each other without much mercy. A title can own a streamer’s homepage for a weekend and still fail the test that actually renews a comedy, which is whether people keep coming back after the binge window closes.

Critics were split in a narrower band. Rotten Tomatoes posted a 54 percent Tomatometer from 24 reviews, with a consensus that the series “feels like a sitcom from another era dressed up for a new generation, for better and worse.” Metacritic gave it a mixed 53 Metascore from 13 critics.

The Hallway She Wanted as the Last Shot

Kaling told interviewers in June that she had the final frames before she had the season. Two years earlier, while she was still on the pilot, she pictured Josh Teitelbaum walking down the hall on New Year’s Eve, on his way to hang out with AJ Pascarelli, and seeing his best friend kiss her.

I really wanted the last image of Season 1 to be him seeing his best friend who he loves kissing the girl of his dreams, which is someone that he has complicated feelings about. So we kind of worked backwards from that moment. When I was hiring staff, I already knew that was going to be the last moment, and that doesn’t happen that often.

Mindy Kaling, creator, June 23 interview

She called the story ahead of that image “really wide open.” The open questions were whether Josh would tell Davis and AJ that he had seen the kiss, and whether he would even show up for the rest of the night. Those were the bills season two was supposed to pay.

Grandy said the same ending was left messy on purpose. For Josh, played by Jack Martin, the kiss was less a gut punch than the second he had to admit AJ was not just a friend. Hulu’s cancellation turns that admission into a closed door.

What the New Year’s Eve Finale Left Open

The last two episodes, which dropped together on June 23, were set over Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The finale title was “A Birthday Party For the Whole World.” AJ’s boss, Bill, played by Jay Ellis, ended their relationship and went back to an ex. Davis, played by Will Angus, punched Bill at the office and lost his job. AJ kissed Davis in the doorway for defending her, and Josh arrived with champagne in time to see it, then backed into his apartment without a word.

Career ledgers moved the other way. Josh, Abby, and Kel closed the season with wins. AJ went back to work under the man who had just dumped her. Davis was unemployed. Kel, an aspiring actor who had been teaching to pay rent, made a move on a theater coworker in front of Abby.

UNPAID SEASON TWO THREADS

• The doorway kiss: Josh saw AJ and Davis together and never told them, so the secret dies with the show unless a buyer appears.
• Davis out of work: He defined himself by other people’s approval, and Grandy wanted the next season to test whether he could stop doing that.
• Abby and Kel: They started as hallway pests and ended with Abby watching him hit it off with someone else.
• Bill still in the building: Grandy said a finished AJ-Bill arc did not mean Jay Ellis was gone from the workplace.
• Kel’s two jobs: Ego Nwodim’s Kate fired him from teaching just as the acting side started to move.

Kaling said she did not want the obvious enemies-to-lovers ending she has written before. She wanted room to subvert it across years. That room is what Hulu just declined to fund.

Five Actors Hired for 10 Seasons

Grandy put the ambition in one line. “Mindy wrote the pilot wanting it to run for 10 seasons,” he said. “That is really how it was designed in its DNA.” Kaling, talking about pairings, said she wanted the show to last for eight years and take the cast into their mid-30s. A hangout comedy set after college has no graduation date, which was the feature, until it became the cost.

The five leads were Ella Hunt as AJ Pascarelli, an investment banker from Boston; Avantika Vandanapu as Abby Chilukuri, an aspiring stylist; Will Angus as Davis Beau Bradley Barrett III, AJ’s coworker; Jack Martin as Josh Teitelbaum, a nepo-baby journalist across the hall; and Nicholas Duvernay as Kel Washington, the actor-slash-teacher. Jay Ellis played Bill. It was Kaling’s first sole creator credit since The Mindy Project.

After the ax, Kaling posted a carousel of set photos and wrote, “I love this show, I loved making this show, I love these people, and I love all of you for all your sweet comments, messages, edits and for watching.”

View this post on Instagram

Martin reshared it and wrote that he “will always love” the series and everyone who was part of it. Hunt called the job “a dream come true” and thanked Kaling and Grandy for “the loveliest group of goobers there ever was.” Avantika, 21, called it “an opportunity of a lifetime” and thanked Kaling, Grandy, Hulu, and Warner Bros. for the chance.

Hulu kept Adults, another young-ensemble comedy, and dropped this one. The NSFW leads did not arrive with influencer followings, and that gap is a rotten way to score a first season, but it is how a streamer now weighs a hangout show that needed years to get sticky.

Why They Fought to Shoot in New York

Kaling’s compass for the series was a memory of moving to the city and feeling she would die if she did not become a professional copywriter. Grandy said they ignored the urge to chase “zeitgeist Gen Z attitudes” and wrote toward that panic instead, the kind that is nostalgic for one audience and present-tense for another.

They also begged to shoot in New York so guest actors could take a car instead of a flight. Line producer Ayesha Rokadia made the numbers work. The Hulu press notes list five work-obsessed 20-somethings in Murray Hill, with recurring work from Victor Garber, Greg Germann, Judy Gold, Ego Nwodim, Harry Richardson, Constance Wu, Laura Bell Bundy, May Hong, Bhavesh Patel, Emilia Suárez, and Michael Benjamin Washington. Grandy separately named Gigi Hadid, Jeremy O. Harris, Hari Nef, Hannah Berner, and Paige DeSorbo among the New York drop-ins.

Wu’s Vanessa rehired Abby on a trial basis after Abby had gone behind her back and crashed. That was the show’s idea of a work lesson: try to skip a rung, get burned, come back and ask. The workplaces were supposed to be as fleshed out as the apartments, which is why Grandy’s dream order for a second season was 18 episodes, not another nine. The pilot already counted as two half-hours. Hulu gave them one short season and stopped.

Warner Bros. Is Shopping the Leftover Season

Warner Bros. Television produced Not Suitable for Work under Kaling’s Kaling International label, with Grandy and 3 Arts Entertainment’s Howard Klein as executive producers. Both Kaling and Grandy hold overall deals at the studio. After Hulu passed, the studio began taking the show to other platforms.

As of Aug. 31, that search had not landed a buyer. The last time this shop tried the same move, with The Sex Lives of College Girls after Max canceled it in 2025, Warner Bros. TV Group chairman Channing Dungey eventually said they had “come to the end of the road.”

WHAT WE KNOW

• Hulu’s order: No second season of the nine-episode 2026 run, which premiered June 2 with three episodes and finished June 23.
• The studio’s next step: Warner Bros. Television is shopping the series and had not found a home by Aug. 31.
• The precedent: The same studio failed to place The Sex Lives of College Girls after Max dropped it following three seasons.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A season two pickup: A full new-season order from Netflix or anyone else is described as a long shot, and some streamers block canceled originals with long exclusivity windows.
• A license of season one: Moving the completed nine episodes would require a deal with Hulu, which still has exclusivity.

Hulu’s own history with Kaling makes the silence louder. In 2015 the streamer saved The Mindy Project after Fox canceled it, then ran three more seasons. BJ Novak had told her it might be classier to let the Fox show die. She moved it anyway. Eleven years later, the same company is the one ending her first solo-created series since that sitcom.

Never Have I Ever Meets College Girls on Netflix

On Aug. 31, Netflix added all three seasons of The Sex Lives of College Girls in the United States under a non-exclusive license from Warner Bros. Television. The Max seasons stay up. On Netflix they now sit beside Never Have I Ever, Kaling’s four-season high-school comedy. She has described the three shows as a loose life trilogy: high school, Dartmouth-era college, then the early working years in New York that fed Not Suitable for Work.

A few months ago that trilogy lived on three streamers and could not be watched as one shelf. Sex Lives arriving at Netflix days after the Hulu ax makes the missing third chapter obvious, and still hard to finish. A Netflix season two of NSFW is a long shot. Licensing the Hulu season is the more realistic ask, and even that needs Hulu to blink.

Kaling’s other current series, Running Point, has already been renewed for a third season at Netflix, where she has a long relationship with chief content officer Bela Bajaria. Bajaria, in an earlier job at Universal Television, had championed The Mindy Project when NBC passed on the pilot. That history is why the shopping conversation keeps drifting toward Netflix. History is not a pickup.

Internationally the nine episodes remain on Disney+, which published a weekly episode drop through 23 June when the season was still airing. In the United States they remain on Hulu, a completed first season whose last shot was engineered to demand a second. For now, Josh is still in the hallway, and nobody is coming to tell him what happens next.