Dear Television Programming,

I can’t even with you right now.

First you cancel Mercy Street.  Now you have cancelled Underground.

I’m upset not just because I’m a 19th Century American literary scholar and not just because I’m intrigued by slavery and the Civil War.  I’m upset because these are good, critically acclaimed programs that allowed viewers to see into lives and historical situations in nuanced ways that are typically not open for discussion.

These programs showed our history in important ways we rarely learn or even consider. And that is vital to our country’s present and future.

I like fluff, but you can’t maintain a steady diet of it.  Mercy Street and Underground provided some nutritional value in fluff-filled television landscape, and we are the worse for their departure.

Shaking my head,