Penelope, Elena, Alex, and Lydia Alvarez are back on primetime, and you didn’t even know it.
The queerly beloved sitcom One Day at a Time has been through a lot in the past few years. After an impassioned campaign to get the show back on the air, fans rejoiced when One Day at a Time aired its fourth season on Pop TV in March. Unfortunately, the show was forced to shut down production due to COVID-19 after only seven episodes. So far, Elena and Syd’s romance is still going strong, Penelope’s love life is still chaotic, and Lydia’s meddling is still wildly inappropriate (we love her for it). There was even an animated special produced during the production shutdown.
But after that bumpy ride, One Day at a Time is now reaching its biggest audience ever. As of October 5, viewers can catch the Alvarezes on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. on CBS, which is airing the first seven episodes of its fourth season. As CBS This Morning noted last week, the pickup makes One Day at a Time the only Latinx-focused show to air on a major broadcast network this Fall.
For the show’s fans, the new primetime placement — which is likely due to so many of CBS’s shows being in limbo during the pandemic — feels even more exciting considering One Day at a Time’s fourth season might not have happened at all.
When Netflix canceled One Day at a Time last year, the sitcom’s fate felt uncertain at best and doomed at worst. Netflix’s aggressive production model has felled other risky queer shows during renewal season, like Sense8. And after ODAAT’s third season drew disappointing numbers, Netflix opted to cancel. The #SaveODAAT hashtag was born, yet despite a spirited campaign by fans to bring the show back, Netflix did not relent.
Fortunately, Pop TV stepped in to correct this mistake. In addition to renewing One Day at a Time for a fourth season, the network — which is owned by CBS — gave us the uber-queer Schitt’s Creek, which swept the Emmys this year, bringing home a historic eight awards for its sixth and final season. One Day at a Time’s primetime run gives viewers a chance to catch up with Elena (Isabella Gomez) and her nonbinary partner, Syd (Sheridan Pierce), who remains one of the few representations of nonbinary people on cable television.
The show’s fourth season also saw the return of the one-liners and double-takes that made the critically acclaimed sitcom so charming. Core cast members Justina Machado, Todd Grinnell, Marcel Ruiz, and the legendary Rita Moreno reprised their roles, and their developing sexual relationship between Elena and Syd wasn’t the only thing brewing. Does Lydia sign Penelope up for a Tinder account in the new season? Yes. Will Penelope and Schneider ever hook up? It remains to be seen.
One thing’s for sure: The upbeat pace of the show is a welcome antidote to the streaming public’s quarantine-induced fatigue. Will the show’s seven episodes be enough to lift us out of our election season depression? We’ll just have to watch and see.
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