Quote:
Originally Posted by drgon78
Never even heard about that, so what happened?
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During what turned out to be the show's final Season, a costume designer filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Savage and Jason Hervey. It was later settled out of court but there was a lot of bad publicity for a brief period.
There were other factors, such as an escalating budget (due to more location shooting) and the fact that the cast was getting older and yet they could not write realistically "mature" storylines for them due to the show's younger audience and its 8pm time slot.
So there were already concerns about whether or not to call it quits, and supposedly the lawsuit and resultant scandalous headlines were the final straw. Looking back, I remember reading about the incident in the tabloids and them saying that the show was going to be cancelled over it. But I honestly never watched it that much and it was so long ago that I'd long since forgotten about it.
The actress who played the Mom called the allegations "ridiculous" and Savage claimed to have been exonerated, but there was always some uncertainty. Common speculation was, it may have been Hervey who was the instigator and Savage, being younger and more impressionable, may have simply played along. Assuming anything actually happened, of course. But that seems somewhat plausible. Harvey had sort of a reputation as being a bit of a womanizer, or tried to be anyway. He banged Missy Hyatt for a while back when that meant something. So I could see him copping a feel or making suggestive comments, "all in fun", and like Savage just parroting the stuff he was saying to try and be "cool".
I've always been inclined to believe that if anything happened it was probably just "boys will be boys" stuff, not like serious stuff. But regardless, they got sued over it and that was the last straw for the network.