HBO Cancels ‘Hard Knocks: In Season With the Browns’ After Nation’s Suicide Rate Skyrockets
CLEVELAND—HBO pulled the plug on this season of the long-running franchise Hard Knocks when viewers began killing themselves in record numbers after finding the Browns so depressing that they simply lost the will to live.
“Watching the show sucked all my happy thoughts out of my brain. The Browns QB room is like something out of an A24 movie,” viewer Anthony Glazer lamented before sprinting headlong into oncoming traffic.
Head of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Cecil Webb, explained, “When people watch someone on TV experience profound grief, trauma, or loneliness, your brain mimics those emotional states, causing you to physically and emotionally feel their pain. Watching that dumpster fire of a franchise, frankly I’m surprised the world didn’t suffer a real-life Thanos finger snap moment.”
According to the CDC, more people committed suicide after the first episode of Hard Knocks: Browns aired than after the JFK assassination, Challenger explosion, and September 11th combined.
“The franchise was founded 81 years ago and hasn’t even made it to the Super Bowl yet. It makes me so saaaaaad,” Betsy Hanson said, sobbing, before taking an ink pen from her handbag and repeatedly stabbing herself in the temple until she collapsed in a pool of her own blood.
“The Browns have only had 4 winning seasons in the last 30 years, why would they pay $230 million in fully-guaranteed money to a quarterback whose favorite pastimes are throwing interceptions and exposing his genitals to strangers?” Jim Hebert said, sullen and downcast, shortly before positioning a grand piano so it teetered precariously over the roof’s edge of a 10 story building, racing down to street level and blowing a vuvuzela in its direction until the sound waves dislodged the 1,200 lb stringed percussion instrument and it plummeted onto his head, crushing him instantly.
Polling shows viewers were not only despondent about the staggering number of losing seasons the Browns have endured, the embarrassingly incompetent current roster, and the bafflingly inept front office decisions that could only be made by Sloth from Goonies. The grave melancholy even extends to the Cleveland uniforms.
“Oregon has 4 million uniform combinations and the best a professional team could come up with is a brown shirt and a solid orange pumpkin-looking helmet?” Jenny Wingard said, choking back tears. “Even Pop Warner helmets have stickers on them and those little guys run in the wrong direction.”
She cried silently for 14 minutes before pulling herself together to continue: “The WNBA has some wack-ass team names. What the hell is a ‘Tempo’ anyway? But Cleveland’s mascot is a color. And not an exciting one. They picked the color of dookie. Actually, you know what? That fits perfectly,” Jenny said before performing a do-it-yourself BBL by injecting her own buttocks with Fix-A-Flat, resulting in an immediate aneurysm.
At press time, HBO had decided to replace Hard Knocks: In Season With The Browns in their Tuesday night lineup with programming deemed much more heartwarming and inspirational: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.