Sadly, that was it for Eric McCormack's crime-solving schizophrenic neuropsychiatrist (for those unfamiliar with the show, yes, the character was all of those things at once -- crime shows don't have to be plausible). 

The ratings for TNT's "Perception" were pretty varied in season 3, with the third episode drawing more viewers than the season premiere, but the most important fact from the network's perspective is that the overall trend was downward. The show took a mid-season break in August 2014, at which point it had lost more than a million viewers -- almost a third of its audience -- from a year earlier. So TNT pulled the plug during the break, airing the back half of season 3 in the winter of 2015.

But while the ratings were bad, they weren't terrible. It seems there were other factors at play.

In announcing the show's cancelation, TVSeriesFinale.com columnist Trevor Kimball wrote that "the cancelation is at least in part due to the cable channel's desire to move towards airing edgier series."

Indeed, "edgier" is the word that David Levy, president of TNT's parent company Turner Broadcasting, used to describe the new direction the network would be taking. "We are going to get edgier, we are going to get louder and we are going to get more dual (male-female)," he said in an interview with Deadline.com. He listed two newer shows, the spy series "Legends" and the '60s-set cop show "Public Morals" as examples of this new direction.

"Perception's" series finale was, as you say, a little weird -- there was some happily-ever-after closure for some characters, but not all. It did have a big wedding, though, which is a pretty traditional way for a show to go out.

Series star McCormack was apparently not happy with the cancelation, or at least with his career path: he switched agents this past fall.

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