ABC Drama 'Blood & Oil' Trimmed to 10 Episodes: Struggles to Keep Viewers

A lot of network shows have been getting the axe lately and ABC's Blood & Oil is now one of them. The new Sunday night drama has been trimmed to 10 episodes for the rest of its freshman season. The series has not been canceled, however this type of move from a network tends to foreshadow the end of a new series. Blood & Oil has struggled with keeping viewers each week since it started this fall and its latest episode only had 3.5 million viewers.

The show is also one of several freshman shows that went through a lot of behind-the-scenes changes prior to its premiere. Which included a showrunner change just minutes after ABC announced the show.

Sources close to the show have said that Creator Josh Pate'svision was not up to the network's par for the drama that they were looking for. This caused issues for showrunner Cynthia Cidre and her team of writers, which led to Jon Harmon Feldman coming in to make changes that would appease the network.

The series also went through several recastings and now has two writers' rooms, one led by Feldman and the other led by Cidre.

Blood & Oil follows young couple Billy and Cody who move to North Dakota to open a laundromat, but on the way there, an accident sends them and their business supplies off the road. Instead of adding insurance to the laundry machines, Billy, who has a gambling problem chose, to invest it elsewhere. Now the couple is broke and Cody is upset that Billy didn't listen to her advice about covering their assets. The two end up crossing paths with oil tycoon Hap Briggs and his wife Carla who are intrigued by the young pair. The billionaire sees himself in Billy and gets the naive couple entangled into their drama.