NBC has decided to bite off a little less Love Bites: Vulture hears the network has decided to trim back its episodic order for the Working Title–produced romantic anthology series starring Ugly Betty’s Becki Newton and Heroes’ Greg Grunberg. Instead of the previously planned thirteen-episode first season, just nine episodes will be made for now; filming will halt early next week. It’s been a long road to air for Bites, which was originally scheduled to debut on Thursday nights this fall and underwent a show-runner shuffle early on. The decision to trim the episode count isn’t really a big surprise, however: Once NBC decided to expand to six comedies on Thursday and launch some other midseason shows in January, it became clear the network wouldn’t need a full thirteen-episode order of Bites for this season. Peacock insiders remain high on the show, which was always a big risk because it’s a Love, American Style anthology with only a couple of recurring characters. The show’s ultimate fate will rest in the hands of incoming NBC boss Bob Greenblatt, who will very likely make the decision on when and where to finally schedule Bites. We hope he gives it a shot — we’ve seen two vignettes from early episodes of the show, and it’s cute and a lot less annoying than Outsourced.
