Where there's a will, there's a way. After Oprah declined to pick up the show due to the costs, the producers should have revamped their production strategies to get Lady O to reconsider or to get a green light from another network.

Tyler Perry is the master at keep production costs under control by minimizing sets. His primetime dramas can be insufferably boring, but that can be overcome with clever writing. The pacing of the Underground episodes would have necessarily had to change, but at least, the show would have been able to potentially continue production.