Khan

Me, too!!

Reading all the posts in this thread, I realize once again how very, very smart David Hyde Pierce has been in avoiding another series after "Frasier," concentrating instead of theatre and films. He's made some limited appearances on shows like "The Good Wife," but nothing in the way of a regular gig (...yet, lol).

I would set Frank Valentini's hair on fire if Sonny and Laura hooked up. (I'm kidding. I wouldn't set his hair on fire. I'm not going to jail over that bastard).

IKR, lol? I shouldn't laugh, because Cam McCulloch was a legendary sound mixer/recordist who had worked on so many classic shows, including "I Love Lucy," "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and pretty much all the MTM sitcoms. But there's something so "Remember WENN" (points to anyone who remembers THAT show!) about a sound guy who's elderly and hard of hearing. I think it was either Tommy Krasker or Jackson Upperco who said (in their blog post about "Life with Lucy") that Gale Gordon actually looked more vibrant on camera in "Life with Lucy" - despite being near eighty at the time and not having worked regularly since "Here's Lucy" ended in '74 - than Lucy, who looked so frail to the point where audience members would actually gasp whenever she engaged in another pratfall. I also think I read somewhere that he still had a terrific memory, never once flubbing a line during tapings. So, you know, it doesn't surprise me a bit that he would ask to be paid for 22 episodes, regardless of the actual order; because, IMO, he had more than earned it. IIRC, Marla Gibbs, who had been hesitant to do "Checking In," would not sign off unless the producers promised (in writing) that she could return to "The Jeffersons," should "Checking In" not get renewed. As much as she likely wanted her own series, she also knew what she and everyone else involved were jeopardizing by spinning off Florence...and she was right, lol. Similarly, Norman Fell made ABC and the producers of "Three's Company" promise that he and Audra Lindley could return if "The Ropers" wasn't picked up for another season. In his case, however, it didn't work out that way. Fell theorized that ABC deliberately waited to cancel "The Ropers" until they were no longer obliged contractually to honor their part of the deal. Otherwise, he maintained, they would've had to write back the Ropers into "Three's Company" - which would've been tough to do, I think, since Don Knotts had proven to be a big hit as Mr. Furley. Maybe. Of course, we'll never know, since only one (Jaclyn Smith) made it all the way to the end. (I guess she wasn't as dumb as we all thought, lol). On the other hand, I think "Charlie's Angels" would've run about five seasons, regardless of whether all three had stuck with it. Personally, as much as I still love the show, I think there were only so many ways you could have gotten Jaclyn and Farrah (or Cheryl) to go undercover as bikini models before you started repeating yourself, lol. To this day, I feel sorry for Delta Burke, whom the press, and especially the tabloids, vilified and turned the public against, even though she clearly was the victim. That's why, as badly as I felt for Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and how Les Moonves had basically black-balled her at CBS, I also think she had it coming, because there's no doubt in my mind over how she and her husband had hurt Delta on the DW set.

I think so, too. Numbers-wise, Saturdays weren't great for any network by that point, but CBS still performed decently there, even if their shows tended to lean toward conservative.

I think I read or heard somewhere that Gibbs was actually developing "227" while still working on "The Jeffersons," with the understanding that it would launch after "The Jeffersons" had wrapped for good. But that was because everyone was expecting "Jeffersons" to get another season followed by a proper series finale. So, when CBS actually cancelled "The Jeffersons" WITHOUT allowing them their finale, it was a shock, of course, but luckily, Gibbs had "227" ready to go for NBC, so it just launched a year or so ahead of schedule. Of course, I might have that wrong, lol.

I wonder, too, whether "Us" would've been another hit for Landon (and his first on a network other than NBC) had his cancer diagnosis not curtailed everything. Say what you will about the mawkishness of "Little House on the Prairie" and "Highway to Heaven," but Landon seemed to know better than a lot of others what people wanted to see every week on TV. In a way, however, I think Lucy herself (and maybe Aaron Spelling, who produced "Life with Lucy" for her) might have been to blame. It's one thing to be loyal toward those who helped you in the past, but the TV landscape had changed so much from the time "Here's Lucy" went off the air to when "Life with Lucy" would premiere. IIRC, her head-writers, Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Davis, had just finished working on "Alice," and their writing and producing style on that show felt old-hat even back then! Lucy really needed more modern writer/producers who could update her form of slapstick comedy for the '80's.

It's funny how Suzanne herself skips over "She's the Sheriff" in her Television Academy interview, as if the only things she did between "Three's Company" and "Step by Step" were her tacky Vegas shows, lol.

VC was one of those "hammock shows" that did fine as long as it stayed on Thursday nights between "Friends" and "Seinfeld." Once NBC switched their time slot, however, they were as good as finished. Lord, when I think of all the times that various people, including Carsey/Werner and David Letterman, tried and tried and tried again to make Bonnie Hunt happen.... I, myself, am not crazy about her for the same reason I'm not crazy about a lot of Second City and Groundlings alumni who came in the wake of SNL's original cast. To me, they always give off this vibe that says, "We're the smartest, funniest people here; and if you don't laugh at our jokes, it's not because they're too bizarre or mean-spirited, it's because you're a !@#$%^&*]in' plebeian who wouldn't comedy if it bit you!"

Remember when William Hurt made that out-of-nowhere guest appearance as a shrink on "The King of Queens"? William Hurt on a sitcom was weird enough, but I'm still trying to figure out why "King of Queens" and not, say, "Frasier" or even "Seinfeld". (This might've happened around the same time that Gary Oldman popped up on "Friends," suggesting to me that many, high-profile dramatic actors were dipping their toes in the sitcom waters to see whether they could have any longevity in the genre). IIRC, "Sling Blade" was the moment when the industry, at least, sat up and took notice of John Ritter as more than just the dude from "Three's Company" who "fell funny." It's just a shame that that film didn't translate into more "serious" gigs for him. I feel like he was primed and ready for a lead on a really good, really dark drama series, like how Bryan Cranston went from "Malcolm in the Middle" to "Breaking Bad." You didn't miss much, lol!

I'd forgotten about Ted Danson's work on "Damages." Of course, that's likely because I haven't seen much of the show (just an episode here or there). But I do think it was a fantastic opportunity for Close to reunite and work again with several of her former, on-screen co-stars, including Danson and (IIRC) William Hurt. Yeah, I'm still mad that "Mary and Rhoda" never made it to series, because I think the concept had "juice." I even had plotted out a spec script where Mary begins dating one of Rhoda's exes (specifically, restaurateur Mike Andretti, hopefully played again by Judd Hirsch) in the hopes that the series would get picked up. But as soon as I'd heard that Jeff Lowell and Tom Fontana (!) had written the script, I had a very bad feeling, lol. Not quite. Remember "New York News," the one-hour series that was so bad, MTM tried to get out of her contract before CBS decided to cancel the show anyway? After that, though, she was done with series television.

Love this, too!

LOVE. THIS.

I still can't believe how Samantha fooled everyone into thinking she was Marlena when she neither sounded like her nor looked much like her either.

I agree. He had several near-hit series - the original "S.W.A.T.," "Vega$," "Spenser: for Hire" - that diehard fans still recall fondly, yet never had real staying power. That's why I feel like he would've been much more successful on a daytime soap (working opposite Susan Lucci on AMC immediately comes to mind, lol).

The character of Marshal Dillon cast one of the biggest shadows on TV. There was no way Jim Arness was going to get out from under him after playing him for two decades. Andy Griffith really lucked out with "Matlock" after several, post-"Andy Griffith Show" misses, but it could be argued that Ben Matlock was really just an older, crankier version of Sheriff Andy Taylor. (Same went for Dick Van Dyke, who played Dr. Mark Sloan on "Diagnosis: Murder" more-or-less as Rob Petrie with a medical license). Similarly, you might argue that Carroll O'Connor's two characters, Archie Bunker and Chief Bill Gillespie, were two sides of the same coin, with the only difference being that "In the Heat of the Night" soft-pedaled Gillespie's bigotry in the early seasons until his interracial relationship with Harriet DeLong eliminated that entirely.

Ironically, just about every other cast member from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" managed to land on at least one other hit series EXCEPT Mary herself. There was Valerie Harper, of course, with "Rhoda." ("Valerie" would've been a hit, too, had she and her husband not fallen out with Team Miller/Boyett). And there was Betty White with "The Golden Girls" and "Hot in Cleveland." (I don't count "Mama's Family," since NBC cancelled it after two seasons and she never became a regular on the syndicated version. And speaking of GG and "Mama," isn't it ironic that Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan's two defining roles on TV were on the same two series? I'm talking, of course, about "Maude" and GG. Anyways.) But there also was Ed Asner ("Lou Grant"), Cloris Leachman ("The Facts of Life" - to a certain extent), Georgia Engel (recurring gigs on "Coach," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Cleveland"), Gavin McLeod ("The Love Boat"), Ted Knight ("Too Close for Comfort") and even John Amos ("Good Times"). Mary, however, was just too strongly identified with Mary Richards and Laura Petrie to really break out on another show. (Totally off-subject, but why no one ever thought to reunite Mary and other "Dick Van Dyke Show" cast members on an episode of DVD's later series, "Diagnosis: Murder," is beyond me). Conversely, it seems like Bob Newhart was the only cast member from "The Bob Newhart Show" to land another, long-running gig (on "Newhart"). Well, Marcia Wallace, too, if you count her work on "The Simpsons," lol. Two other actors who kept plugging away until they landed another hit series: Tom Selleck ("Blue Bloods," which finally went off the air - and risked giving every 80-year-old who watched the show a coronary in the process) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (first, "The New Adventures of Old Christine;" then, "Veep"), who might not have broken the so-called "Seinfeld curse," but who's definitely been the most successful since that show ended. Finally, out of all the actors who appeared regularly on "Cheers" throughout its' 11-year run, it seems like Ted Danson has been the only one to land other, successful TV gigs that didn't involve reviving his "Cheers" character (the total opposite of Kelsey Grammer, who struggled even with the recent "Frasier" revival). Which is a miracle, because his first post-"Cheers" show, "Ink," did not look promising at all, lol. But he eventually landed "Becker," followed by his run on "C.S.I.," then "The Good Place," and now, "A Man on the Inside."

Unfortunately, I think that's what happened, lol. Say what you will about Douglas Marland, but his ATWT was never as off-the-rails as all that. Heck, even the lowest points of Mary-Ellis Bunim's run as EP were more watchable than most or all of Chris Goutman's regime.

I'll say this much: as insane as that material must have been to play, on the other hand, at least they committed to playing it 110%, lol.

Yes, please! Have her and Drew conspire to start up a new cult (or revive Dawn of Day, or whatever the frak it was called) as a money making/money laundering scheme!

Wow! Thank you, @P.J. , for filling in the blanks for me. Like I said, it's been years since that hot mess aired; and even when it WAS airing, I wasn't paying close enough attention, because I thought (and still think) the whole story was entirely too convoluted.

Translation: They've got some dirt on ol' Marj, so she's cut-and-running rather than risk her dirty laundry being aired out in public.

Oh, well. There's always B&B, lol.

To this day, the reveal feels very anticlimactic to me. Here, we have a whodunnit that literally had the entire nation - if not the entire globe - in its' grip, and she's the one who turns out to be the culprit?

Well, it's been a long time since the entire story unfolded, and I still can't recall or make sense of all the twists and turns...sigh...but I'll try, lol. Basically, Rosanna, who is married to Craig at this point, wants a baby. Craig, however, doesn't want a baby - I guess, because he had just lost Bryant? - but to appease his wife, he arranges for an adoption. Rosanna learns that the adoption (of their son, whom she names "Cabot") was illegal and that she has to give Cabot back to his biological mother, who lives, offscreen, in Canada. Rosanna dumps Craig and leaves Oakdale (and somewhere, in the middle of all this, Rosanna falls in love with Paul Ryan, too). In the meantime, Rosanna gets back in touch with Cabot's bio mom, who tells her that she could have Cabot back, but only if she convinces Jordan Sinclair to marry her. (Don't ask me why, lol). So, Rosanna does just that: she cons Jordan into marrying her. It's only AFTER they marry, however, that Jordan learns he is Cabot's biological father. (I think this is also when Jordan learns he, himself, is James Stenbeck's illegitimate son, but I'm not sure). Rosanna panics when she learns that James is Cabot's paternal grandfather and abducts the baby. James, in turn, abducts Cabot and Rosanna and leaves them to die in a burning building. Someone - Jordan? Paul? - rescues Rosanna, but the baby is presumed dead. Jordan annulls his and Rosanna's marriage and leaves town. Barbara, who had crossed over to the dark side with James, plots with him to implicate Emily in some bizarre scheme to drive Rosanna crazy with the suggestion that her baby was still alive (which he was, James had rescued Cabot from that fire). Rosanna agrees to dump Paul in exchange for getting Cabot back. Rosanna leaves Oakdale again. Some time later, though, Craig finds Rosanna (and Cabot) someplace out of the country. Rosanna is devoted to her son, but realizes that she has to give up baby Cabot for adoption again, or else he'll always be in danger of being taken by James Stenbeck... ...which, I think, led us straight into the Jennifer/Gwen baby switch, but whatever. I mean, all that drama over a child that ended up being given away anyway, and a baby drama that led us only to yet another baby drama. No wonder I ended up on antidepressants, lol.