Series You Initially Loved, Then Abandoned and Never Finished

[Khan]

 

I'm just glad they never had Stefan and Steve split apart for good, so that Urkel could remain with Myra, and Stefan could hook up with Laura.

 

I'm also glad they never had a full-on romance between Myrtle and...well...anyone.

[mango]

Kate and Allie - the last season, when Allie married Bob and they moved into the apartment. Having Kate and Allie out of the home that made the series was abrupt. And Kate's character was just plain lost. Why didn't they have her end up with Ted? However, not having Emma around for a good chunk of the show didn't impact it as much as I thought. 

 

Home Improvement - Randy's departure hurt the show and Mark's seemingly overnight flip to a goth kid. I'm gathering Tim Allen was pretty burned by JTT's decision to leave.

 

More recently, I was thrilled about Versace True Story on FX here in Canada. The first episode was excellent, but since then, it's become the Andrew Cunanan story. Disappointing. Not sure if I'll continue on with it.

[Khan]

 

Believe it or not, mango, I've been watching K&A eps lately on YouTube; and I've reached the same conclusions about S6 as you.  Fortunately, as evidenced by their separate interviews for the Archive of American Television, the show runners for that year, Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, ALSO felt it was a mistake to have Allie and Bob marry at the end of S5, as well as to have Kate and Allie move out of the Greenwich Village apartment.  (Apparently, from what I have gathered, these were network-dictated moves, presumably to keep the show fresh, and keep it going, once the show's original producers, Bill Persky and Bob Randall, had moved on.)

 

If I had been the one tapped to produce the last season of K&A, I would have struck some sort of compromise with CBS. I would have had Allie move out after marrying Bob, BUT I would have had them move into an apartment in the same building as Kate's, so we could at least keep the old set.  Would it have been an ideal solution?  Frankly, no.  Truth be told, ANY solution that involved keeping the show going past Allie's remarriage would have been problematic, because, IMO, the remarriage ran counter both to the show's basic premise AND the feminist message laying underneath.  (Are we really telling our audience after five years that marriage or remarriage is the only "happily ever after" for a single mom like Allie Adams Lowell??)  But I feel like what I might have had in mind -- keeping Kate in her apartment with Allie and Bob on a separate floor, building a recurring gag with Kate's "revolving door" of new roommates, maybe setting up a new love interest for Kate that might or might not end in marriage as the series closes -- would have been better than what we left with: a newly married Allie, in a strange (and frankly, off-putting) new apartment, with a suddenly rudderless best friend and roommate.

[cct]

 

 

This was a show I had unknowingly checked out of. Years later, I caught the reruns in syndication and hadn't realized the show went on after Allie married Bob!

 

What was funny, to me, was that Bob showed up numerous times in the series before that as other people. Also, for AMC fans, Jill Larson (Opal) showed up in various guises in the episode where Emma has to do a project on women in history.

[All My Shadows]

I never had a problem with Allie getting married on K&A simply because Kate remained single. I know there's always that huge push of "Marriage isn't the goal," but for crying out loud, Mary Richards remained single because marriage wasn't the goal, Ann Marie remained unmarried because marriage wasn't the goal, etc. Someone had to get married at some point to show that marriage can be a happy ending. Key word here being "ending," because I do agree that the show had no reason to continue once one of the women remarried.

[Cat]

 

You mean... it didn't tank because he ran out of story in the sophomore season and decided instead to do musical numbers featuring Mary Cherry (who I love, I admit) and Ms. Glass?

 

I get it. Some characters and stories run their natural course. It is beyond difficult to helm a show with all the attendant egos involved, working 20 hours a day AND come up with inspiration and new story ad infinitum. But Ryan Murphy (like Josh Schwartz of The OC) gets bored quickly. In some ways, an anthology show like American Crime Story or AHS is perfect for him. He know he just has to fill out a short season and then he can start from scratch with something brand new next year. It's very self-aware, actually!

 

I didn't mention The OC earlier because I actually stuck with that show through about three seasons, but in that show's case, Schwartz literally blew his wad halfway through Season 1. He could have taken a page out of 90210's book, which managed to carefully milk the high school drama through 4 seasons, but no. Same with Gossip Girl.

 

 

I'm glad you stuck with Monk. I loved that show; Tony Shalhoub is one of those actors, like Stanley Tucci, that I will stop to watch almost anything they are in. Monk had this lightness that I really enjoyed, and in some ways harked back to Columbo in its lightness (though obviously not in its format). As with Columbo, it was about the journey and not so much the destination: Monk untangling mysteries which in a few cases were easy to figure out, but no less enjoyable for it.

 

Speaking of Columbo, that is a show I watched on repeat and never abandoned. I even watched the '90s episodes, although it was the vintage ones (Ransom For a Dead Man starring Lee Grant, for example) that I treasure the most.

[All My Shadows]

I don't think AHS's anthology format has worked well for Murphy, given that he's made it a habit to go nuts about halfway through each season. But then again, between AHS and Glee, he's nothing but a gimmick monger, and it's never actually about the story.

[Antoyne]

Ooo @Cat you just reminded me,  Gossip Girl was one of my favorite shows but man did it go off the rails. I don't even remember what season I stopped watching it on but when I found out who Gossip Girl was I decided I would not go back to finish as it made literally no sense.

[Cat]

Once they left high school and went to college, I couldn't stick with it. Mainly because we didn't need the college-as-a-transition-to-adulthood trope. These kids were already living crazy partying shagging drugging adult lives when they were 17! I also agree the GG reveal was a major let down. I remember reading about it on a blog and thinking 'glad I dumped this show ' lol.

 

You're right, he's not so much a writer as a conceptualizer. I'm sure he's great at pitching concepts at production meetings, or coming up with the 30 second promo. But sustaining story and character progression is another thing. Feud and OJ had a clear beginning, middle and end, but that's because both stories are part of Hollywood and pop culture history and lore. Ryan Murphy didn't have to come up with anything new, just mine the news archives, or read up on Davis and Crawford.

[Antoyne]

You're so right. Something didn't click at all when they became adults. The writers were just throwing [!@#$%^&*] at the wall and hoping it stuck. One thing they were always great about though was making sure I hated Vanessa. I saw the actress in a movie like last month and couldn't enjoy her because my hatred of Vanessa runs so deep lol.

[mango]

 

Fascinating. I had no idea. Thank you for sharing.

 

Moons ago, when TV shows first started coming out on DVD, I purchased all of Kate and Allie from a Canadian company called VEI. I remembered loving the show as a kid and wanted to rewatch from start to finish. (Funny enough and unrelated to this thread, I never knew Martha Byrne was on an episode until I watched it as an adult and recognized her voice).

 

The discs are very bare bones in terms of production, no extra features etc. And as I watched the final season, I wondered where that decision came from. If the DVD set was done differently, and by a company with more money, I'm sure they would've had interviews with the cast, crew to discuss why the show went in the direction it did.

 

It really jumped shark. I didn't mind that Allie got married. I liked Bob and they were a nice pair. Taking away the original home was a mistake. It was such a focal point from the start. I can still remember Allie wallpapering the closet when Kate's date came to pick her up and ended up liking Allie's company more. And just think about the laundry area, where Kate and Allie would have their important conversations.

 

Now I want to watch those early seasons again

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[All My Shadows]

Logo or Antenna TV needs to pick up Kate & Allie right away. It would fit perfectly on either one, and it's a show that I think is very capable of some contemporary praise. I wonder if SSJ and JC would ever do a very short-term catch-up series for Netflix or Amazon or whomever. Those two characters are worth another visit, for sure.

[DaytimeFan]

Great topic!

 

Empire

 

Grey’s Anatomy

 

Both of these shows became absurd to me. 

[ChitHappens]

 

+1

 

Started beautifully!!!

 

Then a new person she needed to make pay showed up week after week after week.  It was never ending. The reason she needed revenge on each one of these people became more convoluted with each eppy. I was out by S2!  It was already bad enough I was giving energy to EVC!  

[Khan]

 

Yes!!  I, too, would LOVE to revisit "Kate & Allie," especially now, at this point in their lives, when they're most likely grandmothers.

 

As I see it...

 

Allie is probably a widow (but that might be due to the fact that Frank Gifford's death remains fresh in my mind) while Kate has yet to remarry (although I'm certain she came close once or twice).  They still run their catering business.  However, they run it out of a gourmet store that they bought over once the catering business really took off.  They employ a small staff that includes a recent divorcee, who, like Allie before her, is starting her life over with zero skills and education after being "just a housewife" for so long.

 

Kate's daughter, Emma, is back in NYC, where she co-hosts a morning talk show, a la Kelly Ripa.  She's happily married; and together, she and her husband are raising two teenaged daughters, both of whom were carried via surrogate on account of Emma's numerous difficulties in conceiving a child.  (But, in the mythical season-one finale, of course, Emma has a surprise for everyone when she learns she is pregnant for the first time -- at age 48!)

 

Allie's son, Chip is still in NYC, and still lovelorn.  In college, he majored in film and TV; and now, he works BTS at some satirical news show, a la "The Daily Show," or maybe even at a show like "The Late Show Starring Stephen Colbert."  But what he really wants to do, of course, is direct films; and for years, ever since his college senior thesis, he's been sitting on a loosely autobiographical script about a kid from CT who ends up moving with his mom and older sister to NYC, where they live with his mom's best friend and daughter after his parents' divorce.

 

And Allie's daughter, Jennie, has followed in both her parents' footsteps: she's a doctor, like her dad; and she has raised a son who is now in college, like her mom.  (But she still entertains the fantasy of being a professional singer, just like in the original series.)  The big twist, though, is that Jennie came out as a lesbian some years after graduating from Columbia (and later med school) and marrying Dylan Walsh's character; and for most of Jennie's son's life, he has been raised in part by his "two mommies."*

 

 

 

 

 

*"Two Mommies," in case y'all didn't know, was creator Sherry Coben's original title for the series.  (Thank God they changed it.)

 

 

 

I've tried to catch up with that show, but there has been sooooo much cast turnover, it seems.