No one has mentioned* Family Matters*? Just as the name implies, it wasn’t supposed to be The Urkel Show; it was supposed to be a generic family sitcom. Jaleel White was only supposed to be a one-time guest.
In fact, the whole premise of the Brady Bunch - a family created from the marriage of two partners who were already parents - quietly disappeared. A few shows in the first season centered around stepfamily issues, but after that it was rarely mentioned - outside of the theme song!
In Season 3 of the Wire, a major character is shown in the background in a gay bar. There was an expectation that his closeted life might be a subplot, but they never mentioned it again.
Wasn’t The Simpsons supposed to be a bit like that, Bart-centric until the producers settled on Homer as the star.
EDIT: And in Doctor Who, the last season of the “old” Doctor made reference to an “Other”, some sort of character that was related to the Doctor’s distant past. The character never made it onto the big screen and remains an idea for the novels only.
The miniseries that launched the new Battlestar Galatctica included a kid character. He was never seen or mentioned again.
Another *West Wing *one: the character of Mandy, who was erased from the space-time continuum at the end of the first season.
If I recall correctly, Klinger’s character on M**ASH* was originally a one-time guest shot. The visiting general is stopped by a sentry in a dress, and remarks, “Still trying to get out of the Army, Klinger?” The rest is history.
This is referenced by creator David Simon inthis interview:
As for aborted ideas, the entire season 3 of Sopranos got a bit scrambled up after the passing of Nancy Marchand. The season is pretty disjointed, especially compared to season 1 and 2. As I understand it, she was to be a big part of a storyline with the FBI but the season had to rewritten in the last minute.
The whole pseudo-Christian theme of the next to the last two seasons of XENA about the prophet Eli and the coming of the One God of Love. Then the last season comes & that’s left by the wayside.
Mostly true; he had a non-speaking role in Bastille Day; IIRC he was standing by the podium in the pilot’s briefing rooom as a sort of “mascot” while Starbuck gave a briefing.
And had he was in Water, nut IMDB said his scenes were deleted. Other than that, though, you’re correct that they never did anything with him.
In other sci-fi geekdom, Farscape never did much with the Nebari Establishment, a race/government that uses a “mental cleansing” on nonconformists, and who also secretly infected their own “incorrigibles” with a kind of deadly STD and sent them out into the galaxy to wreak havoc amongst the Nebari Establishment’s “next on our list to knock off” adversaries.
It was called Bureau 13.
Unfortunately, there was already a fictional Bureau 13 as part of the game Stalking the Night Fantastic and a trilogy of books based on the game, the first one being called…Bureau 13.
So they dropped it.
Copycats that they are, the Star Trek Universe just reversed the numbers and came up with Section 31.
On Family Matters Urkel was supposed to be one-shot character, but soon ended up hijacking the show.
ETA: Ah, I see Big T already mentioned it above.
Also on Family Matters was the youngest daughter, who went upstairs at the end of one season and was never seen or mentioned again.
At the end of one episode of Seinfeld Kramer announces he got a woman pregnant. We never hear about Cosmo, Jr. again.
On Married With Children there’s Seven, whose disappearance was never mentioned (except for a few appearances on a milk carton).
Until she appeared in pornos that made Urkel exclaim “Did I do that?”
Yes Jaleel White, you did.
Maybe something will happen with it, but at the beginning of this season of Fringe, there was this really hot FBI agent who was nosing into the story for a few episodes to the point where it seemed like she was a new regular character, and then she hasn’t been seen or mentioned of for the rest of the season, which is almost over. Either they changed their mind with her or she’s supposed to come back later.
Including the things mentioned above, there were a lot of things in The West Wing that ended up being different from their original conception. Sam Seaborn was supposed to be the main character (thus Lowe’s eventual departure), Donna Moss was supposed to be as insignificant as the rest of the secretaries, etc.
When people make a TV show, they usually have two or three seasons planned out in their heads, so when one becomes successful and seems like it will go on forever, things have to be re-calibrated mid-flight to allow the show to continue. This accounts for why Lost turned into crap as soon as it got popular, and then when an end point for the series was finally established, things got back to being good again, since the writers knew they’d be able to tell the whole story without needing to make episodes (or entire seasons) of filler. See also Heroes, which needs to be out down like a lame horse.
This happened sufficiently on TWW that fans spoke of characters being sent to “Mandyville.” Another one I can think of (but whose name eludes me entirely) is the black woman, based on real life Al Gore advisor Donna Brazile, who appeared quite prominently in the episode where President Bartlet walks to Capitol Hill to resolve the government shutdown (and is made to wait by the arrogant SOB SotH) and is never seen again.
I hate the “Mandyville” thing, because it shows an extreme lack of creativity in the audience of such a creative show. Would not “Mandyland” be much better a name for an imagined place?
Two significant characters in the pilot for Weeds vanished once the series proper picked up. One was mentioned later (and may have reappeared), but the other is, as far as I know, vanished into the aether.
How would Sorkin know? He had left the show several years earlier.
Judging by the show, it was clear that Santos was their planned winner, though they wanted Vinnick to be a credible threat.