The talk show circuit and book writing would have made them all some nice bucks.
Technically, he was also King George IV - remember, the “real” future George IV was killed by the Duke of Wellington.
Also, I don’t know if this really counts as a sitcom, but on Nickelodeon’s As Told by Ginger, Courtney Gripling’s family went from being millionaires to more or less destitute after her father was arrested for insider trading. (Even if you’re familiar with the show, you may not remember it as it happened during the final “high school” season that Nickelodeon stopped airing after one episode.)
Is Maron going down the economic scale? I haven’t watched the show but in the ads it looks like he’s pretty destitute.
Didn’t Mike Brady get kicked out by Carol at the end after she caught him with Sam the butcher in Alice’s quarters? He eventually lost his job at the architect firm because of a missed deadline and being on thin ice after Bobby lost those plans that time.
Yeah, Maron definitely counts. He went from almost having a talk show about him to losing his house and living out of a storage unit.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - During the course of the show Cordy’s dad gets indicted for insider trading and goes to jail, Buffy goes from supported by Joyce’s gallery work and support payments from father to working at the Doublemeat Palace, Giles loses his pay from the Watcher’s Council and eventually takes over the Magic Shop. Then there is Xander: Basically, I got as far as Oxnard and the engine fell out of my car — and that was literally. So I ended up washing dishes at the fabulous Ladies Night club for about a month and a half while I tried to pay for the repairs. No one really bothered me or even spoke to me until one night when one of the male strippers called in sick and no power on this earth will make me tell you the rest of that story. Suffice to say I traded my car in for one that wasn’t entirely made out of rust, came trundling back home to the arms of my loving parents where everything was exactly as it was except I sleep in the basement and I have to pay rent. How’s college?
Duet. Alison Le Place lost her job as movie studio executive and had to go to work in her sister’s small catering business.
Well Ginger was able to afford a shitload of plastic surgery, but in the end they all ended business partners in deserted island theme resort that they had to run themselves.
Cheers is a good example for other character too.
Norm starts off with a regular job. When he loses that, he starts running a bar tab and using sneaky tricks to get free beers, with the occasional painting gig or unsuccessful attempt at self-employed accounting. He never fixes his marital woes.
Frasier does financially well as far as we know, but he loses a fiance at the altar. Then he marries and divorces, losing custody of his son. His mother dies and his father does too (or so he says).
Even the billionaire boss ends up broke and on the run, though he’s probably too much of a minor character to count for the OP’s purpose.
I think Woody is the only character on the show to improve his situation. Most of the others maintain a status quo that is pretty much at the bottom already.
She didn’t lose it-- she sold it to a Barnes & Noble-type chain, and still kept working there, until her boss, who worked for the chain, turned out to be a homophobe, so she quit, but she still had the capital from selling the store, some of which she used as a down payment on a house.
He did end up getting the bar back for a dollar when he helped catching Rebecca’s boss, Robin. Eventually becoming partners with Rebecca, after she burns down the bar, and offers her life savings to help rebuild it. So it could be argued that he ended up no better or worse than he was when he started the show.
In the Mary Tyler Moore Show, they are all fired (except Ted) in the last episode. It’s implied that they ended up with work elsewhere.
Wel, we know that Lou Grant ended up with a job somewhere. As a newspaper editor on the show, Lou Grant.
And Sue Ann became a nurse/companion to an elderly man, as stated in the final episode.
I think Mary got married and had a kid, according to the TV reunion movie.
I wish there was more, but I agree with this article, that Lucky Louie getting cancelled was a blessing in disguise.
Louis CK went on to do his best stand-up work after that, something that he probably would have shelved had the show been renewed for multiple seasons.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but IIRC, in the last episode of Night Court, Christine got elected to Congress and was moving to Washington, and Dan upped and quit his job to chase after her. Not exactly a slow economic downfall, but I imagine suddenly quitting would have some negative effects.
Once there Christine probably told him what to go do with himself whereupon he became a soulless multimillionaire lobbyist.
You do realize that Gilligan is going to mess that up for them? (Unless they got off the island after finally realizing the best strategy for rescue was to Just Eat Gilligan. If so, then Gilligan ended up in a really crappy situation.)
(BTW: My comments on Gilligan’s Island pertained only to the regular run of shows.)
If you accept that Roseanne actually was just a book she had been writing, that Dan had actually died and nobody won the lottery, then I think the Connors count. Of course, that also means accepting that the show had a sort of straight-line progression from beginning to end.
A lot of the shows that follow kids or teenagers kind of count. Boy Meets World and Sister Sister both ended up with the in-focus characters heading to college, and college students are on a “lower rung” that they were with their massive sitcom mansions (even if they do have impossibly large dorms/condos/whatever).
Would Archie Bunker be in a lower class owning a bar instead of working as a longshoreman…or whatever blue collar job he had?