Hell, MASH did that exact script at least twice during its 11 year run.
How many times has “She’s gorgeous when she dresses better/takes off her glasses/lets her hair down” been used? I can think of three instances right offhand: Lola Bright in The Beverly Hillbillies, Sue Ane Langdon in McHale’s Navy, and Sharon Acker in It Takes a Thief.
Sometimes it backfires on the boyfriend—the girl/woman starts attracting other males after a makeover. This happened in Dobie Gillis (Maynard’s girlfriend) and Cheers! (Cliff’s girlfriend).
Brady Bunch again. (Jeez, how much borrowing did they do?) Bobby pushed Peter out of the way of a falling ladder, and Peter declared himself Bobby’s slave for life. Although that led not so much to Bobby being annoyed by Peter as taking advantage of him. Which led to them being at odds with each other, dividing the room* with masking tape (Greg was in the attic by then), and a not-staged accident – Bobby locks himself in the closet.
Also Gilligan’s Island: Gilligan saves a native woman from drowning in the lagoon. The aggravation doesn’t last long; the real crisis is the woman’s SO showing up and wanting to duel with Gilligan for her.
Again, Gilligan’s Island. A frumpy, grumpy woman lands on the island; Ginger and Mary Ann make her over to look…like Ginger. Because they’re both played by Tina Louise, duh. As mentioned above, it was one of three castaway doppelgängers. Some guy had been impersonating Mr. Howell, and somehow got shipwrecked and washed up on the island. Then, Soviet spies were convinced that the castaways were some kind of operative, and sent an agent, made up to resemble Gilligan, to infiltrate them.
*Bobby, triumphant: “And you know what else?..The bathrooms on my side of no-man’s land!” ::stomp stomp stomp:: ::flushhhhhhhhhhhh:: See, they did have a toilet!
I like the beavis & butthead “it’s wonderful life” episode better --where it turns out everyone is better off if they had NOT been born.
Frasier and Bob (Newhart’s show where he created a comic book) both did an episode where the title character loses something and frantically tries to find it (for Frasier it was a recording of a show, for Bob an issue of Mad Dog), then finds a thoroughly obsessed fan who has it, and then decides they can live without it.
As also happened on Married with Children
wasn’t that baileys whole thing in wkrp? she looked like a somewhat hot geek at work but when she went out the looked better than Loni Anderson?
yeah married with children’s version al sees everyone has such a great life without him that he decided to stay alive just to shit on everyone and they had had sam kinison as the spirit too
Kids’ cartoons and shows are the worst in fact I remember one of the first “listicles " id ever seen that was " the 12 episodes every kids show must have since the 1960s”…
I always preferred Bailey. For me, she was WKRP’s equivalent to Mary Ann. 
Dallas did this, too. The Devil (played by Joel Grey, IIRC) showed J.R. what the world, the Ewing family in particular, would be like if he’d never been born. As expected, everybody else was a lot better off. At the end J.R. goes into his office, closes his door, and a shot rings out.
(Yeah, they walked it back…it’s what they’re famous for.)
The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley also did an It’s A Wondeful Life episode. IIRC “Every time some one gives you a wrench, an angel gets its wings!”
Also happens in The Simpsons, Homer finds out what would happen if he never married Marge (and his Guardian Angel is Colonel Klink), and turns out Homer is rich and Marge is President of the United States.
Dennis the Menace and Family Matters both had episodes where a grumpy, uptight character (George Wilson / Carl Winslow) is injured and taken to the hospital - where he ends up having to share a room with the most annoying person he knows (Dennis Mitchell / Steve Urkel).
There was a similar episode of Mary Tyler Moore. Pat Carrol (remember her?) was the grumpy roommate.
I recently learned that Pat Carroll started out singing with (an also-just-starting-out) Olivia Newton-John (also learned that Newton-John’s grandfather had a Nobel Prize in Physics)
I think we’re talking about two different Pat Carrolls here:
I remember seeing her on TV often when I was growing up.
I see too she died only recently. I had no idea she was even still around.
(I also realize I spelled her name incorrectly above.)
Darn - you’re right. Oh, well.
At least the bit about the Nobel Prize was right - Olivia Newton-John’s grandfather was Max Born
Perfectly understandable. That episode of MTM aired sometime in the mid '70s, which was when Olivia was a really hot item.
Laverne and Shirley was seen by some critics/viewers of being a 1970s version of I Love Lucy, with just the two women. Or maybe they were the Ricky/Fred and Lenny and Squiggy were the women. Anyway, AFAIK, they never borrowed an entire episode’s plot, but there was one episode that had to have been an homage to one episode, perhaps two.
It was late in the show’s run; L&S were living in California and working in a department store. They’re in the gift-wrap department, and they’re told to wrap several hundred boxes of chocolate. Laverne: ::slams down paper cutter:: “Oh my. A crushed box. Can’t sell this.” ::scarf, gobble, nosh:: Of course, what she doesn’t know, but the audience does, is that these are liqueur chocolates. So, an homage to Vitameatavegamin. And call me a TV pagan, but Penny Marshall playing drunk >>>>>>> funnier than Lucille Ball playing drunk. “Let’s go on vacation!” ::spins globe:: “Let’s go to Chad! Nobody goes to Chad anymore…” Supervisor: “Ladies! This room is in shambles!” Laverne: “Is that near Chad?”
Anyway, so that was a nod to Vitameatavegamin, but having chocolates as the source of alcohol calls back to, of course, the chocolate factory job on ILL. But for those who haven’t seen it, the plot of that episode was not “Lucy and Ethel work in a chocolate factory and get fired for eating more candy than they box up.” The episode’s premise was that the men and women switched jobs, so Ricky and Fred could screw up the housework* while L&E went to a temp agency and were sent on numerous jobs…that they always washed out of. The chocolate factory was their last chance; that’s why they went to such lengths not to fail.
*Which is another premise – men and women switch roles; hilarity and humbleness ensue – that predates TV, so can’t really be said to be “from” anything.
weird foul foreign candy turns out to be an illegal drug- done on Taxi with Latke’s cookies. Done on Just Shoot Me with a candy somebody brought home from a trip overseas.
Accidental pot brownies showed up on Sanford and Son, Barney Miller, and no doubt many more.