Which are episode(s) of a TV show in which the main character or characters do not appear (or only make very brief appearances and are not centrally involved in the main plot)?
Examples:
[ul]
[li]Roseanne Season 7, Episode 18 “Single Married Female” - only a few lines of Roseanne’s voice are heard.[/li]
[li]Orange Is the New Black Season 2, Episode 2 “Looks Blue, Tastes Red” - Piper does not appear at all.[/li]
[li]South Park Season 4, Episode 14 “Pip” - Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny do not appear at all.[/li][/ul]
Main characters who have left the show don’t count (e.g. Zach Braff in the last season of Scrubs).
Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 3 episode 13: “The Zeppo” sort of fits the bill. It focuses on Xander (who is one of the main characters) mostly doing his own thing. We briefly see the other main characters here and there, and they seem to be going through some really intense save-the-world stuff.
Doctor Who, the episode “Blink” which was broadcast on June 9, 2007. You don’t even have to know who Doctor Who is to understand it. It’s like a short movie that’s only loosely tied into the series.
During the first season of Mission: Impossible, Steven Hill, the nominal star of the show, was either missing or featured only briefly in a number of episodes because he was an Orthodox Jew who refused to work after sundown on Fridays (and filming almost always went way over schedule). This is why he was replaced with Peter Graves after the first season.
I always thought that Rick Jason was slighted on Combat!, but I once read an interview with him in which he pointed out that he and Vic Morrow were featured almost equally over the show’s five-year run.
When Lucy Lawless broke her pelvis falling from a horse she could no longer play Xena in the show Xena: Warrior Princess.
Rather than stop filming the show they continued by using stock footage, voice overs and most significantly changing a couple of scripts to include the idea Xena’s body is taken over by Calisto and within the context of the show is Callisto although the other characters are seeing her as Xena.
Meanwhile the legendary Australian soap opera Neighbours has, like all soap operas, an ever changing ensemble cast. One episode - although also featuring the usual cast - heavily concentrated on Bouncer the Dog (to be clear - a dog) dreaming of marrying a sheep dog.
One of the few good episodes in the fifth season of Babylon 5 followed a couple of random low-ranking maintenance workers on the station, as they went through their day. There was a standard Crisis of the Week going on in the background, and we got brief glimpses of the main characters dealing with it, but it was mostly these two who we’d never seen before dealing with things like “rats” chewing through wiring and discussing the lunch meats in their lunch sandwiches.
I thought it was the other way around, that Xena was inhabiting Callisto’s body. So everybody saw Callisto, but it was still Xena. But then, it’s been years since I’ve seen an episode of Xena.
Either way, the point is that Hudson Leick took over playing the lead for a few episodes, and Lucy Lawless did not appear.
Just remembered. Probably not what the OP wants but Charlie’s Angels never had much of Charlie - just his voice. In a similar way Magnum never showed Robin Masters - the actual owner of the house where Magnum lived.
Moving increasingly away from the OP Columbo often referenced his wife but she was unseen (until the spin off series Mrs Columbo with a frighteningly young for Columbo Captain Janeway. in 1979 actress Kate Mulgrew was about 24, Peter Falk was 52 and even worse he had been playing the married Columbo since about 1971 when Kate would have been just 16.)
MrAtoz. It has been a while so I did a quick check and it looks like we are both correct: First Callisto took over Xena’s body and then Xena took over Callisto’s.
IIRC, the series was one of the lamebrain creations of Fred “The Man with the Golden Gut” Silverman and was almost immediately disowned by just about everyone involved.
From Wiki:
*Mrs. Columbo, a spin-off TV series starring Kate Mulgrew, aired in 1979 and was canceled after only thirteen episodes. Lt. Columbo was never seen on Mrs. Columbo; each episode featured the resourceful Mrs. Columbo solving a murder mystery she encountered in her work as a newspaper reporter. Connections with the original Columbo series were made obvious: the glaring presence of Columbo’s car in the driveway, Dog, and Mrs. Columbo emptying ashtrays containing the famous green cigar butts – all featured in the show’s opening sequence. References were also made to Kate’s husband being a police lieutenant.
There were also notable discrepancies between the two shows. Most visibly, Kate Mulgrew was much younger than was plausible for the role of Columbo’s wife; only 24 when the Mrs. Columbo series aired, Mulgrew would have been 12 when we first saw Columbo talking about his wife in 1967’s Prescription: Murder. Other discrepancies involved Mrs. Columbo having different interests and hobbies than had been previously described by the lieutenant.
Due to the negative critical and public reaction to the show, the producers made changes to Mrs. Columbo almost immediately. The spin-off was renamed Kate Columbo, followed by Kate the Detective, and finally Kate Loves a Mystery. The main character was likewise renamed “Kate Callahan”; all references to and ties with the original Columbo show were dropped. After this, a reference was made in the show to Kate’s divorce: the character was no longer Mrs. Columbo nor was she meant to have any connection with him at all.*
In the Rockford Files Jim was missing or made only cameo appearances in several episodes while he recovered from injuries. Also at least one episode of Perry Mason was missing Raymond Burr, IIRC Mike Connors (Mannix) filled in.
In The Prisoner episode entitled Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, Number Six’s mind is transferred into another man’s body. I just looked it up, and this episode was written because series star Patrick McGoohan was away filming Ice Station Zebra.
While Kaley Cuoco was recuperating from a broken leg, Penny was written out of two episodes of The Big Bang Theory: The Desperation Emanation and The Irish Pub Formulation.
Doctor Who did the same thing for “Turn Left” and “Love and Monsters.” Both were written to give David Tennant a break after a couple of strenuous episodes where he was in nearly every scene.
Gunsmoke had episodes where Matt Dillon was out of town during the show and didn’t appear.
Babylon 5 had “A View from the Gallery,” which showed events from the point of view of a couple of maintenance workers. The leads only have cameos.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer had “The Zeppo,” where Buffy only appears peripherally.
After suffering a heart attack, Ross Martin was temporarily replaced by several actors on Wild, Wild West: Charles Aidman (four episodes), Alan Hale, Jr., and William Schallert.
Many many series have Back Door pilots where the main characters step in to introduce new characters and then the rest of the episode is the new characters. Usually these pilots never land and you are left with just a weird episode.
Valerie Harper left the show that was named after her and they continued on under a new name for several seasons.
Coincidentally, I watched an old Hawaii 5-0 (Cloth of Gold) where McGarrett, while not absent, was not in a lot of the episode, and Danno was giving all the snark lines that Steve usually got. We wondered what was going on. Jack Lord didn’t direct or anything. He just didn’t do much of anything.
Bonus in that episode: parts were filmed at the Anderson Estate, aka Robin’s Nest.
Maybe it’s just me, but I always figured Columbo was never really married - “the wife” was just another tool he used to confound the suspect.
I’ll be damned! There was also a Martin-less episode with John Williams (the second Mr French) as Sir Nigel Scott! I had completely forgotten about this one: