Superboy changed the actor playing the title character between seasons 1 and 2.
Lois and Clark changed Jimmy Olsens between their seasons 1 and 2.
And speaking of Roseanne, they took it even further and brought back Becky 1, then brought back Becky 2 again. I think for a while they were switching back and forth, but eventually, by the time the show limped to the end, they seemed to have finally settled on Becky 2. Bleh. I like Sarah Chalke on Scrubs, but she sucked on Roseanne.
I agree. NCIS has gone to the well too many times.
And it’s not really necessary to kill me DiNozzo. There are two obvious and satisfactory ways for him to leave: going off to join Ziva, or simply taking a job commensurate with his age and experience.
I don’t know if you’d call it a hit, but there’s this example:
For those who don’t recognize the names, these were the two guys who played “Spartacus” in different seasons of the Starz show. The original actor developed cancer after the first season, eventually passing away as a result. Since the show was called “Spartacus”, their choices were either re-cast or cancel the show. It’s notable that, prior to his death, he was in favor of re-casting the role.
Maybe it’s me, but when I watch a rerun of 70s Show, I can barely tell which actress is playing Laurie Foreman: Lisa Robin Kelly or her replacement, Christina Moore, who I had to look up. Don’t notice a significant difference in voice, looks, or acting style. But perhaps the character never meant that much to me.
Recasting Vivian on Fresh Prince worked out horribly, I thought. Janet Hubert-Whiten was a hell of an actress. Daphne Maxwell-Reid played the role like she was the voice of an automated phone menu. The show was headed downhill for other reasons, and they didn’t need this, too.
I’m more interested in creative ways to keep a character alive offscreen. I remember a show where the guy playing the main girl’s SO got something he couldn’t turn down: a movie or a Broadway show. Temporary, but time-consuming. They held his place by sending the character overseas, and in almost every episode, he’d call his fiancee, resulting in some amusing one-sided conversations. And speaking of Roseanne, before Becky was recast, and when Darlene was away at art school, the show had sets built where the actresses were, so they could film a handful of scenes without having to commute.
Edith Bunker shouldn’t have been killed. They should have just had her always away taking care of a sick relative.
LAST MAN STANDING replaced the oldest daughter – the single mom working at a restaurant – because, c’mon, a sitcom based on him having three daughters? Sure, rotate new guys in at a workplace drama, but that won’t fly here.
The Roseanne case was a bad job of recasting. Sarah Chalke was a very attractive young woman, replacing Lecy Goranson who… was not. Had the actresses been more similar, the swap might have worked better.
Actor temporarily unavailable? Send his character into space!
It helped that Spartacus was the least interesting character in Spartacus. The show had a lot of neat characters, but the lead was just the same sort of gritty action hero that populates a lot of similar shows. The difference was hardly noticeable.
And they did actually do a season of “Spartacus without Spartacus” while Whitfield was sick, in hopes that he would recover, making a prequel taking place before the Spartacus character showed up.
It’s you, the new Laurie was a drastically jarring change. Sad that the original couldn’t get her shit together and died such a young tragic death.
For certain definitions of “hit show” but definitely a higher budget show with artistic pretenses, there’s Starz’s “Black Sails”. The character of Dufresne was played by Jannes Eiselen who developed brain cancer and was taken over by Roland Reed in season two. He’s definitely a major character if not a “main” character and it helped that the two actors look similar. His role in the story precluded writing the character out or killing him off.
Edit: The post from Horatius made me think he talked about it first but, really, I guess there’s too many people on Starz shows getting cancer 
Yeah, I hadn’t heard about that one. I’m watching Season 3 of Black Sails right now, and didn’t catch that this was a new guy. I usually just think of him as “Round Glasses Guy”, though, so that tells you how much attention I’m paying 
Wow… this is a hard one.
I think maybe main characters should always be written out, even if they die during the hiatus from bizarre and tragic can-opener accidents or something. It would be too weird to say… recast Kramer on Seinfeld, or Chrissy on Three’s Company, Tony on NCIS or Scotty on Star Trek. Whether you kill them off, or just have them go live on a farm in the country… doesn’t really matter. But you couldn’t recast them.
But for supporting/recurring characters, then I’d say write them out if you can- if you know they’re leaving the show, then write them out. If not, then recast them and then write them out as soon as you can, but in a plausible fashion. If they’re vague enough, or if you can land an actor close enough, then you might even keep them in, like the 2 Dicks on Bewitched. I’ve never been a fan of the situation where a character is hale and hearty at the end of one season, and suddenly, awkwardly gone at the start of the next because the actor left or died and the writers just bashed something together to explain it.
I agree. The original girl was slightly funny-looking, kinda dirty, slutty, ‘could-be-in-porn’ pretty. The new actress was way too sweetly ‘girl-next-door’ pretty. Consequently she never really pulled off the ‘bad girl’ character (probably why she was dropped after only 6 episodes).
I suppose it depends on whether they want to continue with the character and the tone of the show. Having a family member die in a sitcom is pretty dark and fundamentally changes the tone of the show. Although they did this with the show Valarie due to a contract dispute with Valarie Harper who played the mom. The following season started six months after she “died of cancer”, the show was retitled “The Hogan Family” and Sandy Duncan joined the cast as an aunt, essentially taking over the “mom” role.
A particularly good example since Denise Crosby kept coming back every few seasons via some contrived plot device (time travel and some separate stupid Romulan plotline IIRC). If it was just a matter of the actress leaving the show, why not just give her a touching goodbye and ship her off to the USS Yorktown or something?
