There was the Seinfeld episode where Jerry was embarrassed to admit that he watched Melrose Place. In the later seasons he ended up dating two women from the show, Kristin Davis and Marcia Cross. I never watched Melrose Place when it first aired back in the '90s, so I didn’t pick up on this until years later when my wife introduced me to the show.
Talking about redressed sets, watch the motels that the Winchester brothers stay in on Supernatural. It’s the same room redressed to look like a different motel.
Jason Alexander gets noticeably balder as the series goes on, though it would be hard to pinpoint a particular season from that alone. Also, he gradually gains weight year to year.
Michael Richards looks oddly different in the first season, and I can easily spot it. He closely resembles his janitor character in UHF, in appearance and manner. After that, he becomes the real Kramer.
And Newman, yes, is eternally Newman.
I know there is no great love for Friends nor Jennifer Aniston here, but one thing I noticed about her in the show is she was ALWAYS in character and paying attention. You can see it when she is off to the side, she is really listening to what the others are saying, even if she doesn’t have a line to say before or after.
I always took that as an indication that she was probably the best “actress” on the show, simply because she wasn’t just mouthing her memorized lines, but fully in character in each scene.
Jerry Seinfeld, on the other hand, always seems like he is in the audience and watching the show. Other than when he is speaking his lines, he seems to be watching the events and waiting for his cue for his line. He just never seems to really be in character - which is odd, considering the show is all about him. Funny guy, just not a particularly great actor.
Roseanne was like Seinfeld in earlier shows, but she openly admits that her first plan for the show was to surround herself with the best actors and actresses she could find to make up for the fact that she wasn’t the best actress. It seemed to work, as Roseanne got better and better at acting as the show progressed.
He got better as the show went, but yeah, looking back at some of the early seasons, it’s almost cringeinducing to look at his mugging. And there are many moments where it’s pretty apparent that he’s trying not to laugh at the jokes. It’s a testament to how good the rest of the cast was, that this never really seemed to hurt the show much though.
I recently caught a Batman rerun on the Hub in which Batman and Robin are called to "Ireland “Yard” in Londinium to help investigate the theft of the Queen’s snuffboxes by Lord Fogg, played by Rudy Valee. The Inspector’s office was obviously the same set used for Commissioner Gordon’s office, only decorated with things such as coats of arms and a suit of armor. They even remarked on it in the dialogue. Gordon said “There’s a strange familiarity to your office,” and the Ireland Yard inspector said, “Police offices seem to have a bit of sameness to them all over.”
I liked Friends. And while I’ve not followed her career closely since, I judge Aniston to be a hottie.
Okay, that I can’t agree with, simply because I’d call Lisa Kudrow the best performer on the show.
For THIS show, that had to be an intentional joke rather than cost-cutting measure.
That is the coolest thing ever. Thank you!
I totally didn’t get that about Harley in Newhart.
In I Dream of Jeanie, you surely noticed Barbara Eden’s uber-sexy bare midriff. But did you notice that she had no belly button?
There was some awards show years ago – probably the Emmys – where Dennis Hopper did the opening speech. It was stirring and inspirational. It started “I am an actor.” He sprinkled that phrase throughout. It was pretty much the theme of the speech.
When Seinfeld won an award, Jerry began his acceptance speech with “I am a bad actor.”
He knew.
No, this was in Batman’s third season. ABC had slashed the show’s budget drastically. Very minimal set dressing was used, often consisting of only a stark black stage with no walls and two-dimensional cutouts to provide setting because that was all that the budget would allow for. Near the end, ABC also wanted to slash the budget further by using only Batman and Batgirl, cutting Burt Ward and Neil Hamilton (Gordon) out of the picture completely. Both William Dozier and Adam West protested, thereby prompting ABC to cancel the show completely. It definitely was a cost-saving measure and the writers knew the audience would notice it, thereby providing an explanation in the dialogue.
Along those same lines, Psych always has a pineapple appear somewhere in every episode.
Facts are for women and Welshmen. Rhymers ignore them whenever they do not support our arguments.
I’m not surprised that it’s from the bare-bones third season, and your explanation makes perfect sense. But I also think that, had they done that episode when the show was still a hit, they might have made the exact same joke. After the oddly-serious-in-retrospect pilot, the 60s Batman was nothing but silly.
I saw a show about Will Smith that mentioned how bad an actor he was when he started on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. They showed a clip of him sitting on the sofa having a conversation. While waiting for his cue, he was mouthing the other character’s lines.
They set that show up like an old repertiore company. It was pretty obvious right away.
Amusingly, Saturday Night Live had a skit a couple weeks ago just about this. They had a pretty impressive Will impersonator. The skit had him a) reacting to bad news with a Scooby Doo “ro-roh”; b) not being told how to react when given news about his uncle being in the hospital from a hot chick cop and how she would give them a ride, he went “Cha-ching”; c) when Carleton gave him some challenge or something, he decked him with the line out of Independence Day, “Welcome to Earth”. The actor did a good job of pulling off Will’s mannerisms, and that particular punch scene.
This is extremely common for non-trained actors. You can see it anywhere people not used to acting are acting roles.
Early in the show’s run, he was on Letterman talking about how the others were actors and he wasn’t. He was amazed that when the cameras stopped and they walked off stage they became different people. Jerry continued to be Jerry. He then showed a clip from the show (“The Second Spitter” bit, so middle season 3) to prove how bad an actor he was.
Nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy Emmy 5 times. Won a Golden Globe plus other lesser individual awards. Other People did not get the message.
Oh, and another vote for Lisa Kudrow as the only good actor on Friends.
I’ve noticed the same thing and I can’t pin down exactly what was different, but the shape of his face just isn’t the same or something.
This was done on Bonanza also. All the main characters wore the exact same outfit all the time – for years on end. They had multiple sets of identical costumes for each of them. This was done as a cost/time saving measure – they could reuse shots from different episodes in making up a new episode.
Yeah, that was another recent one of those “Theo’s buddy is Adam Sandler” moments for me.
They really do a bang up job redressing it, though. Very creative and always something interesting about the deco.
In the Seinfeld episode where they get stuck in Long Island, then the guy shows up at Jerry’s apartment and wants to party, winds up getting drunk with Kramer, etc. The guy is Michael Chiklis, a long way from The Shield.