*****Obscure Sitcom Spin-Offs*****

that link above has every answer to every sitcom spin-off question I could think of.

It still didn’t show The Art of Being Nick, so i e-mailed the webmaster. He said it was only a pilot… like the Lenny & Squiggy show and a spin-off of MAS*H titled and about Radar.

I e-mailed him back and said I’d love to see a page dedicated to never-picked-up spin-off pilots.

Melrose Place gave us Models Inc. I vaguely remember seeing Carrie-Ann Moss in that.

(And wasn’t Melrose a spin-off of 90210 too? I’m probably wrong there.)

Melrose was spun off of 90210, but IIRC (and I’m not sure), the Jake character was originally introduced into 90210 only to build anticipation for Melrose; that is, it was one of what I’ve termed a concocted spin-off.

Love, American Style has spawned the largest number of spin-offs, but indirectly through Happy Days. All in the Family comes in second; many of the AIF spin-offs came directly out of it.

Love, American Style begat Happy Days, which begat Joanie Loves Chachi, Happy Days Again, the Happy Days cartoon, and Laverne & Shirley,which begat the Laverne & Shirley cartoon (remember, with the pig?). Happy Days also begat Mork & Mindy, which itself begat its own cartoon show. I’m sure I’m missing some.

All in the Family begat Gloria, Archie Bunker’s Place, 407 Hauser Street and Maude, which begat The Jeffersons, which begat Good Times.

Phyllis did have her own show.

–Cliffy

Out of the Blue was the angel show. Like Mork, it was a concocted spin off.

I think Good Times came from Maude. Florida Evans was MAude’s maid. I forget what Maude’s connection was to AITF. The JEffersons were Archie’s upstairs neighbors before they moved to the DEE-luxe apartment, in the Sky-hi-hi.

You’re thinking of Maude. I could be mistaken, but didn’t they try to give Bently his own series in '82?

OK, let me clear this up. Maude was concocted as the Bunker’s cousin; she had two guest appearances, one in '71 and again in '72. Husband Walter was with her in '72. Good Times has no direct connection to The Jeffersons

Mad About You …Friends.

Phoebe’s sister was the waitress in Mad About You.

Pretty successful spin off!

Tibs.

I believe that “A Different World” is a spinoff of “The Cosby Show.” Of course I can’t be sure, because I don’t remember any of the Cosby characters showing up in “World” but a big deal has been made of William Huxtable (Cosby) going to Hillman College (the setting of “World”). And also most of the production crew of “Cosby Show” worked on “World”.

Cliffy, wasn’t “Happy Days Again” just an alternate name for Happy Days when it ran in syndication? Back in the early 80s I remember many shows were retitled when they went into syndication. For example, Emergency became Emergency One, Barney Miller became Twelfth Precinct and, AFAIR, Happy Days became Happy Days Again.

Also, alongside your (very useful, I think) concept of “concocted” spinoffs we should consider “retooled premises,” where a successful show changes its title and some of its characters (usually in a futile attempt to recover lost ratings). They’re not true spinoffs, they’re just continuations of the original show.

Thus:

All in the Family became Archie Bunker’s Place
The Andy Griffith Show became Mayberry RFD
Valerie became The Hogan Family

And for the truly obscure:

Second Chance became Boys Will Be Boys
Duet became Open House

Tiburon:

Sorry Tiburon, that’s not a spinoff. Friends had nothing to do with Mad About You to begin with, beyond the fact that Lisa Kudrow’s exposure on the latter show landed her the part on the former.

It wasn’t until Friends had been on the air for some time that the producers decided to tie the two shows together by establishing Kudrow’s characters on the two shows as identical twins.

SterlingNorth, A Different World was indeed a spinoff of Cosby. Lisa Bonet, who played the second-oldest daughter on Cosby, was spun off into A Different World, which was created as a vehicle for her.

But then Bonet had some kind of breakdown or falling-out with Cosby or something like that, so she was written out of her own show and then it became about all the other characters instead.

[Nipick]
Actually, it wasn’t “for some time.” In the very first season of Friends, Joey and Chandler meet Ursula at Riff’s and Joey ends up dating her for a while.
[/Nitpick]

So “for some time” equals “part of the first season.” Where’s your nitpick?

I took “for some time” to mean several seasons in.

Add another to the “Happy Days” lineage. “Laverne and Shirley” very briefly became “Laverne and Friends” when Cindy Williams left the show.

I thought Happy Days Again was a new show, but I appear to be incorrect. I thought it was a revisiting of the characters without Richie but with Ted McGinley, but it seems that was part of the original run. My bad.

–Cliffy

P.S. I thought the Jeffersons used to live in what was later the “Good Times” apartment before George made his pile; I’m pretty sure I saw an episode where they went back to visit.

I thought the Jeffersons lived in the other half of the duplex in Queens where the Bunkers lived, before George made his pile.

Yep, that’s where they lived. There was an episode where Archie assumed the black woman was there to clean the empty house, and was later horrified to find out she was his new neighbor.

Well, Trapper John was not supposed to be a spinoff of the show Mash(yeah, right). Seriously, they went to court over it. Both the makers of the movie MASH and the show wanted to claim that the show was based off their work.

The court ruled that Trapper John, M.D. is spun off the movie, not the show. Consequently, all royalties went to the makers of the movie. This does work better anyway, since Trapper in the show is more like the one in the movie.

If you care, the court case was “Preminger vs. 20th Century Fox”.

Also, the pilot movie about Radar was called WALTE*R and it sucked big time. But it was directed by Bill Bixby, so what the hey?

After MASH came about right after MASH ended. The cast had voted as to whether or not to do a 12th season. Everyone voted against it accept Harry Morgan, Jamie Farr, and William Christopher. Consequently, they went on to the next show and were quickly dismissed.

And everyone else on MASH went on to good long careers, not at all typecast in their roles on the show. Oh wait, no one did. They were all typecast. Nevermind.

Sorry, that’s not possible. According to the IMDb, Good Times started airing in '74; The Jeffersons in '75. And at no time did any member of one cast appear in the other show.

Well, unless you mean that Alan Alda has been typecast as a “sensitive guy”, I think breaks down at least there. I think that’s just Alan.

I saw him in a (almost) one man play in L.A. as Richard Feyman, the Nobel Prize winning physicist from Cal Tech, and it had the Hawkeye emotional moments. I bring this up because he stayed after and discussed the play with the audience and a real Cal Tech physicist. He had a lot to do with the play becoming an actual play and getting produced, so I assume he had a good bit of creative control too.