Sorry, my bad. I meant Growing Pains.
Growing Pains was already running on fumes by the time they brought in DeCrapio.
Where to start: home improvement, 3rd rock from the sun, soap, married with children, all game shows, all cop related shows, funny video shows, all reality shows, and then there are movies.
But only some of those are sitcoms.
I can’t watch even one episode of this series anymore. It irritates me that the Clampetts lived in Beverly Hills for nine years, and they were just as clueless at the finale as they had been on Day One.
Yes. it didn’t bother me back in the days of coal-fired TVs when each episode was new. I loved it. But would it have hurt to have them change? The rule of the day was “no change, no evolution, no continuity problems, episodes can be seen in any order.” So we have Jed wearing the same clothes NINE years later. What would be wrong with gradual change? As noted way back 15 years ago, they didn’t have old clothes and an old truck because they liked them. That had them because it was all they could afford.The only thing that did change was their bank balance, which IIRC went from about $12M in season 1 to maybe $96M in season 9.
And the answer to the OP question is still Seinfeld.
They kept them because any changes would have fundamentally altered the concept of the series.
Imagine what would have happened if Captain Kirk had been busted for violating the Prime Directive, the POWs finally decided to break out of Stalag 13, Endora had killed Darrin and left Samantha a widow, Gomer Pyle deserted after he was shipped to Vietnam, or Batman and Robin really were gay lovers. We would no longer have the original shows, which is just what happened when Sheldon, Leonard, and the other geeks in Big Bang Theory found the women they were looking for.
I’m amazed BBT lasted as long as it did. It should have been cancelled in the middle of its sixth season.
changed my mind
We could have a whole new thread about “What would have happened if X changed in your favorite TV show.”
I could support that. I have lots if ideas!
I think Endora did kill Derwood, but Samantha replaced him with a close simulation. Nether could say anything because both of what they did was illegal in the witching world. So they pretend nothing changed. As did the audience.
Unfortunately, she screwed up and he never had the chemistry of the original.
I just read through this whole thread and several sitcoms mentioned are ones that I enjoyed watching as a kid:
Happy Days
Laverne and Shirley
Three’s Company
Diff’rent Strokes
ALF
Saved By The Bell
The Brady Bunch
Gilligan’s Isle
The thing is though trying to rewatch them NOW is almost impossible for me–they seem so cheesy and cliched.
So people mentioning older shows–do you think they sucked when you originally watched them or is it because you realize now how bad they are?
The only ones on this list I can watch today are Three’s Company and Gilligan’s Island, since they appeal to my sense of silliness.
I liked L&S when it first came on, but then I went away for a year. When I came back, I found it had morphed into a parody of The Lucy Show.
Never ever cared for Happy Days, which purported to be about the 1950s. If there was a '50s vibe, it sailed past me completely. The show was an attempt to cash in on American Graffiti, which is set in 1962 and one of my favorite movies, and this offended me greatly.
I watched Diff’rent Strokes on occasion back in the '80s, but it falls into my category of that era’s “cute” sitcoms (like Facts of Life) that relied on children making snappy comments and were supposed to “teach a lesson” each week.
I watched every episode of a high percentage of these when they were new. It would seem I liked them and thought they were funny.
I guess that means I’m one of the lumpen masses. Or maybe they were funny, at the time, and tastes change.
Not just sitcoms: I loved CSI Mothership when it was new. Now I can’t stand it because I can’t stand the characters. It took many seasons of loyal watching to begin to notice how annoying they are, but when you go back to S.1, now you can see it right away.
I can’t watch Gilligan’s Island anymore, even the fondly remembered ones like Agent 014, or Hamlet, or the Rashomon episode, because the pace is soooo sloooow and I’m like “drop this filler and let’s get to the good parts already!” And you remember it was like this when it was new, you just never noticed.
I watched CSI religiously until William Peterson left. Then I tried watching the show with Laurence Fishburne because I was hoping it’d be good. Instead, I fell asleep in the middle of the third episode and just gave up on it.
Now i want a CSI/Seinfeld crossover.
Jerry: What’s the deal with fingerprints? Can you prove they are all different? Like snowflakes? No one has! Amirite?
Gil: I just want some soup.
So here we are in this 2011 zombie thread. It’s The Future now, and all you cool kids who hate sitcoms? Guess what, you’ve killed them. Happy? 
MASH : went on for far too long, (outlasted the war it was actually satirising) got preachy, and that dam’ laugh track (missing from the British screening, mercifully)
I believe the laugh track was dropped (or at least used more sparingly) in the second half of the series because Alan Alda wanted it to be more serious and preachy. I certainly noted its absence in the American edition.
Except for the animated ones!