There was also a black-out night on NBC, Mad About You, Friends, Seinfeld, and some other show all had a NY black-out caused by Helen Hunt on Mad About You.
Happy Days also had a brief failed spinoff about a guardian angel. Can’t remember the name of that one.
“Top of the Heap”, which introduced us to Matt LeBlanc, was a bad spinoff of “Married…with Children”. “Simpsons” was a spinoff of “Tracey Ullman”. “The Tortelli’s” spun off from “Cheers”.
:smack:
IIRC, The Andy Griffith Show was a spin-off of the Danny Thomas Show. In one episode DT got pulled over in a small southern town where AG was a fairly mean sheriff, a much different character than he later portrayed.
Eventually, that spawned Gomer Pyle, right?
Right, not to mention Mayberry R.F.D.
“Honey West” was a spin-off from one episode of “Burke’s Law.”
(“Burke’s Law” was later retitled “Amos Burke, Secret Agent.” Many years later, it returned under the original title.)
According to a couple of user comments on the IMDb, the pilot for “Burke’s Law” was shown as an episode of “The Dick Powell Theatre” and starred Dick Powell. He died before the “Burke’s Law” series was picked up, and the part went to Gene Barry.
And none of you kids remembers either show.
Actually, Seinfeld didn’t participate. I heard that Larry David wouldn’t stand for such nonsense.
But the other three “Must See TV” shows did (the fourth one escapes me, too).
I think we need to define our terms a bit. I’m not inclined to call a show a “spin off” if the main character in the new show had only one appearance in the so-called “parent” show, and that appearance was just a gimmick to introduce the character to an established audience.
Is Frasier the most successful spin-off, in terms of ratings and revenue? Is The Simpsons?
Trivia: Lou Grant and Trapper John M.D. are the only hour-long drama spinoffs of half-hour comedies.
Let’s see… Perfect Strangers begot Family Matters, and Urkel from there showed up on Full House and Step by Step, and some terrible sounding show starring Bronson Pinchott named Meego.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have even used the word “spin-off”. I’m mostly interested in single episodes that were clearly meant to be a spin-off, but it never happened. That, and exactly what you describe above - i.e. Mork on Happy Days. I’m pretty familiar with all the other normal repeating character spin-off shows, i.e. Three’s a Crowd.
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*Originally posted by lothos2002 *
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I’m pretty sure The Zeta Project is a spinoff of Batman Beyond.
…got any grounds for that?
Similar styles of animation and a future context aside… The two shows don’t really seem to be related.
It is a direct spinoff. There was an episode named “Zeta” which showed the origin of the character. However, it could be argued that the that episode was more of a launching point since the character had not appeared before that show. He did reappear in an episode entitled “Countdown.”
I believe there was a similar type episode in Chips. Where Ponch and John arrest a bad guy. This leads some spy group, for the rest of the show, to solve a bigger case the original arrestee was a part of. I do not recall if this show ever made it past this episode of Chips. The one scene I remember is one of the men had a puppet and used it to distract one of the bad guys.
Using the “one-episode intro” definition of a spinoff, Animaniacs was spun off from Tiny Toon Adventures, which was itself, if not a spinoff, a direct descendant of the WB Loony Toons cartoons.
Nah, I saw that episode and it wasn’t a puppet. The bad guys were blinded when Erik Estrada smiled in daylight.
How about:
The Lone Gunmen - spun from The X-Files
The Heights - spun from BH 90210
Melrose Place - spun from BH 90210
Didn’t the King of Queens spin from Everybody Loves Raymond?
It’s a little hard to remember, but Mork and Mindy was a spinoff of Happy Days, making it a spinoff of a spinoff.
If you’re thinking of Out of the Blue, which Tars Tarkas mentioned, I thought that was a spinoff of Mork and Mindy. I remember Mork being on the first episode, though I’m not sure what the connection was supposed to be.
Little more detail on Melrose Place vis-a-vis 90210: Grant Show played the same character on both. On 90210, he was doing some kind of manual labor around Kelly’s house. She had a crush on him, and couldn’t believe that older guys were actually resistant to her charms!
Reading this, I cannot dispel the memory of the Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase!