How about if Endora puts some kind of hex on Darren, and nobody can figure out what is wrong, until Samantha yells, “Mother!” at the ceiling.
I’ll bet we can re-use that one.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has reused a handful of plotlines (e.g., trying to beat Wade Boggs’ record for most beers drunk on a cross-country flight), always with a cynical wink and nod. They even built a whole episode around the meta-premise that the show was running out of ideas, titled “The Gang Recycles Their Trash.”
I think there’s a difference between sticking to format and recycling scripts. The closest Colombo came to that was when he nailed the two college kids in almost the same way he got the crooked police commissioner.
Gomer Pyle recycled a number of Andy Griffith scripts. The one that comes to mind first is “Gomer Becomes Andy’s/Sgt Carter’s Devoted Servant” after he “saves his life.”
“‘Gomer upsets Sergeant Carter’…oh, I’ll never forget that episode!”
Format again!
Yes, what I’m talking about is much more than just similar themes. Another example from Bewitched:
A two-parter where Benjamin Franklin is accidentally brought into the present. Sneaks out and observes the world around him and how the world remembers him. Is asked to be the mascot for a product. Accidentally runs afoul of the law. Is zapped back home but accidentally zapped back again. Defends himself eloquently before authorities and goes home satisfied that he didn’t dishonor himself by skipping out on his legal troubles.
And
A two-parter where George Washington is accidentally brought into the present. Sneaks out and observes the world around him and how the world remembers him. Is asked to be the mascot for a product. Accidentally runs afoul of the law. Is zapped back home but accidentally zapped back again. Defends himself eloquently before authorities and goes home satisfied that he didn’t dishonor himself by skipping out on his legal troubles.
(In this case there is a pretty similar episode of I Dream of Jeannie set in Hawaii where King Kamehameha is brought into the present, causes trouble like Genghis Khan in a San Dimas mall, and is shown how history remembers him.)
The episode Dick van Dyke was in is titled Negative Reaction. Dick is a phtographer who offs his wife (Antionette Bower) and tries to pin it on an ex-con who works for him. He lures the guy to a junkyard and whacks him, and then tries to make it look like self defense.
Even Gary Larson noticed it.
One episode is a scene-by-scene remake with almost exactly the same dialog. (Two different Darrins, though.)
Sam comes up with a catchy advertising slogan, and Darrin believes she used witchcraft instead of her imagination, They get into a heated argument with the exchange “Are you calling me a liar?” “If the shoe fits!” and Sam storms out of the house.
Darrin feels guilty and pitches the slogan to his client anyway, but he/she doesn’t like it. He/she wants something more romantic. Sam and Darrin kiss and make up and Sam says something romantic off the cuff. Turns out it’s the perfect slogan, and it ends up on a huge billboard advertising the product. Fade to black.
The first time around, the product was canned soup. The slogans were “A pretty kettle of fish” and “The only thing that will ever come between us.” I don’t remember what the product was the second time, but the second slogan was the same.
Alternative plot: One of Samantha’s relatives conjures up something scandalous by either mistake or design. Sam and Darrin cover it up by pretending it’s part of an advertising campaign. Everyone believes them and the world is right again. Fade to black.
Not a TV show, but after Curly had his stroke and Shemp returned to the Three Stooges the recycled a lot of the old scripts.
I remember an interview where John Ritter was talking about Three’s Company and said that one of the early episodes dealt with the threesome trying to hide a puppy from Mr. Roper. Jump ahead several years, and the threesome was trying to hide a kitten from Mr. Furley. At that point he realized that the show had run its course.
A similar storyline was in Monk. Monk, I forget exactly why but is caring for a baby and having a difficult time in a Monkish way. Jump ahead and for some reason Monk is caring for a puppy with similar results.
There are four episodes of The Avengers from the Cathy Gale era that were remade as Emma Peel episodes.
Recycled scripts are fairly common in children’s television, where it’s safe to assume the original episode’s audience will have aged out of watching the show by the time the new version airs. (The revival of Blue’s Clues consisted entirely of word-for-word remakes of the original version, with new host Josh in place of old host Steve.)
Here’s a weird one: There was an episode ofBJ and the Bear where a young woman was accused of being a witch. She gets falsely accused of something and either the town or someone from the town burns her house down with her in it. At the end of episode BJ goes to the pond where they met and funds her necklace.
That plot- truncated to fit a half-hour show - shows up in an episode of Werewolf.
The Brady Bunch borrowed several plots from My Three Sons
- One of the kids is allergic to the family dog (but is ultimately found to be allergic to something else
- The youngest son is desperate to win a trophy because everyone else in the family has one.
- One of the kids discovers he has a double at school
The 60s Spider-Man cartoon did a lot of this. Episodes were made on the cheap and recycled action footage of Spidey was in every episode. Grantray-Lawrence Animation handled the first season but went bankrupt during that year and production was handed over to Krantz Films for the second season. The second season got cheaper where many of the villains – and even a whole story – were recycled from their other show Rocket Robin Hood. Season 1 episodes were also cut up and formed into new episodes.
In all fairness, they were doing everything possible to make it look like the wife was murdered, so not how the murderer usually tried to outsmart Columbo into making him think they didn’t do it.
Psych had two episodes that were basically the same. However, the second one was a remake.
The names of the episodes are:
Cloudy… With a Chance of Murder
Remake A.K.A. Cloudy… With a Chance of Improvement
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis did a surprising number of reboots for a four-season show. That allowed them to reuse plots, especially during the fourth season.
Dobie started out as a high school junior. During the show he graduated, did an Army tour, and enrolled in junior college. Plots dependent on his being about 16 were no longer workable. So they brought in a much younger cousin and had him stumble through the first season plots all over again.
This was the show with the smartest dialog and most interesting cast on television in the late 50s but for some reason the otherwise brilliant Max Shulman couldn’t do plots.
Shulman did book-length plots just fine. What he couldn’t do was come up with 148 short story-length plots about a sexually frustrated teenager.
Dobie Goes Incel might have been an interesting twist, but Zelda would have to kill him in the finale.