I would say the 1966 regeneration of William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton during the last few seconds of Dr Who “The Tenth Planet”. Completely unexpected and wonderful, set the tone of the show for the next fifty years.
Good one, because I actually remember reading somewhere that they weren’t supposed to get into a long-term relationship, but fan reaction was so overwhelmingly positive, that the writers changed the course of the show.
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Which got me thinking: was was the most shocking, unexpected, upsetting, game-changing, show-changing turn in a television series? What event (probably a death) completely gobsmacked the audience and the world of casual viewers?
Amateur Barbarian, does it have to be an abrupt, one-time event to count here? I can think of two examples that were not deaths but which were unexpected game changers for two tv series. Each completely altered the focus of its respective tv show. I refer to the casting of two actors:
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In 1978 Anthony Geary was cast as Luke Spencer in General Hospital. For the benefit of younger or overseas Dopers, he became an extraordinary sensation following only a handful of appearances, had his picture on the cover of Newsweek and countless other magazines, got more adoring fanmail IIRC than anyone in the history of daytime tv and more than most primetime stars. When he made public appearances he was met with the sort of frenzy that one associates with the fans of Mick Jagger. The producers completely changed the focus of GH to showcase Geary. He is still playing Spencer, and while he doesn’t inspire rock god hysteria these days, his continuing popularity is probably the reason that the show wasn’t canceled a couple/three years ago when a lot of soaps got axed.
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In 1989 Jaleel White played Urkel and took over Family Matters. I’m sure most Dopers, the Americans anyway, remember so I needn’t go into detail. It was pretty much the same situation as with Geary.
Neither Geary nor White was a name before undertaking the Spencer and Urkel roles and each was hired to play a disposable short-term minor character and each ended up the star of the show.
Removed the spoiler for space. And, to add another shocker,
They get to Earth. And find that it’s a blasted radioactive hellscape.
That show did know how to shuffle the deck.
And, sure, I’ll jump on the “Buffy’s mom” bandwagon.
“Mom? Mom? Mommy?”
But I’m not sure if that really compares to Willow.
Really? That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect in the pilot, when the producers are trying to hook the most eyeballs. I can’t remember ever seeing it again. Too expensive, is what I remember hearing.
I remember reading at the time that the producers and the network were pretty irked at his leaving. The downing of Blake’s plane was a way to tell Stevenson, “Sorry, you’ve burnt your bridges here. No writing you back in if the sitcom you’re deserting us for fails.” Which it did.
Anyway, I liked Sherman Potter better.
I made the mistake of clicking on these spoilers.
Damn me, and my curiosity!:mad:
When Thomas Magnum shot Ivan in cold blood. Even though he had planned the whole thing out, you knew Magnum was too honorable to actually go through with it, regardless of how much Ivan deserved it. It made my mother cry.
It made my teenage self cheer and pump my fist.
You must not have had a crush on Tom Selleck like my mother did.
NYPD Blue - when Sylvia, Andy’s wife, was gunned down in the courthouse. She gasped, ‘take care of the baby’ and was gone. I didn’t see THAT coming!
At the time, for reasons I’ll never understand, MacLean Stevenson was regarded as the heir apparent to Johnny Carson on*** The Tonight Show***!!!
That was such a stupid idea that SNL had a sketch in which NBC president Fred Silverman was portrayed as an undercover agent from ABC, secretly sabotaging NBC from within. Making MacLean Stevenson the new host of ***Tonight ***was supposed to be a clever way of destroying NBC forever.
At any rate, when Stevenson left, he had some reason to think he was moving on to bigger and better things.
I had a kind of man-crush on Tom Magnum…
But no, my real crushes were reserved for Erin Gray and Lynda Carter at the time.
Me too. Getting Harry Morgan was casting brilliance.
Stevenson had a brief show called Hello, Larry, where he was a divorced father with custody of his two daughters. I think it was supposed to be NBC’s twist on the very successful One Day at a Time. I was in the target audience for it, and I watched it it, but it wasn’t great. The only good thing about it was Kim Richards as one of the daughters-- she had been one of the kids on Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain, something burned into the collective consciousness of GenX. NBC even tried a horrible crossover with the inexplicably successful Diff’rent Strokes (a show I hated) to try to save Hello, Larry, but it didn’t work. Every plot of Hello, Larry was a watered down afterschool special, which goes to show how much the shows writers didn’t understand what was good about One Day at a Time. Then, there’d be some “sore-thumb” shtick for Stevenson per episode, which made no sense given the target audience, and was there only for the few adult MAS*H fans who might have been watching. The show was a mess.
After that, it was “McLean who?”
Um… yeah. He’s stilll pretty damned attractive, and with the weight he’s put on with age, Blue Bloods can give him the utterly imposing look of Bruce Wayne in TDKR. It’s to the good.
(OTOH, the season 3 writing completely sucks so far… I hope that passes.)
I hear he sings like Caruso. 
If you read the back story on Henry Blake’s death, the actors didn’t even know it was coming. Radar was handed the script just before walking into surgery. The reactions from everyone were authentic.
That was a good one. There was speculation that Carter would die, but as I remember it that was based mainly on the fact that Reese had clearly developed feelings for her, and everybody knows that in this type of show being the love interest of a main character is the Grim Reaper’s kiss of death.
Lost actually shot 3 different versions of the season-ending “coffin reveal” to fuck with anyone who might try to leak the scene before the episode’s air date. Locke, Sawyer, and Desmond were all shown lying in the coffin in different takes.
Leaffan, that’s fascinating! I did not know that.
Yeah, Shelley Long and McLean Stevenson are the reason for the showbiz adage, “Never walk out of the hit show.” That’s a piece of advice that seems to have taken hold; you notice that Jim Parsons, with his four Emmys, is staying put.
It’s also just a bit of a myth. Yes, it was concealed from everyone. The script page was only given to “Radar” at the last moment. But what we saw on TV was… the second take. The first got screwed up by something. So the reactions were fresh, but not completely so.