While pointing down that all way (ie directly at the camera/audience).
Same actor/different character is an institution on the Law & Orders. I Love Lucy did that alot; Lucille Ball had a habit of casting close friends of hers in bit parts and recurring roles. Golden Girls also did that with Harold Gould; he played Rose’s date Arnie in an early episode, then had a recurring role as her boyfriend Miles Webber. Speaking of Miles one episode it was revealed that his entire identity was fake and he was in the Witness Protection program and the mobster he testified against was out of prison. He disappeared for awhile; then snuck back in one episode to see Rose (who was now dating the mobster he was hiding from), mobster tries to kill them, and ends up back in jail. None of this is ever mentioned again and he goes back to his old fake life with everyone calling him “Miles” as if it was his real name.
MASH did that, as well. In one episode early on in the series, a visiting, highly decorated Colonel is found to be going senile. Apparently, he got better, because a few years later he’s in charge of the 4077 as Colonel Potter.
No, IIRC you’re both right: Sam Malone is surprised to learn that Martin Crane is still alive, which prompts the “argument” explanation – and then Martin is surprised to learn he was a scientist rather than a cop in that story, which prompts Frasier to add, hey, you were dead, what did it matter?
In the pilot episode of “CSI.” Catherine Willows goes home to see her two children, a son and daughter, who are sleeping. Later, Catherine only has a daughter.
In the pilot episode of “MacGyver,” he and Peter Thorton don’t know each other. Yet, in “Partners,” Thorton is shown to be the one who hired him.
“Family Matters” knocked off their kids left and right.
IIRC, “Boy Meets World” dealt with the syndrome with one of the friends who disappeared early in the show’s run and reappeared near the end of the series. Where was he? He was off camera, down the school hallway. I think one of the characters said, “Oh, we don’t go there.”
You’re right. I think I was confusing it with the Taxi episode where Louie has dinner with Zena’s parents, and her mother threatens to send a hit man after him if he proposes to Zena.
Sherman Hemsley did NOT play George Jefferson when GJ made his first appearance on All In The Family.
However, later on, the guy who was introduced as George Jefferson suddenly became Henry Jefferson (George’s brother), and Sherman Hemsley stepped in as George Jefferson.
Yeah, and S. Epatha Merkerson and Annie Parisse had guest shots before assuming their regular roles. I don’t think a simple recasting constitutes a continuity break, else Jeffrey Combs and Marc Alaimo would all by themselves make up 50% of Star Trek’s retcons…
Well, duh. We had Ed Gein and Jeffy Dahmer and Liberace and Senator Joe McCarthy, not to mention the real-life haunted house that The Amityville Horror was based on, and the Beast of Bray Road, the Mangy Werewolf of Black River Falls…
and Chuck Cunningham.
I think Mr. King should just call his upcoming novel “Cunningham”. It’s more dramatic than “Chuck”. Either way, you’ll never guess what reeeeeally happened…bwah hah hah!
And Vincent d’Onofrio got cut in half by a Baltimore subway on Homicide: Life on the Streets, which is in the same TV universe as the Law & Order series’ (just ask John Munch).
Also, Kathryn Erbe played a young AIDS victim on H:LOTS.
The Cosby Show had an un-Chuck event. At some point early in the series Cliff and Claire have a conversation along the lines of “Why do we have four children? Because we didn’t want five!” And later in the series they introduce oldest daughter Sondra, making them five.
To totally fanwank the “bitch Hester Crane on Cheers” versus “delightful dead mother we hear about on Frasier” situation…
She was right, wasn’t she? Diane was an awful woman and no loving mother would ever idly sit by and let her son get married to her. Frasier was going to get his heart broken by Diane at some point, maybe Mrs. Crane just wanted to rip that band aid off right away.
In an episode of MAS*H where Klinger is pretending to believe he’s still a civilian back in Toledo so he can get his Section 8 discharge, Col. Potter pretends to go along with his scheme and starts asking him questions to fill out paperwork. Klinger says his name is “Max Klinger, with one X”, but in other episodes, he says his full name is Maxwell Q. Klinger.
