Today, the AV Club posted an interview with Richard Masur (http://www.avclub.com/article/richard-masur-transparent-norman-lear-and-survivin-231228) ("David). It's a long interview, but has a lot of ODAAT content. Most interesting? That ODAAT originally started as a pilot where Bonnie Franklin would have played a divorced nurse, and her boyfriend a doctor at the hospital.

Today, the AV Club posted an interview with Richard Masur (http://www.avclub.com/article/richard-masur-transparent-norman-lear-and-survivin-231228) ("David). It's a long interview, but has a lot of ODAAT content. Most interesting? That ODAAT originally started as a pilot where Bonnie Franklin would have played a divorced nurse, and her boyfriend a doctor at the hospital.


We briefly touched on the original pilot in this topic-

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=147577

I, for one, personally, would have loved to have seen Ann's bedside manner as a nurse.

I love how Masur fought for his mostly emasculated character and tried to give him an ounce of dignity even when the writers basically used him as a prop for Wicked Ann and her mood swings.:mad:

Incidentally, the last David (and Nick for that matter) episode airs today, you know the one where he finally, if abruptly lets go of Annie the Red Menace.:mad:

Poor Nick, incidentally. What a horrible way to be written out.:( Couldn't Nick have just been off screen in the building with Alex popping in on a regular basis. They could have Nick pop in too a couple times of year having moved on to work somewhere else because he and Ann famously did not get along.

No need to kill him off permanently even though it provided some good drama.

Alex's mother was such a narcissist to abandon him like that. I know it was mutual on their part at first but then she dropped him like a hot rock for a couple of years. Sad.

Elinor Donahue was very appealing in the part however, more maternal than they later portrayed Felicia to be, they should have brought her back from time to time, especially at the end when they wrote Alex out.

On the Gilbert Gottfried (https://soundcloud.com/gilbertgottfried/richard-masur) podcast (https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gilbert-gottfrieds-amazing-col-123634/episodes/richard-masur-84692234), he said he begged Norman Lear to let him out of his contract — without specifying why. He wanted to leave immediately, perhaps with one last show to explain David's absence. Lear made him serve out the season, but finally agreed to let him go. Masur said his last request was to have David killed off "so he could never come back", but Lear didn't agree to that.