I recently watched the 3rd episode of 3rd season called "Burned Out", where the Hogan's house burned down. Oddly, the episode ends with the Hogan's getting ready to move into a hotel while the house is rebuilt, but by the next episode everything is back to normal like nothing ever happened...even the suggestion box is where it always was.

What was the point of this episode? I know there was supposedly one Season 3 episode that Valerie Harper taped before getting fired - was this it? It's hard to believe they would go through the trouble of torching an entire set only to disregard the life-altering event immediately afterwards.

This is typical of sitcoms, where something substantial/somewhat substantial happens and then everything is back to normal. The set was not torched it was just dressed to make it look like a fire. I do not think this episode had anything to do with Valerie Harper. Part of the story line is that David found a charred picture of his deceased mother. I do not know of any point other than telling a story or a plot for a sitcom. It is kind of refreshing to see a sitcom plot that is not tired or done over and over.

This is typical of sitcoms, where something substantial/somewhat substantial happens and then everything is back to normal. The set was not torched it was just dressed to make it look like a fire. I do not think this episode had anything to do with Valerie Harper. Part of the story line is that David found a charred picture of his deceased mother. I do not know of any point other than telling a story or a plot for a sitcom. It is kind of refreshing to see a sitcom plot that is not tired or done over and over.

I read somewhere that they did burn the set completely and the McDonald's Corporation financed to rebuild it. But that episode struck me as extremely odd.

I guess it struck me as an event that would have made a major change in the direction of the show had Valerie still been there. Instead, there were now two tragic events happening very closely together- not exactly a recipe for laughs.

There was also a major fire on the series Webster, and in the aftermath of that fire they actually moved to a different building for the rest of the series.

I just got the impression that if the episode wasn't first taped with Valerie in it, at the very least the producers had committed to the episode before firing Valerie. Then they simply tweaked it to fit Valerie's death into the story, but then hastily abandoned the story line going forward in order to lighten the mood of the show.

I always thought about that too! I found it really weird that all of a sudden, they were back in the house after that. They probably could have gotten some good episodes if they had done a couple from a hotel, or something like that.

A Very Special Episode - The Hogan Family "House Fire" Episode (http://allisonswrittenwords.blogspot.com/2014/10/HoganFamilyBurnedOut.html)