Pretty much around the time that Dick Sargent came in the picture. It was likely because she was getting sick of doing the show (ABC apparently wanted a ninth season but couldn't do it because Elizabeth didn't want one) and her marriage to William Asher was falling apart.

Yes she seemed very bored. There was little chemistry with Dick Sargent. She did seem to rebound in the Salem Saga but that was about it. I thought season 8 was her worst.

I saw an interview that Elizabeth gave years after Bewitched ended where she says that she was never bored with the show and was always learning something while doing the show, which I thought was so wonderful of her to say.

To me Elizabeth always seemed like she was "present" and participating but she was acting the part of a woman who had been married for a few years so she had settled into that life.

I think that the show had run its course by season 5. Losing Dick York was a huge loss creatively, but they carried on rehashing the same themes over and over for 3 more years. Elizabeth did seem to be running on automatic by season 8 and the show was more harsh character-wise than ever before. Everyone was so mean. I'd guess her crumbling marriage to Bill Asher was greatly affecting her overall enthusiasm for the show.

It's interesting too that if you watch the first movie she did after Bewitched - The Victim - Elizabeth still seems to be channeling season 8 Samantha (although a powerless Samantha). It was the last performance she gave in which you could see bits of Samantha in her performance.

I'm probably reaching here but did the assassination of John F. Kennedy play a serious factor in Elizabeth Montgomery's growing disillusionment with Bewitched? Elizabeth and her husband show producer Bill Asher (http://www.palmspringslife.com/Palm-Springs-Life/December-1999/The-Man-Who-Invented-the-Sitcom/) were good friends with JFK. Asher had even produced Kennedy’s birthday bash where Marilyn Monroe sang ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President.’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday,_Mr._President) Rehearsals for the pilot episode of Bewitched actually began on November 22, 1963 — just hours before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

There were more Tabitha episodes in the final 3 seasons so I was a happy camper :wave:

Remakes?????...........What Remakes????
Thank God we had 3 more seasons of Bewitched with Dick Sargent
I do not see what I want to see rather what is actually to be seen & is on the screen itself.

Others see what they choose to through a prism that is distorted by the affection that they feel for DY, hence I believe the place from where all the hatred for DS comes from by the Yorkies who express it.

What I saw was DS as Darrin clearly in love & devoted to Samantha with great affection for her & totally devoted to being with her evermore.

Most Yorkie's have the view that you express but most Bewitched fans in total, although may prefer DY, still very much like & enjoy DS as Darrin & his seasons a great deal.

He was very popular with the original generation of Bewitched fans that count the most the & although they are not as vocal as the Yorkie's they exist just as much to the same extent.

Although the ratings which are a relative thing to other shows did go down, the actual number of Households & people watching Bewitched were actually higher in the DS years then the early DY years for example.

As well the changeover prior to season 6 was not publicized & was largely unknown to the Bewitched Fan base till it happened. So when the fans tuned in to see the first episode of Season 6 they were expecting to still see DY, the ratings for this episode where they were tuning in to see DY were exactly the same as they were for the rest of the season when when they were tuning in to see DS, as they knew of the switch after seeing the first episode.

As well after the switch over there was no reaction from Bewitched fans, nobody called or wrote & cared or had a problem with it.This according to Screen Gems executives of the time like Bill Asher, Harry Ackermen, Richard Baer & Richard Michaels.

Thank goodness that the show did not end after season 5, that would have been a huge mistake & instead it should have been as it was done with the show continuing onwards for 3 more Wonderful Seasons.

Yes, Liz & DS were very good friends in a personal sense while she & DY were merely fellow workers who otherwise were not acquainted & were nothing more, which is why they had zero contact after DY left the show.

The Dynamics of the show as to how the characters such as Darrin, Samantha & Endora etc. interrelated & the Premise of the show was unchanged by the changeover from DY to DS, everything was maintained as it had been with consistency.

The 8th season was excellent & very enjoyable, all this Liz was bored,unhappy, hated being there, was a hateful Samantha & changed the character is a lot of Rubbish & is not what one sees on the screen, rather one sees the opposite of all this hateful comments.

Furthermore Elizabeth Montgomery is on record in many interviews that she loved doing all 8 years of the show, was never ever bored for a minute or unhappy doing the show during the 8 seasons & that it was a great experience throughout the entire run of the show & that she would not change anything about her experience in doing the show.

Her words are the truth & after all she should know as they were her feelings.
In fact what one sees is a happy & joyful Samantha, more so even then the previous seasons & that is saying something.

Good examples of this are Bewitched,Bothered & Baldoni, Three Men & a Witch on a Horse, where Adams powers were tested & the final episode, all that i have described is clearly delineated in those episodes.

#72 "What every Young man should know" from season two is a remake of the Pilot.

Remakes began as early as that not only in the last three seasons as so many say.

I would say from season 3 on there were 2,2,3,3,4,4 (out of the first 22 episodes in season 8) remakes, it was only at the end of season 8 that they were largely the case with 3 of the last 4 episodes being remakes.

These facts just show how creative & diverse Bewitched was, that although they stuck to their main premise through all 8 years they still never became formulaic or just rehashed themselves on a regular basis, quite the opposite was the case with varied &
unique episodes being the norm the vast majority of the time rather then them being glorified remakes of each other as has been suggested.

I must say as well that episodes where a spell was placed on Darrin or when he was transformed, ones time travel back & into the future, witch illness ones etc. were never remakes but all unique & creative episodes in the form of sub premises of the main premise, otherwise you might as well say that each time Samantha twitched her nose or Darrin kissed her that this made it a remake episode.

This would make as much sense as it would be to say the ones i referred to above were remakes as well,
& not the word for word of the entire episodes(which none of them ever were)which so often are claimed to be the case by those people who claim most if not all of the episodes the last 3 seasons & especially they say the last season were remakes..............they weren't needless to say.

Even when they were remakes they changed them around so much that they were dissimilar and ony had the odd line in the odd scene that was word for word the same with 98% of the dialogue utterly different from the original episode, this was not like the Japanese or Russian versions of Bewitched where they took the original scripts for each Bewitched episode and then remade them literally word for word scene for scene, when Bewitched even had a rare remake then this was not the case, far from it.


I don't think the issue was the lack of new writers but rather that if you were going to stay true to the fundamental premise & the original characterizations then one was limited in what one could do over 8 years.

The alternative would be to go off on a completely different tangent that would not have been good or healthy for the show.

The fact that they stayed true to their original intent & premise is laudable in my view.

Actually a good quarter to a third of the shows the last few years were from new writers.

To me Little Pitchers Have Big Fears", "Soapbox Derby" are the same as It's Magic and Prodigy,the sort of Good Sam helps the Mortals sub premise and therefore would not constitute a remake, same as a spell on Darrin would not even though it had been done before & the basic aspects of it were the same in premise such a spell, complications for Mortal Darrin, he freaks, he & Sam work to fix it out, she uses magic as a last resort to do so, Witches ,laughing at all the mischief they created, mortals saying did i just see that................that sort of thing, but they were not remakes either.

Elizabeth Montgomery was a brilliant comedienne and demonstrated this fact on numerous occasions over her long illustrious career.

Bewitched, When the circus came to town, her special guest appearance with Fred Astaire on Mr.Lucifer,Robert Montgomery Presents:"Our Hearts were Young & Gay,1954, Thriller: Masquerade 1961,are just a few examples of this fact.