Examining The Spinoff: "Television's low-rated, quickly canceled misfit children"

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By Noel Murray

The hot topic of the television season has been the sputtering performance of Joey, an amusing-but-directionless half hour that hasn't lived up to the memory of Friends, the show that begat it. Joey will probably get renewed for a second season, but when the plug inevitably gets pulled, the series will go down in TV history—fairly or unfairly—as one of the medium's classic spin-off blunders. On the flip side, if Boston Legal gets cancelled at the end of this season, or even the next, will anyone remember years from now that the show was a sequel to The Practice? Probably not, because Boston Legal isn't a "Diminishing Returns" spin-off like Joey; it's more a "Second Verse, Nothing Like The First" spin-off. What does that mean? All is explained below, as The Onion A.V. Club presents the six main spin-off categories, and some of their most egregious examples.

The "Stealth" Spin-off

When Frasier ended its run last year, it didn't feel like the final end for Cheers, because Frasier was distinct enough from the show that introduced its titular character. Similarly, people rarely think of Family Matters as an extension of its parent show, Perfect Strangers, or Daria as a cousin of Beavis And Butt-head. Does a mention of Models Inc. conjure up its direct associations with Melrose Place? Or Melrose Place with Beverly Hills, 90210? Good Times and Maude? The Facts Of Life and Diff'rent Strokes? Not really, because the Stealth Spin-off takes recurring characters from popular shows and puts them in situations where they can stand or fall on their own.

But Who Remembers...? The Tortellis. In his periodic Cheers turns as Rhea Perlman's womanizing, oddly erudite ex-husband, Dan Hedaya brought the house down; Cheers guest shots by Jean Kasem (as Hedaya's naïve bimbo wife), Timothy Williams (as his idealistic teenage son), and Mandy Ingber (as Williams' pragmatic teen bride) were equally hilarious. But when the Tortelli clan was on its own in Las Vegas, the family's loose morals and weird speech patterns made American viewers want to spend more time at a local bar—preferably one without a TV.


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The "Diminishing Returns" Spin-off


Matt LeBlanc in...Top Of The Heap
Joey's stiffest competition for champion of this category is After MASH, the infamous M*A*S*H spin-off that lasted for a season and a half, as a nation adjusted to the loss of its favorite show by watching a handful of its regular characters hang around a V.A. hospital. (At least it fared better than Gary Burghoff's post-M*A*S*H vehicle W*A*L*T*E*R, which never got past the pilot stage.) More typical of the Diminishing Returns Spin-off: A Different World—which lifted Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show's cast and sent her to college, far away from Bill Cosby's warmly idiosyncratic humor—and Fish, a short-lived Barney Miller spin-off which took the deadpan detective played by Abe Vigoda and saddled him with five multiracial foster children.

But Who Remembers...? Checking In. For four stilted episodes, The Jeffersons' sassy maid Marla Gibbs went to work at a hotel supervised by M*A*S*H veteran Larry Linville (not playing his M*A*S*H character, sadly). After the show washed out, Gibbs returned to The Jeffersons, explaining to her old bosses that the hotel had burned down.


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The "Second Verse,
Same As The First" Spin-off

Archie Bunker's Place was essentially All In The Family Part II; Carroll O'Connor was behind a bar instead of in a comfy chair, but his character still spent his days grumbling. The other All In The Family spin-offs—Maude and The Jeffersons—were also little more than minor variations on a theme, making heroes out of opinionated loudmouths. In tone and style, Laverne & Shirley was basically Happy Days in downtown Milwaukee instead of the suburbs. For The Golden Palace, the cast of The Golden Girls (minus Bea Arthur) bought a hotel, but dealt with the problems of old age as much as the comic gripes of hotel staffers Cheech Marin and Don Cheadle. The goofiest second-verser? Saved By The Bell: The College Years, which incongruously kept the silliness and moralistic sermonizing of the high-school-bound Saved By The Bell (and its parent show, Good Morning Miss Bliss).

But Who Remembers...? The New WKRP In Cincinnati. Because everybody knows the real stars of the original were Gordon Jump, Frank Bonner, and Richard Sanders, not Howard Hesseman, Tim Reid, and Loni Anderson. As God as their witness, they thought this turkey could fly.


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The "Second Verse,
Nothing Like The First" Spin-off


For a while in the late '70s, TV producers took beloved sitcom characters and tried them out in different genres. The best of the bunch was Lou Grant, with Ed Asner reprising his Mary Tyler Moore role as a grumpy newsman, now in L.A. and holding down the city editor's desk, where he delved into hot-button issues from 1977 to 1982. In 1979, Pernell Roberts replaced Wayne Rogers as former M*A*S*H surgeon Trapper John, M.D., and tackled torn-from-the-headlines medical problems in San Francisco. Then there's The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which revived the sitcom as a song-and-dance show so memorably crummy that it's been parodied by The Simpsons and released on DVD.

But Who Remembers...? 704 Hauser. More than a decade after the end of All In The Family, creator Norman Lear put a new family in Archie Bunker's old house, casting John Amos as a liberal head-of-household dealing with his conservative son. The premise flip didn't generate nearly the same sparks, though Lear was smart enough to employ Maura Tierney a year before the debut of NewsRadio.


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The "Forgotten" Spin-off

Rhoda spun off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and made it after all, but when Cloris Leachman's egotistical MTM character Phyllis moved west, the audience stayed behind in Minnesota. As for Moore herself, after her 1978 variety show Mary flopped, she essentially spun it off as The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, for which she played the star of a variety show. Empty Nest—a One-off Spin-off of The Golden Girls—lasted long enough that it can't really be called "forgotten," but its spin-off, Nurses, almost certainly is. And as though The Brady Bunch Variety Hour weren't enough, the Bradys got a third lease on life with 1981's The Brady Brides, with most of the original cast back for a look at the trials of young adulthood.

But Who Remembers...? The Art Of Being Nick. Scott Valentine's one-note junkman/artist character from Family Ties—essentially a ham-handed parody of Sylvester Stallone—got his own shot at a series in 1986, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus along for the ride in her first significant post-Saturday Night Live TV project. The pilot aired once, and is currently part of an "environmental sculpture" in somebody's landfill.


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The "One-off" Spin-off


The most insidious and common of the spin-off types, the One-off comes about when characters are introduced into a long-running show solely for the purpose of launching a spin-off. Robin Williams premiered his Mork & Mindy alien on Happy Days (which itself spun off from Love, American Style), Diff'rent Strokes had a visit from future Hello, Larry radio host McLean Stevenson, and no one knew the Growing Pains kids had such a close relationship with their school's football coach until he left town to head up Just The Ten Of Us. When Green Acres launched, its first few months of shows were crossovers with Petticoat Junction. And in one of the odder One-offs, the hippie child-care comedy Day By Day—Julia-Louis Dreyfus' second significant post-SNL TV project—was revealed in its second season as part of the Family Ties "universe."

But Who Remembers...? Top Of The Heap. Introduced on Married... With Children as Al Bundy's closest friend, apartment superintendent Joseph Bologna quickly moved to his own show, which had Bologna trying to get son Matt LeBlanc married to a rich woman. After a short run, the show was retooled as Vinnie & Bobby, with LeBlanc reprising his character, now out on his own. Vinnie & Bobby tanked, and LeBlanc was never heard from again.