Re: 15 Backdoor Pilots That Never Became TV Shows

[David]

"Ubiquitous" wrote in message news:ptjqut$8do$2...@dont-email.me...

Once in a blue moon, you'll tune in to a new episode of your
favorite television series, only to find that hardly any
recognizable characters are present. Instead, the episode is focused
on a slew of strangers connected tangentially, if at all, to the
established players. These newbies spend the episode fostering their
own lives, relationships, problems, and plot contrivances in a brand
new setting. It almost feels like a completely separate television
show. because, in fact, it is. Or at least it hopes to be.

Occasionally, the men and women behind the curtain of a given
television network will sneak a de facto pilot into a popular
existing program, testing the premise on a guaranteed audience. Some
of these endeavors, known as "backdoor pilots," come to fruition and
spawn full series, such as Mork & Mindy (which started with a Season
5 episode of Happy Days) and Maude (from a Season 2 episode of All
in the Family). But many spawn nothing, remaining forever bizarre
and awkward departures from the series that housed them. Here are a
few backdoor pilots that fall into the latter, more regrettable
camp.

1. THE BRADY BUNCH AND KELLY'S KIDS

https://youtu.be/tZcu7DR1WYU
A favorite example among television historians came in the Season 5
episode of the hit sitcom The Brady Bunch. Mega-producer Sherwood
Schwartz, who along with the blended family classic created
Gilligan's Island, wanted to develop a show that celebrated racial
diversity. As such, he introduced the Bradys to Ken and Kathy Kelly,
a white American married couple and new adoptive parents to three
young boys: one white, one black, and one Asian American. Despite
Schwartz's ostensible influence over network television audiences,
the "Kelly's Kids" episode did not beget its own show.

2. THE NANNY AND THE CHATTERBOX

https://youtu.be/O3PpdUx25HM
The Nanny committed a much more egregious instance in its second
season, stepping away from the Sheffield household almost entirely
to lend focus to the quirky staff members of a local beauty salon
called the Chatterbox (for which the episode was named). The
dynamics were largely in step with that of The Nanny, promising
romance between a busybody female lead and her uptight male employer
and single father.

3. GILMORE GIRLS AND WINDWARD CIRCLE

https://youtu.be/pGTDZe03Cq0
Smack dab in the middle of Rory Gilmore's most divisive
relationship, Gilmore Girls took a quick jaunt out of Stars Hollow,
Connecticut, down to a corner of Southern California torn straight
from William Asher's Beach Party movies. The Season 3 episode "Here
Comes the Son" united Jess Mariano with his deadbeat dad and hippie
stepmom in an experiment dubbed Windward Circle, which The WB hoped
would be a warm modern family dramedy in the vein of Gilmore Girls
itself. But seeing as Jess wasn't exactly a favorite for many
Gilmore Girls fans, his spin-off never came to fruition.

4. SMALLVILLE AND MERCY REEF

A short while later, The WB took another stab at the maneuver on
Smallville, introducing DC Comics's well-known Aquaman character in
the superhero series' Season 5 episode "Aqua." The effort seemed
mostly bent on piquing general interest in the character, as the
network would recast its Aquaman (replacing Alan Ritchson with
Justin Hartley) during development of his proper series Mercy Reef.
Unsurprisingly, nothing came of the show, leading Smallville to
revisit Ritchson's Aquaman character in later seasons.

5. THE INCREDIBLE HULK AND TWO MARVEL COMICS SUPERHEROES SHOWS

Smallville was hardly the first superhero series to mine its comic
book history for potential spin-off fodder. The Marvel Comics-based
drama series The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby and Lou
Ferrigno, gave the likes of Thor and Daredevil a whirl in its late
'80s TV movies The Incredible Hulk Returns and The Trial of the
Incredible Hulk. Neither hero got his spotlight back then, but time
certainly did make it up to each of them.

6. GOSSIP GIRL AND VALLEY GIRLS

https://youtu.be/DEWl3t3Rk5A
Late in its second season, Gossip Girl leapt back in time to the
1980s for a self-contained story about young Lily's (played in
flashbacks by Brittany Snow) misadventures in Los Angeles with her
sister, played by Krysten Ritter. While the episode received a
relatively positive reception, The CW opted not to bring Valley
Girls to life as its own series-this despite announcements to the
contrary made before the Gossip Girls episode even aired.

7. THE OFFICE AND THE FARM

Though the series finale of The Office was only a few weeks away,
NBC was still unready to throw in the towel on its esteemed
mockumentary sitcom. The network tasked Paul Lieberstein, who at the
time was the show runner of The Office, with developing a test pilot
for Rainn Wilson's popular character Dwight Schrute.

The ninth season episode "The Farm" focused on Dwight's life outside
of Dunder Mifflin: It reunited him with his marijuana farmer brother
and relatively normal sister and introduced a new love interest in a
local farm girl. Ultimately, the series was scrapped, allowing
Dwight to find true love with his on-again-off-again romantic
partner Angela in the Office finale.

8. THE COSBY SHOW AND TONY ORLANDO

In the late Season 1 episode "Mr. Quiet," The Cosby Show couriered
viewers to an activity center under the pretense of a lecture to be
delivered by Cliff. The Huxtables were shuffled to the background,
however, in favor of guest star Tony Orlando and his fellow center
staff members, the lot of whom were actually spotlighted in end
credits title cards (as if the message wouldn't have been subtle
enough otherwise).

9. CHARMED AND MERMAID

Charmed producers insist that the supersized Season 5 premiere "A
Witch's Tail" wasn't originally meant to be a backdoor pilot, but it
sparked an attempt at a series about a mermaid ("Mylie" in the
episode, "Nikki" in later development) existing among mortals and
contending with supernatural forces much in the way the Charmed
sisters did.

10. THE MANY ATTEMPTS OF CHARLES IN CHARGE

The Scott Baio sitcom with the impossibly catchy theme song actually
spent much of its final season trying to launch new series for its
central cast members, but with one catch to make the whole ordeal
feel even more bizarre: The actors were tasked with playing
identical relatives of their established characters.

In the 19th episode of Season 5, "Lost Resort," Charles in Charge
star Willie Aames played an hotelier in Hawaii, and the lookalike
cousin to his regular character Buddy. Four episodes later, in
"Almost Family," Ellen Travolta played her own twin sister Sally, a
car wash proprietor. Finally, in the penultimate episode of the
series, "Fair Exchange," Nicole Eggert doubled down as an identical
cousin living in New Mexico with her family and a foreign exchange
student. None of these went to series.

11. THE MANY ATTEMPTS OF THE FACTS OF LIFE

Yet another multiple offender, The Facts of Life made three attempts
at launching series for new characters: the Season 2 finale "Brian
and Sylvia," about Tootie's aunt and uncle, an interracial couple;
the Season 3 episode "The Academy," about a nearby all boys school;
and the Season 3 episode "Jo's Cousin," which focused on the 14-
year-old only girl in a family of machismo-imbued New Jersey men.

12. SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH AND WITCHRIGHT HALL

Sabrina the Teenage Witch offered a somewhat more organic example
with a recurring character, Sabrina's cousin Amanda (played
sporadically throughout the series by Emily Hart). Fans hadn't seen
or heard from Amanda in over a year when she resurfaced in Season 5
at the center of her own episode, "Witchright Hall."

The premise of the episode, and the show it was meant to yield,
surrounded teenaged Amanda's experiences at a boarding school for
maladjusted witches. Sabrina joined Amanda on her initial visit to
the academy, but acted mostly as a vehicle to introduce the audience
to new characters like Professor James Hexton, played by Charles
Shaughnessey, and a talking dog named Phil, voiced by Blake Clark.
Nothing became of the Witchright Hall idea, but both Hart and Clark
did reprise their roles in later episodes.

13. MAGNUM, P.I. AND J. "DIGGER" DOYLE

https://youtu.be/ZlEbxLexnQA
Now known best for her role on Silver Spoons, Erin Gray was almost
the star of her own action/crime series, thanks to a friendly nudge
from a first season episode of Magnum, P.I. Named for her character,
the "J. `Digger' Doyle" episode introduced Gray as a security expert
called upon to assist Magnum in the prevention of an assassination
attempt on the unseen character Robin Masters, voiced by Orson
Welles.

14. STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES AND TERI GARR

An episode in the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series
devoted to the 1968 adventures of terrestrial super spies played by
Robert Lansing and Teri Garr went so far as to promise more
"interesting experiences in store" for its two guest characters, as
professed forebodingly by Mr. Spock in the episode's final moments.
As certain a proclamation of intended spin-off as this might have
been, Star Trek was unable to make a proper series stick for Lansing
and Garr's respective characters, Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln.

15. DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEK SPACE OPERA

Of the 797 episodes to broadcast under the Doctor Who umbrella,
spanning 26 seasons between 1963 and 1989 and nine serials since
2005 (not to mention a TV movie back in 1996), only one has been
absent of both the Doctor and his contemporaneous companion. That
episode was "Mission to the Unknown," which aired as part of the
original incarnation's third season.

In lieu of the Doctor's continuing misadventures, the episode
focuses on an impending conflict between planet Earth and the
imperialistic alien race, the Daleks. Characters included Earthling
military officials, Dalek conquistadors, and a variety of new alien
species. The hope was to warm audiences to the idea of such complex
interplanetary struggles in advance of a space opera series on the
subject. Ultimately, the Daleks remained confined to the Doctor Who
margins.


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Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.

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I knew about the possible spinoff from the Gilmore Girls. The
others, either I never watched the show, or just missed the spinoff
attempts.