Wrapping up Death Week

I thought I'd use this day to touch upon some other notable deaths and why I chose not to blog about them. One of the most famous is probably Nicholas Colasanto AKA "Coach" from Cheers pictured above. There is no doubt that he was vital to the show's success but I was always surprised about how well Woody Harrelson filled that void, especially considering he was almost playing the same character. Cheers got lucky twice that way. The show simply went on.

Night Court lost Selma Diamond and her Replacement Florence Halop in the course of two years (which must have made Marsha Warfield nervous about getting the role) but the show had such a revolving door of cast members at the time that it didn't seem to phase the series and it ran for six additional years. Four of which I enjoyed...

And of course, the biggie would be John Ritter, who died one season in to "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter". I wasn't as interested in this story because Ritter was doing better films than he was TV at this point in his career, the show seemed like a paycheck to a guy of his calibur and should have been cancelled immediately after he passed away.

Anyway, enough death, next week we get serious.

Death week: NewsRadio

This one still bothers me when I think about it. I believe that NewsRadio was one of the finest shows of the decade, consistantly funny with a terrific ensemble. One of the bright points being Phil Hartman's tour de force as Bill McNeil, pompous and slightly crazy news man for the station.

When Phil Hartman met a tragic end in the summer of 1998, I was not completely surprised to hear that the series would return, it was a strong show. I purposely didn't watch the opening episode, where they dealt with Bill's death (he had a heart attack on the series) as a long time fan of Hartman, it was just too real.

The resulting season just kind of fell apart but it wasn't the fault of Hartman's replacement (and friend) Jon Lovitz, who played his Max Lewis character as a kind of sad weirdo.

Something seemed to go wrong with NewsRadio's once crisp writing this year and it just wasn't itself. There seemed to be an over proliferation of big gags and plot twists including the season ending where Jimmy James retires.

Season 6 was going to switch locations for the series to a small New Hampshire AM station but NewsRadio was cancelled.

Death Week: The Royal Family

1991 was set to be the year of Redd Foxx's comeback, after being brought back into the public eye in "Harlem Nights" Foxx had a new CBS series "The Royal Family" with Della Reese. The show had good buzz and started out with solid ratings.

Then Foxx had a heart attack, seeing as he was known for faking them, he didn't get immediate help and died on set. A pretty awful way to go.

CBS tried hard to save the series, their ad campaign silent stating something to the effect "Our family has had a loss but like all families, we will move on" but the death of a main character can crush very popular shows let alone ones seven episodes in. The Royal Family ran for 15 episodes...

Death Week: Gimme a Break

Like Chico and the Man, a lot of the humour on "Gimme a Break" revolved around the friction of it's leads, in this case Nell Carter and Dolph Sweet. So when Sweet passed away from stomach cancer after the fourth season, the show completely lost it's bearings.

This lead to the show to slowly get rid of much of the supporting characters, namely the chief's daughters and co-workers and just like Chico and the Man, start adding some cutsey poo kids (The Lawrence brothers who would continue to plague tv for over a decade afterwards) to brighten things up.

In the end, the show had Nell, Addy, grandpa and the boys living in New York City with Nell's mother and a cast of wacky neighbours. It didn't resemble the series it once was at all, it's like biting into a mars bar and finding honey mustard. There was no longer a need to give breaks, so why go on?

Death Week: Chico and The Man

I was mistaken yesterday, Jack Soo's death actually wasn't the first celebrity death I remember, it has to be Freddy Prinze. Chico and the Man was a staple in my household, it's comedy deeply entranched in the chemistry between Prinze and Albertson.

So when Prinze took his own life in January of 1977, the show sort of limped along and finished the season explaining Chico had gone to Mexico. It couldn't return right? right?

Never underestimate the greed of Hollywood, despite the show no longer having "Chico", "The Man" returned and now he had precocious 12 year old Raul to deal with. To keep things zany, they also added Charo, no seriously they added freaking Charo to the cast. The show was mercifully cancelled as it should be no surprise, the sad loss of Prinze tainted everything and no amount of "Cuchie-Cuchie" could make people watch.

I will give props for the series later dealing with the fact that Chico was in fact dead during it's final episodes but it really was an exercise in poor taste that they even had a fourth season.

Death Week

I thought I'd be a ray of sunshine and talk about death in sitcoms, not "Henry Blake" type deaths but ones where the actor's unexpected death actually takes the wind out of a series.

The first one I can recall is actor Jack Soo who played Detective Nick Yemana on "Barney Miller" for 80 episodes before falling to Cancer in 1978. "Miller" had a truly great ensemble cast and Soo was a big part of that, his laid back style and incredibly wry wit were sorely missed. Without a doubt, Yemana was my favourite character on the series, watch the clips, the humour is actually timeless.

Perhaps because of the great ensemble and good writing, "Barney Miller" would run another 80 episodes and remain a quality program, this is one of the few examples of a show that survived a sudden cast member death as we'll explore the rest of the week.