FTA-TV TV Shows That Went In Strange Directions

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

The Bob Morrison Show.
Starting around.... episode one

Haha

I remember an episode of Frontline where Marty was perusing a printout of the television ratings and he remarks, "The Bob Morrison Show is proving me wrong."

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Surprised no one has brought up Scrubs yet.

Eight seasons with JD narrating (apart from about one episode every season narrated by another cast member) his life at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital, culminating in a nearly note-perfect finale when he leaves the hospital for another job.

Then the ill-advised ninth season, which changes the location to a medical university (although it keeps the name), changes most of the cast with Turk and Cox the only holdovers (although some of the former regulars occasionally pop in for guest spots) and changes the narrator to one of the medical students who have become the main characters.

Might have worked as a spin-off, but as the ninth season of a long-running show it was jarring to say the least.

 

[Gasometer]

Not so much strange but the episode in sopranos where it goes into Tonys sub-conscious in season 6. One of my favourite episodes with some awesome acting from the cast.

Was that the one with the Eiffel Tower acting as a beacon? Creepy. Awesome episode

 

[Gasometer]

Surprised no one has brought up Scrubs yet.

Eight seasons with JD narrating (apart from about one episode every season narrated by another cast member) his life at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital, culminating in a nearly note-perfect finale when he leaves the hospital for another job.

Then the ill-advised ninth season, which changes the location to a medical university (although it keeps the name), changes most of the cast with Turk and Cox the only holdovers (although some of the former regulars occasionally pop in for guest spots) and changes the narrator to one of the medical students who have become the main characters.

Might have worked as a spin-off, but as the ninth season of a long-running show it was jarring to say the least.

Pathetic wasn’t it. I take the last episode where JD exits with all of the hospital saying goodbye as he walks the corridors as the Finale to a show I just loved.

Fwiw Kerry Bische who led Season 9 was stellar in Halt and Catch Fire

 

[Shell]

For Friends- the Joey falling in love with Rachel storyline. So weird and just so stupid. Then they actually got together, but couldnt have sex. Again, stupid. I like Friends, but it really should have stopped about series 7-8.

 

[Shell]

Australian dramedy 'The Secret Life of Us' was a huge hit when it commenced in 2001, but ratings had softened somewhat by the end of 2003, with a number of popular characters departing from the show in the past two years.

Big changes were made to the show for 2004. Seven characters (two original, three added in 2003, two recurring guest stars) departed, two of the three remaining originals had greatly reduced roles, a host of new 'cool' characters joined and the show went from one male and one female narrator to just one female narrator. These changes made the revamped show seem like a spin off - a very bad spin off - and fans were not impressed. They hated the new 'cool' characters who were just suddenly there without explanation or back story, the changes to the show's structure and that established characters were gone without explanation or further mention. Ratings were abysmal and the show axed after only a month.

Perfect summation of Secret Life of Us. The last of the "good" storylines I can think of was Kelly being attacked/threatened by that guy who was staying with them- Samuel Johnsons "friend". After that it was all downhill.

S1 and 2 were fantastic tho.

Will never forget the look Gabriel gives Alex as she walks into the pool to swim laps- giving her the evil eye. Not a word is spoken but is such a memorable scene.

 

[Butters and Pepper]

I actually thought of E Street after I posted this last night. Like you said it was a standard enough soapie in its early years, then changed towards the end of its run to become totally unrealistic with the serial killer, a lifelong paraplegic inexplicably finding himself able to walk and IIRC aliens and werewolves too.

Chances was similar to this too.

Started off about a family winning the lottery, and lots of nudity, and ended up going completely off the rails with the ridiculous storylines

 

[emuboy]

Perfect summation of Secret Life of Us. The last of the "good" storylines I can think of was Kelly being attacked/threatened by that guy who was staying with them- Samuel Johnsons "friend". After that it was all downhill.

S1 and 2 were fantastic tho.

Will never forget the look Gabriel gives Alex as she walks into the pool to swim laps- giving her the evil eye. Not a word is spoken but is such a memorable scene.

I remember Gabriel and Jason making such a mess of their separation. In one episode, Jason takes to stalking Gabriel - it wasn't menacing, more bumbling, such as hiding behind bushes and bus stops to set up chance meetings. He stops doing this, but then starts dating a girl who looks very much like Gabriel who turns out to be crazy and stalks him. The big challenge for the Secret Life producers was to find a jobbing actress who looked like Sybilla Budd who played Gabriel. They succeeded in this aim, and found a lookalike actress for this three episode role.

And who was the little known actress who played Gabriel's crazy doppelganger? Asher Keddie, who would be a Gold Logie winner in the future.

 

[Shell]

Oh yeah.. that was a crazy chick working at the law firm yeah?


I need to see TSLOU its been a while

 

[emuboy]

Oh yeah.. that was a crazy chick working at the law firm yeah?


I need to see TSLOU its been a while

Yeah, she was the crazy girl at the law firm. Jason was terrible at relationships, he also had an affair with another girl who was the most sour, humorless, cold and unfriendly woman you could ever imagine and ended up fathering her son.

Even worse though was Richie, I've never seen anyone mess up in all aspects of his life more than Richie. He ended up getting an acting job on a kids show wearing a dog costume IIRC, before he was one of the characters who vanished as if he never existed at the end of Series 3.

 

[emuboy]

In the mid-late 1990s there was an American sitcom called 'Unhappily Ever After' which ran from 1995 to 1999. I don't know if it was ever screened in Australia, if it was I don't remember, if you recall it screening here please reply.

The show was about a dysfunctional family; a long-suffering father/husband, a fed-up mother/wife, a manipulative teenage daughter, a dumb teenage son and a younger son in middle school who tends to be ignored by the rest of the family. From the start the show had a bit of an odd premise; the father was a schizophrenic and would talk out his problems with a stuffed toy rabbit, his daughter's favorite childhood toy, and would imagine the rabbit coming to life and talking to him.

However, while this was a pretty wacky storyline, things got really odd later in the show's run when the mother/wife died, but rather than be killed off she remained on the show as a ghost haunting the house. When this concept wasn't working, this was simply ret-conned and she was inexplicably alive again, only for her to depart for good in the last series by reason of she and her husband separating and filing for divorce.

An interesting side piece of trivia from this show is that the youngest son was played by Justin Berfield, who the year after this show ended was cast in a far more famous sitcom, 'Malcolm In The Middle', playing Reece. While Berfield's character on 'Unhappily Ever After' was intelligent, he would ironically play one of the dumbest sitcom characters in history in the form of dim-witted bully Reece. In flashbacks, we see how Reece would avoid learning something by singing the Minty-Mint song in his head, and in a later episode Reece joins the army and is delighted to find that he no longer has to think for himself, his military superiors think for him and all he has to do is follow their orders. And it is easy to imagine Reese enjoying watching a sitcom that involved a schizophrenic father having conversations with a stuffed toy rabbit, and a ghost mother.

 

[DEVO]

Popular. Was musing take on high school in season 1 to some weird ass stuff in season 2.

My daughters favourite show when she was around 7-8 year old, but a couple of things about the show frustrated her. First, the parents getting married meant the two protagonists were now "sisters" and after some early tantrums they started getting on well together and as a result the series lost a bit of it's "edginess" and the second was the final season ended on a cliffhanger, a car accident, but there was no resolution so she has no idea what happened to one of the characters.