Speaker 1: It was you, Kristin, who shot you up. I watched
Speaker 1: a lot of TV growing up. When I was nine,
Speaker 1: I memorized the TV guide When my brother Lawrence told
Speaker 1: Missus Barnett across the street that he had a younger brother.
Speaker 1: She didn't believe him. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
Speaker 1: That's how little I went outside. I learned early on
Speaker 1: that the television universe is divided into hour long dramas
Speaker 1: I Trusted You, I Trusted You, and half hour sitcoms.
Speaker 1: On dramas, death is a fact of life. Consider that,
Speaker 1: over the course of the six seasons of The Sopranos,
Speaker 1: ninety two characters died. You shot him at his bad
Speaker 1: naked no chance to run, I swear gun. It's even
Speaker 1: grizzlier on Game of Thrones, where characters have a seventy
Speaker 1: percent chance of getting killed off and the records. But
Speaker 1: today we're talking about something far more mysterious, something that's
Speaker 1: haunted me ever since my childhood basement dwelling days, something
Speaker 1: that just shouldn't happen. I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries.
Speaker 1: This mobit sitcom depths and disappearances. I've brought in an
Speaker 1: expert to help me investigate the phenomenon of sitcom depths
Speaker 1: and disappearances. I'm Alan Sepinwall, chief TV critic for Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: I've been writing about TV since the nineties when there
Speaker 1: were like five channels, and now there's you know, five
Speaker 1: hundred different scripted shows on TV right now. I'm not
Speaker 1: the first person to say, but there's too much TV.
Speaker 1: There really is, you know, and it's good to hear,
Speaker 1: like people who are not TV critics say that. And also,
Speaker 1: the Western world's fertility rates are really low, so there's
Speaker 1: just not enough people to watch these shows. You know,
Speaker 1: who's going to watch Longmeyer. I don't have time to
Speaker 1: do it. And I'm sure it's a fine show, but
Speaker 1: there's so many other things, so many It's like when
Speaker 1: you hear about how big the universe actually is and
Speaker 1: it starts to hurt. Oh my god. And like the
Speaker 1: Netflix interface alone, it's like you you could spend like
Speaker 1: the length of a movie looking for a movie. Our
Speaker 1: topic here is sitcom depths and disappearances. One of the
Speaker 1: great mysteries. So I actually died once on TV. It
Speaker 1: was not on a sitcom. It was on an hour
Speaker 1: long drama on law and Order, criminal intent. I played
Speaker 1: a gossip column. It's named t K. Richmond. They even
Speaker 1: gave me a Fedora to wear. I've never ever watched this,
Speaker 1: I promise you. I swear I've never seen this, and
Speaker 1: I thought I would watch it with an esteemed television
Speaker 1: critic for the first time. So Helen, if if you
Speaker 1: join me for this, here we go. Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Oh God, that hat doesn't really work on me. Elliott, Elliott,
Speaker 1: calm down. There's nothing that says that these pictures have
Speaker 1: to run in my column, blackmail photos. We're in a
Speaker 1: car now. It's not a bribe, it's an opportunity. This
Speaker 1: is going to be the hot new place. The pictures
Speaker 1: go away, right right. I do have a little integrity.
Speaker 1: Did you just blow up? How was that? I just
Speaker 1: blew up? Oh? Do they show my charred remains? Oh no?
Speaker 1: Oh my hat? The hat survives. So that's good. What
Speaker 1: do you think did I pass as a New York
Speaker 1: Post gossip reporter? I mean your look was very sweet
Speaker 1: smell of success. Well, thank you. I love any Tony
Speaker 1: Curtis comparison. Okay, So lots of people die in hour
Speaker 1: long dramas. I think, Actually, that's right. That's the main ingredients.
Speaker 1: Somebody has to die in every law and order, and
Speaker 1: there've been three thousand of them. But for someone to
Speaker 1: die or disappear on a sitcom is much different. Why
Speaker 1: Because sitcom's, in theory, are meant to be a little
Speaker 1: bit lighter, more relatable, more relaxing. It's you're going to
Speaker 1: spend some happy time laughing at, you know, someone tripping
Speaker 1: over the couch, or forgetting to pick up the groceries
Speaker 1: or something relatively simple. Death is not that. In other words,
Speaker 1: sitcom audiences don't want characters to die, which is why
Speaker 1: in some rare cases the characters have just disappeared without
Speaker 1: any explanation, a syndrome given its own name, Cunningham syndrome.
Speaker 1: Happy There was Chuck Cunningham, the third Cunningham child on
Speaker 1: Happy Days, the eldest Cunningham child, who was in the
Speaker 1: show for two seasons and then was never heard from
Speaker 1: or mentioned again. Anna, who was Chuck Cunningham? You said
Speaker 1: the third child, But I'm glad you corrected yourself and
Speaker 1: said the eldest, because he was the first child. Not
Speaker 1: that Howard or Marion acted like he was particularly special.
Speaker 1: I mean he lived in the apartment above the garage
Speaker 1: before funds. He did. He was usually when you saw
Speaker 1: him either carrying a basketball or eating food, or possibly both.
Speaker 1: I gotta go to basketball practice. He was not really
Speaker 1: a prominent part of the show. And then a couple
Speaker 1: of years in the producers decided we don't need another
Speaker 1: Cunningham and we want Funzy to live above the garage,
Speaker 1: and so Chuck disappeared and never came back. You write
Speaker 1: the basketball in the sandwich or his chief accessories. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the thing we remember from him, Chuck, I've told
Speaker 1: you not to dribble in the house, all right, Dad.
Speaker 1: Do we remember anything about him really? Well? I think
Speaker 1: we remember that he disappeared. Yes, But when that's the
Speaker 1: most memorable thing about you, that sort of speaks to
Speaker 1: why they were willing to get rid of him in
Speaker 1: the first place. Good point, good, Well, do you think
Speaker 1: the fix was in for him? Did it feel like
Speaker 1: vultures were circling over him during those first two seasons? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean he started getting less and less to do,
Speaker 1: and that was a show that was obviously going through
Speaker 1: a lot of behind the scenes transformations over those first
Speaker 1: couple of years. Is that right? Yeah, Fonnzi's a relatively
Speaker 1: minor character when you start watching the show. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: even allow him to wear the black leather jacket when
Speaker 1: he was on the motorcycle because the network feared that
Speaker 1: he looked too much like a hoodlum and the audience
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to watch that. And once they decided to
Speaker 1: beef up Fonzie's role, and you have shift it from
Speaker 1: a single camp sitcom shot on film to a multicam
Speaker 1: shot in front of an audience. Bye Bye, Chuck. So
Speaker 1: I talked to Henry Winkler and I asked him did
Speaker 1: Chuck have to disappear? And here's what he said. They
Speaker 1: did not have room in the writing for the older
Speaker 1: brother because the fawns became the older brother. Everything that
Speaker 1: you would go to the older brother for, Richie went
Speaker 1: to the fawns for Yeah. I mean, if you had
Speaker 1: to choose between who you were going to get advice
Speaker 1: from about girls, about cars, about being cool, about being anything,
Speaker 1: why would you not go to Arthur Fonzarelli. All right, now,
Speaker 1: this is en up girl. One time, one time, Molly
Speaker 1: Line might not pick kiss the fonds. That's a bogging
Speaker 1: at any right right exactly, And so Gary Marshall, the
Speaker 1: creator of Happy Days, it was obviously great at what
Speaker 1: he did. So he makes the calculation that if this
Speaker 1: character disappears, the audience will be fine with it, something
Speaker 1: that I asked Henry about. Only years later did I
Speaker 1: ask Gary what happened? And he explained to me, Hey,
Speaker 1: what did he say? It was the older brother and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to write for him, and then
Speaker 1: the right for you, and we had to let him go,
Speaker 1: and there was a terror. Well the thing he went upstairs.
Speaker 1: He never a game down, and Gary understood that the
Speaker 1: audience would accept that. Gary understood television was so well
Speaker 1: or well enough to know that if you've got this
Speaker 1: problem and you write him out, you don't make a
Speaker 1: big deal out of getting rid of the character. It
Speaker 1: will be like slime. You can poke a hole in
Speaker 1: the slime and it closes in on itself and becomes
Speaker 1: whole again. So Alan was Henry right about this. Mostly obviously,
Speaker 1: people still brought it up. They bring it up all
Speaker 1: the time, and especially whenever in the later seasons Howard
Speaker 1: or Marion would make a reference to their two children.
Speaker 1: In the very last episode of the series, Joni and
Speaker 1: Chachi get married, and Howard makes a toast, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about all the happy days that he and Marion
Speaker 1: have had, and he says, but we've had the joy
Speaker 1: of raising two wonderful kids. And I was nerdy enough
Speaker 1: even at that age to say, what about Chuck? I mean,
Speaker 1: harsh Henry told me he gets asked all the time
Speaker 1: about Chuck's fate. Oh a million times, Hey, what happened
Speaker 1: to Chuck? Nobody is really interested, and they just love
Speaker 1: the question, do you know. I'm so sorry, but it's true. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: no one actually cares about Chuck. It's literally just the
Speaker 1: fact that they pretended he didn't exist. I think if
Speaker 1: they'd said Chuck moved away, Chuck goes to Seattle exactly,
Speaker 1: he could have just become an offstage character that they
Speaker 1: refer to occasionally. Yeah, I mean, you know, not all
Speaker 1: families are so tight knit that they're always around and
Speaker 1: always in each other's business. You know. Even if Chuck
Speaker 1: didn't never falling out, maybe he just had a full
Speaker 1: life of his own far far away from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: So for Phonsie to live, Chuck had to die. Yes,
Speaker 1: the sitcom universe is even harsher than the Law and
Speaker 1: Order Criminal Intent universe. Yeah, I mean, it's just like
Speaker 1: because he's not even dead, He's no longer in this reality.
Speaker 1: It's sad. Well, Alan, as I'm sure you know, the
Speaker 1: Internet is replete with theories about what happened to Chuck,
Speaker 1: So of course I had to run some of these
Speaker 1: by Henry confirm or deny some of these widely circulated
Speaker 1: theories among fans about what happened to Chuck Cunningham. One
Speaker 1: he died in Vietnam. No, still in his bedroom. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a serious one. Was gay and disowned by
Speaker 1: his family because it was the nineteen fifties. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I don't think he would have been disowned by the Cunningham's.
Speaker 1: I think that Missus C for sure would have embraced him.
Speaker 1: Would mister C really been okay with that? Mister C
Speaker 1: was very busy with hammers. Remember he owned a hardware
Speaker 1: store that was like always on the brink, right right, okay,
Speaker 1: So he was otherwise occupied, So Missus C would have
Speaker 1: handled this, okay. Gary Marshall always told people that Chuck
Speaker 1: Cunningham got a basketball scholarship in Mongolia. That sounds really right,
Speaker 1: And the sad truth is I think we're all used
Speaker 1: to sort of pretending that someone who has existed doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore. Yep, yep, I I've done that. Had we
Speaker 1: go to a very dark place. But it's true. We've
Speaker 1: all had an older relative tell us, don't talk about
Speaker 1: that person. That person doesn't exist anymore. Yes, there's these
Speaker 1: family feuds and suddenly we don't talk about this aunt anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, Chuck could have done something really awful. The
Speaker 1: Cunningham's are a very decent, you know, apple pie kind
Speaker 1: of family. Chuck could have been a deviant. Oh. By
Speaker 1: the way, that last episode of Jonie and Chocci getting
Speaker 1: married that led to the spinoff, No, no, no, the
Speaker 1: spinoff was in the middle of the show. It wasn't
Speaker 1: really Yes, they left Happy Days for like maybe half
Speaker 1: a year maybe more to go do Jonie Loves Chocci,
Speaker 1: which is the worst theme song in the history of television, right.
Speaker 1: I actually liked Joni Loves Chocci. I always thought there
Speaker 1: it would be fun. And there as yet another spinoff
Speaker 1: where Jonie moves to the shore and opens a little
Speaker 1: store where she sells knick knacks and bobbles, and it
Speaker 1: would be called Jonas I'm so glad. I love that
Speaker 1: you got it. You know what ever gets it? Oh
Speaker 1: my god. And now we take a moment to remember
Speaker 1: another dearly departed sitcom character, Judy Winslow, who spent four
Speaker 1: seasons on the nineteen nineties hit sitcom Family Matters. Family
Speaker 1: Matters told a story of a working class family in
Speaker 1: Chicago with three kids. Judy was the youngest. Hi, this
Speaker 1: is Jamie Foxworth, and most people might know me as
Speaker 1: Judy Winslow from the television show Family Matters. Jamie Foxworth
Speaker 1: started playing Judy when she was just a middle schooler.
Speaker 1: Judy was the sassy little girl with a quick wit
Speaker 1: and shark one liners what I'm called and I'm Craig lessively.
Speaker 1: But over time Jamie started to notice that Judy wasn't
Speaker 1: being given as much sass to throw around. I was
Speaker 1: getting less and less screen time. And it was always
Speaker 1: like Judy goes up to her room, Like I would
Speaker 1: literally be down, you know, in the live room with
Speaker 1: everybody else, and I would say, okay, guys, and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, Judy's right up the steps, just
Speaker 1: like the fawns in Happy Days. Family Matters had found
Speaker 1: its star, a pesky next door neighbor in suspenders and thick,
Speaker 1: grimmed glasses speaker the latter service. That's right, Erkele, because
Speaker 1: his unstoppable rise would mean the sad decline of Judy Winslow. Yes,
Speaker 1: you did, Erkele. It was during the taping of what
Speaker 1: would be her final episode that Jamie noticed people acting strangely.
Speaker 1: I do remember just the cast just coming up to
Speaker 1: me and like giving me so much love and hugs
Speaker 1: and affection, and I was like, what's going on here
Speaker 1: are you guys? Like why is everybody acting so weird?
Speaker 1: She remembers that Reginald vell Johnson, who played her father
Speaker 1: on the show, was particularly emotional. He was literally on
Speaker 1: his knees and he was in tears, and I just
Speaker 1: remember looking at him like, dude, what is going on?
Speaker 1: On February twenty six, nineteen ninety three, as fans, well,
Speaker 1: remember Grandma Winslow got married. Judy was a flower girl.
Speaker 1: She walked down the aisle and was never seen again.
Speaker 1: To this day, everyone asked me the same question, what
Speaker 1: happened to you? How could they just leave the daughter off?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, hey, you gotta ask those producers I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think they thought that people would
Speaker 1: just forget, and nobody forgot. The character of Judy was
Speaker 1: survived by her older brother and sister, her mother and
Speaker 1: father rcle Okay, as weird as a character disappearing into
Speaker 1: the either, maybe there's another occurrence which is equally disorienting,
Speaker 1: an actor who suddenly disappears replaced by another actor in
Speaker 1: the same role. This first famously happened on the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties hit fantasy sitcom Bewitched, when, after five successful seasons,
Speaker 1: the show's leading man underwent a casting change, giving rise
Speaker 1: to what would become known in TV lore as the
Speaker 1: two Darren's. I caught up with Lila Garrett, who wrote
Speaker 1: for Bewitched and experienced the ripples of the Darren effect firsthand. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Lila Garrett, and I'm a writer and a producer
Speaker 1: and a director. Some people think of me as a legend.
Speaker 1: I don't enjoy thinking of myself that way. Lilah, I
Speaker 1: would say that you're a legend. I know, I know
Speaker 1: it's a heavy burden, but I'm willing to courage. Lilah
Speaker 1: wrote for top scripted shows like Get Smart and All
Speaker 1: in the Family and the Lucy Show at a time
Speaker 1: when women were rarely seen in a writer's room. She's
Speaker 1: got two Emmys and a Writer's Guild Award to show
Speaker 1: for it, but out of the more than thirty shows
Speaker 1: she's written for, it's not hard for her to name
Speaker 1: her favorite. There is no show that I have ever
Speaker 1: done that I enjoyed more than Bewitched, and I enjoyed
Speaker 1: every minute of it. Bewitched was a big hit in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties into the nineteen seventies. It was about
Speaker 1: a young, happy couple housewife Samantha played by Elizabeth Montgomery
Speaker 1: and ad executive husband Darren originally played by Dick Yorke.
Speaker 1: The only problem on their honeymoon night, she tells him
Speaker 1: that there's something that she's kept secret from him. She
Speaker 1: is a witch. And rather than be excited about the
Speaker 1: possibility of having this vitiful wife who can also perform
Speaker 1: magic and do anything for him, Darren Stevens decides that
Speaker 1: he you know, he's a man, Gosh Darnett, and he
Speaker 1: does not want his wife doing magic. And the eternal
Speaker 1: struggle of the show is all these magical hijinks happening
Speaker 1: in the background, much to Darren's frustration, which means that
Speaker 1: Darren Stevens character is essential. Yes, because he is always
Speaker 1: exasperated by what happens. Yes, you've been sticking that magic
Speaker 1: nose of yours where it doesn't belong. Again, don't write
Speaker 1: a deny it all right, I won't come on, Sam,
Speaker 1: don't make me. Greg and Audio just Dick York was
Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, he's very good to me. He's sort
Speaker 1: of Jim Carry good. Yes, he's very expressive, very just
Speaker 1: sort of a memorable vocal comic, even to extent physical comic.
Speaker 1: He had a great face. Yeah, I mean real plastic.
Speaker 1: I would say a rubber face. Rubber Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: go anywhere. You know. Every expression of his was wonderful
Speaker 1: and clear in this It's funny. His responses to everything
Speaker 1: that was happening around him drove a lot of comedy
Speaker 1: on the show. Samantha, despite having the magic powers, she's
Speaker 1: the straight man on the show. He's the one having
Speaker 1: the fun because he can't believe what's going on around him.
Speaker 1: What a little favor I ask you to do? And
Speaker 1: what do you do? You? We go that beak of
Speaker 1: yours and really caused problem. He was spectacular and he
Speaker 1: was a spectacular man. As great as he was in
Speaker 1: the role, Dick York had a secret. Well. We first
Speaker 1: noticed the problems with Dick York Brilliant the second year.
Speaker 1: Suddenly he couldn't make it for the show that we
Speaker 1: were writing. And at first it just seemed as though
Speaker 1: he may have had the flu and so on. But
Speaker 1: when it became a habit, we recognized that there was
Speaker 1: a real problem there. Unultimately we found out what that
Speaker 1: problem was. York had sustained a serious back injury on
Speaker 1: the set of the nineteen fifty nine Western. They came
Speaker 1: to Cordura. Acting became harder and harder for him, and
Speaker 1: then practically intolerable some scenes and Bewitched. He could only
Speaker 1: do sitting or lying down. He took medication to manage
Speaker 1: the pain and ultimately became dependent. Dick Yorke started missing
Speaker 1: shows so often the writers had to create what they
Speaker 1: called non Darren shows. On these episodes, the writers would
Speaker 1: render Darren invisible for most of the half hour, often
Speaker 1: via witchcraft. With Darren out of the picture, they leaned
Speaker 1: on Samantha's colorful relatives to fill out the episode. There
Speaker 1: was Uncle Arthur, who was played by paul In one
Speaker 1: of the world's greatest comics. One morning, I shot a
Speaker 1: line in my pajamas, Now what he was doing in
Speaker 1: my pa And then there was and Dora played by
Speaker 1: Agnes Moorehead. Darwood is already a practical jew who was
Speaker 1: Samantha's mischievous, kind of playfully vicious mother. But there was
Speaker 1: only so much slack the secondary characters could pick up. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Dick York was hospitalized and left the show. So Dick
Speaker 1: York was gone. But what to do about the character
Speaker 1: of Darren. She can't divorce him. The whole structure of
Speaker 1: the show is based on this marriage, So what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? They really can't get divorced because even
Speaker 1: years later, when they wanted to make Mary Tyler Morris
Speaker 1: character Mary Richards a divorced woman, that alone was scandalous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're certainly not going to divorce a beloved couple
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show. We couldn't possibly kill
Speaker 1: off the first Darren because he was part of the
Speaker 1: concept of the show. This was a love affair. And
Speaker 1: then someone who looked a lot like Dick York was
Speaker 1: cast as Darren, and that was Dick Sargeant. So Dick
Speaker 1: Sargeant replaces Dick York and they just acted like it
Speaker 1: was the same Darren the whole time. But let's face it,
Speaker 1: you never forget your first Darren. This one wasn't the same,
Speaker 1: especially his connection to Samantha. Honey, You're beautiful, sweet, clever, adorable,
Speaker 1: and I love you madly. It works well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: work on me, but I love you. Did they lack chemistry?
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Montgomery with the second Darren was Dick Sargeant. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had to use the word lack, but their chemistry
Speaker 1: was different. Chemistry is chemistry. With Dick Sargeant, you felt
Speaker 1: as though, oh, let her use magic. Who cares? Darren
Speaker 1: the first was in much more agony and anxiety than
Speaker 1: Darren the second. Just listen to how the new Darren
Speaker 1: says his wife's name. Now listen to Darren classic. And
Speaker 1: Dick Sargeant would have been more appropriately cast as ahead
Speaker 1: of a detective agency. And he's a good actor, nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with him, but he wasn't right for the part
Speaker 1: of Darren, and that hurt the show. So did that
Speaker 1: change what he had to do in the writer's room. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got Darren number two in less trouble because he
Speaker 1: didn't handle it as vulnerably as Darren number one did,
Speaker 1: and therefore it wasn't fun, you know, and he became
Speaker 1: more of an observer than a participant. It never captured
Speaker 1: the same magic. No one ever denied that, and it
Speaker 1: did kind of shake a slow up, and once again
Speaker 1: it was that zany cast or secondary characters to the
Speaker 1: rescue and Dora, Uncle Arthur helping out here Alan doctor
Speaker 1: Bombay played by Bernard Fox. Alice Ghostly came in as
Speaker 1: as Morelda. There was a lot of sort of ancillary
Speaker 1: magical characters who had to pick up the slack that
Speaker 1: Dick Sargent was leaving them. You could basically do anything
Speaker 1: except stories about the Stevens marriage because that ceased to
Speaker 1: be interesting almost immediately after Dicky York left in. Dick
Speaker 1: Sargeant came in. These were all great satellite characters, but
Speaker 1: without that core. Yeah, you know, it's like here's a
Speaker 1: bunch of great side dishes that we now have to
Speaker 1: serve as your entree, I mean, Sergeant's first season as Darren,
Speaker 1: the show's ratings dropped from number twelve to number twenty four.
Speaker 1: The following season, it fell off the ratings Cliff and
Speaker 1: was canceled. This wouldn't be the first or last time
Speaker 1: a major character had had a casting change mid run.
Speaker 1: The Darren handoff may be the most remembered mid run
Speaker 1: casting change on a television show, but this kind of
Speaker 1: thing has happened on more than a few beloved sitcoms.
Speaker 1: I mean, the most famous one I think since then
Speaker 1: is Aunt viv on The Fresh Prince of bel Air,
Speaker 1: when Janet Hubert Whitten got replaced by Daphne Maxwell read
Speaker 1: and I think it was because she and Will Smith
Speaker 1: did not get along. And then with Roseanne, Yes, Roseanne,
Speaker 1: they replaced one Becky with another because Licy Gorenson I think,
Speaker 1: wanted to go off to college, and so Sarah Chalk
Speaker 1: came in and after a certain point they were rotating
Speaker 1: back and forth. After Gorenson started acting again, and then
Speaker 1: on the revival, Gorenson's playing Becky, but Sarah Chalk played
Speaker 1: another part right, and they were very witty about it.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineties, we're talking about the original run
Speaker 1: of Roseanne. There was even a scene, I think, where
Speaker 1: they're watching Bewitched and they're commenting on the two different Darrens.
Speaker 1: Instead of making an inside joke, a self referential joke.
Speaker 1: I cannot believe that they replaced that Darren. Well, I
Speaker 1: like the second Darren much better. There is something to
Speaker 1: learn from the case of the two Darrens, right about
Speaker 1: how a show really can be affected the whole show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously I understand no one wanted to stop the
Speaker 1: money train, but it did fundamentally transform once they had
Speaker 1: a lesser Darren come in and they had to figure
Speaker 1: things out from there. Oh. By the way, I remember
Speaker 1: a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where they're talking about the
Speaker 1: two Darren's, and either Larry or maybe Jerry Seinfeld was
Speaker 1: actually guesting on it said, no one wants to be
Speaker 1: a second Darren. I'd forgotten you mentioned that until now,
Speaker 1: isn't it when Larry winds up having to replace Jason
Speaker 1: Alexander is George when they're making the pilot with two Darren's. Yeah, unbewitched.
Speaker 1: Nobody liked that second Darren. I didn't care for the
Speaker 1: second day bought it. That's right, right, but it's true.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel a little bit badly for the
Speaker 1: dearly departed Dick Sargeant that he's become. Um, what's the
Speaker 1: word that he's defined that now that he's that, he's yeah,
Speaker 1: anyway that he represents that. Look, being the second Darren
Speaker 1: was very lucrative for Dick's argent. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: he would rather be that than to have not had
Speaker 1: a primetime TV job for those final seasons of a Witch. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. That's a great point. Being a
Speaker 1: second Darren is yeah, is a lot better than not
Speaker 1: being a Darren at all. There, thank you exactly. Can
Speaker 1: you please embroider that on a pillow for me. I'll
Speaker 1: work on it. For all their differences, Dick York and
Speaker 1: Dick Sargeant had something in common beyond that role they
Speaker 1: played on TV. They both led exemplary post Darren lives.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, Dick Sargeant, at age sixty one,
Speaker 1: came out until his death a year later, he advocated
Speaker 1: for gay rights, with his friend and TV wife, the
Speaker 1: wonderful Elizabeth Montgomery right by his side. Dick Yorke couldn't
Speaker 1: find much acting work after Bewitched and ended up poor
Speaker 1: living off of his pension check. All the more remarkable
Speaker 1: then that he and his wife Joan dedicated their remaining
Speaker 1: years to helping the homeless by collecting and handing out food, clothes,
Speaker 1: and betting. Dick York died on February twentieth, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Less than two years later, Dick Sargent died on July eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. Two. Darren's both pretty good eggs. All right, Allan,
Speaker 1: Now we're transitioning to a whole other class of sitcom death,
Speaker 1: the death of a character as part of the plot,
Speaker 1: especially jarring when that character is the title character. Oh
Speaker 1: r I p Valerie sweet So Valerie Harper, beloved star,
Speaker 1: co star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, star of
Speaker 1: Rhoda just beloved TV icon. In the middle late eighties,
Speaker 1: she had a comeback new family sitcom called Valerie, where
Speaker 1: she played the mom to three kids, one of them
Speaker 1: played by Jason Bateman. The husband was an airline pilot,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't around very much and it was just
Speaker 1: here's you know, Valerie Harper in the next phase of
Speaker 1: her career, sit Mom. The show ran two seasons. At
Speaker 1: the end of the second season, Valerie Harper said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I would like more money. I'm not being paid enough.
Speaker 1: My name is in the title. I feel I should
Speaker 1: be compensated more, and instead the studio said, no, we
Speaker 1: can do the show without you. The audience seems to
Speaker 1: like the kids better anyway, and so rather than pay
Speaker 1: her what she wanted, they wrote her out of the show.
Speaker 1: They killed off the character. They brought in Sandy Duncan
Speaker 1: as her husband's sister, I think, to move in as
Speaker 1: sort of the surrogate mom of the kids. The dad
Speaker 1: was around slightly more, and for a season or two
Speaker 1: they changed the title to Valerie's Family, and then eventually
Speaker 1: it's a subtitle, yes, Valerie's Family colin the Hogans, sort
Speaker 1: of like Twelfth Night, What you Will or Rambo First
Speaker 1: Blood Party title. Yes, And then within a year or
Speaker 1: so it just became the Hogan Family and references to
Speaker 1: their late great mother went the way of Chuck Cunningham.
Speaker 1: They completely disappeared. So it was the Hogan Family, Nay,
Speaker 1: Valerie's Family, the Hogans, nay. Correct a lot of as
Speaker 1: they say, iterations, why is this so funny? It's just again,
Speaker 1: because you can do death on certain sitcom Certain shows
Speaker 1: are equipped for it because they have kind of a
Speaker 1: level of gravitas, or because they do the death in
Speaker 1: such a ridiculous way like when Chuckles the clown dies
Speaker 1: on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Either way, you can
Speaker 1: sort of work death into a sitcom field. But this
Speaker 1: was a very light and silly and superficial sitcom about
Speaker 1: family life. And you know, am I going to get
Speaker 1: my driver's lightnse or not? Am I going to have
Speaker 1: a date to the dance? And suddenly mom is dead
Speaker 1: because the actress had a salary dispute, And it's injecting
Speaker 1: this really somber tone into the show, which the show
Speaker 1: almost immediately wants to make you forget about because it's
Speaker 1: this unpleasant thing they've done where they have to get
Speaker 1: rid of Valerie Harper because she was too expensive. And
Speaker 1: you make a good point that the form, the sitcom form,
Speaker 1: can sustain death, I mean all in the family. Yes,
Speaker 1: death is incredibly moving. No, yeah, she's just puttering around
Speaker 1: the bar and in the house and you don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on, and then you realize at the end, no,
Speaker 1: Edith's gone. It's amazing the right show can pull it off.
Speaker 1: Cheers Frasier. Certain sitcoms are built for it. This one
Speaker 1: really wasn't, and wasn't even interested in exploring it. So
Speaker 1: Sandy Duncan comes on in the third season. In the
Speaker 1: first episode of that season, they just make very passing
Speaker 1: reference to the death of Valerie in a car crash. Yes,
Speaker 1: Sandy Duncan has moved in the Dad is getting ready
Speaker 1: to go back, you know, flying airlines again, and you know,
Speaker 1: life goes on. Oh well, Dad, it's been six months
Speaker 1: since mom died, and I think it's time you got
Speaker 1: back in the air. Besides, we'll be fine. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got it, Sandy done. So they don't spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time morning hard and the father, who was always
Speaker 1: sort of a secondary character, is going back in the sky. Michael,
Speaker 1: you'll be back in a week. It's the first time
Speaker 1: I've left the boy since Bella's automobile accident. I know,
Speaker 1: keep done a terrific job. I just think it's time
Speaker 1: for everyone to get on with their lives. I have
Speaker 1: to say I love Towards the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: Sandy Duncan, who is fabulous. She acknowledges Valerie Harper's character,
Speaker 1: but barely. I mean, let's just say it's not exactly moving.
Speaker 1: I didn't make the decision to move here over nine.
Speaker 1: I thought long and hard about it. So then why
Speaker 1: did you for a lot of reasons, my feelings for
Speaker 1: your father and your mother and you kids obligatory. But
Speaker 1: then that same season, only two episodes later, the family
Speaker 1: is rummaging through the attic when something super unsitcommy happens.
Speaker 1: She can't get your lamp to work, mister wizard, couldn't
Speaker 1: get that lamp to work? Well, let's go, Oh no,
Speaker 1: the lamp is sparking, and even that music is suddenly
Speaker 1: not sit commy, Right, I think I think it's meant
Speaker 1: to be dramatic. Right, it's got a little Laura More
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, they all head downstairs to bad until
Speaker 1: the smell of smoke wakes Aunt Sandia and now they're
Speaker 1: actually really having to act. Yes, and now they're safely
Speaker 1: down on the front lawn as their house burns to
Speaker 1: the ground. This is very this is us And after
Speaker 1: the commercial breakword back in sitcom Land, how is your Jake?
Speaker 1: It's kind of it's kind of a weird mashup, right,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider that they've blown off Valerie's death
Speaker 1: in the season premiere, right, and it's and they're not
Speaker 1: even doing it in the episode. Sort of in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of her death. They decide, all right, well we're
Speaker 1: gonna do We're gonna come back at the start of
Speaker 1: the season. She's been dead six months, so we get
Speaker 1: to skip past the grief because grief is messy and
Speaker 1: awkward and not really what we do. And then a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes later, oh, we'll burn down the attic,
Speaker 1: which will let us redesign the sets but also give
Speaker 1: Jason Bateman a chance to play some grief. Now, it
Speaker 1: may interest you to know that I have talked to
Speaker 1: both Jason Bateman and Sandy Duncan separately about the Valerie situation,
Speaker 1: and they have the same recollection and it's the wrong
Speaker 1: recollection about how Valerie died. Really, they burned her dead
Speaker 1: in the house, and then they shot the episode where
Speaker 1: we discover her and that was odd for half hour sitcom.
Speaker 1: But wait that she died in a house fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'll fall apart crying. And it was a very
Speaker 1: special two part mo. I was playing the aunt and
Speaker 1: I moved in to take care of the kids because
Speaker 1: I love sitcom and they're so funny. She burned down
Speaker 1: in a house, so it was a fire that ended
Speaker 1: that contract. They both think that she got burned in
Speaker 1: a big old house fire. Oh my god, Sandy was
Speaker 1: shocked when I said no, she had supposedly died in
Speaker 1: a car wreck. Here's the interesting thing. You both remember
Speaker 1: the original title character of the star Valerie having died
Speaker 1: in a house fire. Yeah, all right now, I don't
Speaker 1: want to burst your bubble here, but she actually died
Speaker 1: in a car crash. I don't know if she serious. Yep,
Speaker 1: that is. You'd just dig to the truth, don't you.
Speaker 1: I had no idea, I swear. Do you think actors
Speaker 1: are just learned so many lines that they forget what
Speaker 1: they do? Are we just not too bright? I don't know. So, Sandy,
Speaker 1: here's my question. To get Valerie off the show? Did
Speaker 1: they have to have her character die? Well? I think
Speaker 1: because they had established this happy home life and happy marriage,
Speaker 1: there wasn't much of another way to exit her, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? They wouldn't have gotten a divorce,
Speaker 1: They didn't want her lying in a hospital with some
Speaker 1: incurable disease. So I think it was swift and to
Speaker 1: the point and got over it and went on. They
Speaker 1: had to kill her instantly instantly. It does seem like
Speaker 1: there's a blurrier line between comedies and traumas now so
Speaker 1: that now it's not as jarring or it can be
Speaker 1: treated in a more natural And also because Valerie's family.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, by the way, when you watch
Speaker 1: about it, I mean it's just a terrible show, sure,
Speaker 1: but you know, Jason Bateman was adorable and had great
Speaker 1: comic timing, so that gets you eight seasons, right. And
Speaker 1: Sandy Duncan, I mean was terrific coming in. Yep. I
Speaker 1: mean she did what she needed to do. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: love Sandy Duncan. I think, you know, if you were
Speaker 1: predisposed to watch that show because it was the Valerie
Speaker 1: Harper Show and they were now killing off Valerie Harper,
Speaker 1: you have to bring in someone who's supremely likable to
Speaker 1: get away with it, and Sandy Duncan definitely fits that. Bill.
Speaker 1: I'd like to end this episode talking once again about
Speaker 1: my own TV death on Law and Order. I just
Speaker 1: want to point out that I almost actually died in
Speaker 1: that role, really not because of the car crash, but
Speaker 1: because I was playing a chain smoking gossip columnist and
Speaker 1: because I'm a method actor, I prepared for the role
Speaker 1: by smoking lots of filterless cigarettes. And I mean lots,
Speaker 1: mind you, I'd smoked a couple of cigarettes in my life.
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, and that's it. So right before
Speaker 1: one of my scenes, I began throwing up, like truly
Speaker 1: projectile vomiting, and I just want to thank all these
Speaker 1: years later, I want to thank the crew of Law
Speaker 1: and Order Criminal Intent, because as I was hurling, I
Speaker 1: kept thinking, all these people want to start laughing right now,
Speaker 1: and they're not laughing, and I wanted to just be
Speaker 1: able to say, like, it's okay, you can laugh, because
Speaker 1: this is a ridiculous situation. So here's my question. If
Speaker 1: you know, God forbid you had actually fallen to your
Speaker 1: death because of the reaction for the cigarettes, who would
Speaker 1: you have wanted to play that role in your stead? Oh?
Speaker 1: My god, Well, Sandy Duncan, of course. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: I love Peter Pan, I love wheat thins, I love
Speaker 1: Sandy Dunk, love Run Scooby Doo. I love Run Scooby Doo.
Speaker 1: So I definitely would have wanted Sandy Duncan playing me. No,
Speaker 1: that's an excellent choice. Alan Steppenwall, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Mo my absolute pleasure. I feel heaven every moment. Next
Speaker 1: time on Mobituaries, the trailblazers whose paths were somehow erased,
Speaker 1: the forgotten forerunners. She's really the Rosa Parks of New York,
Speaker 1: and most New Yorkers, most Americans, have no idea. How
Speaker 1: much does this historical amnesia bother you? I mean, it's infuriating,
Speaker 1: It's absolutely infuriating. I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobid
Speaker 1: be sure to rate and review our podcast. You can
Speaker 1: also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Morocca. You can subscribe to
Speaker 1: Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. For more great content
Speaker 1: and to watch my fiery death on Law and Order
Speaker 1: Criminal Intent, please go to mobituaries dot com. This episode
Speaker 1: of Mobituaries was produced by Kate mccauliffe. Our team of
Speaker 1: producers also includes Gideon Evans, Meghan Marcus, Meghan Dietree, and
Speaker 1: me Morocca. It was engineered by David Herman, indispensable support
Speaker 1: from Genie Staneski, Kira Wardlow, Richard Rohr, and special thanks
Speaker 1: to Alan Seppenwall and Dan Dzula. Our theme music was
Speaker 1: written by Daniel Hart and as always, undying thanks to
Speaker 1: Rand Morrison and John carp without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi,
Speaker 1: It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I
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