In the coming years, people will probably remember Joey as one of the worst sitcoms of all time. Why? Because it took a character from a hugely successful series, Friends, and put him in a show that was about as bland as a sitcom could get.This isn't the first time that a series that spun off main characters from a popular series has fallen on its face. In fact, aside from Frasier and maybe Archie Bunker's Place, the "falling on face" outcome seems to happen more often than not.
(UPDATE: To clarify, I'm talking about a show spun off from a hit show AFTER the hit show ends. I'm thinking of shows like The Golden Palace, Three's A Crowd, etc. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.)
Take the case of AfterMASH. After M*A*S*H ended its long run in 1983, people were still clamoring for tales of the people from the 4077th; so when plans were announced to follow three characters -- Col. Potter, Father Mulcahy, and Max Klinger -- back to life in the U.S. after the end of the Korean War, fans were overjoyed. In fact, ratings for the first half-season or so, which aired in the same Monday at 9 timeslot as M*A*S*H, were so high, the show ended the calendar year 1983 in the #1 slot.
There was a little problem, though: the show was boring as hell.
Despite the fact that AfterMASH had many of the same writers and directors as the original show, the episodes didn't crackle with the expert comic timing and back-and-forth dynamic the original had. In fact, the stories were a little depressing: Mulcahy, who went deaf in the last episode of the orginial series, developed a drinking problem over his condition, only to be saved by Potter, who had come out of retirement to adminsiter a veterans' hospital in his home state of Missouri. Klinger, who married his Korean girlfriend Sun-Lee, comes to Missouri because his relatives shun him for marrying a Korean and can't get housing because of the couple's mixed-race status.
Funny stuff, right? I mean, M*A*S*H dealt with serious issues as well, almost to a fault. But at least they could couch those issues in terms of the war that was going on around the characters. Without bombs going off and choppers with wounded coming in, the immediacy was gone, rendering AfterMASH too serious for its own good. Viewers noticed this, and as the 1983-84 season ended, the high-flying show's ratings were in a steep decline (it finished in 15th place at the end of the season).
And the casting of the supporting roles didn't work out all that well; viewers finally got to see Col Potter's wife Mildred, but she was recast between seasons one and two, as were some of the surrounding characters that were supposed to be civilian versions of Hawkeye, Frank Burns, etc. According to the show's IMDb page and Wikipedia entry, there were plans underway to bring back old M*A*S*H characters in season two (Radar already came back for a two-parter), but the show was cancelled before those episodes were written.
In all, thirty episodes were created, and all but the finale eventually aired. But for a show that started from such a high perch in September 1983, to be cancelled by December 1984 meant that CBS knew the show couldn't be salvaged. For over twenty years, it was seen as one of the most spectacular flame-outs in TV history. Now, with the failure of Joey, AfterMASH has some company in the halls of infamy.
You just wonder, though, when TV producers and network executives will start to learn from their predecessors' mistakes. If the little kid from Two and a Half Men gets his own show in five years, the answer will probably be no.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-30-2006 @ 3:20PM
Jake said...
I don't think Joey was that bad.. it just didnt live up to expectations. You cannot tell me that Joey was worse than According to Jim, any Fox comedy sans Arrested Development, and a myriad of other ABC and CBS comedies that currently pollute the airways. And honestly, other than How I Met Your Mother and the Office, Scrubs and The Office, I don't think there are any good comedies on TV right now. (Two and Half Men is mindless rehash and Earl is just not that funny)
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5-30-2006 @ 3:21PM
Samuel McConnell said...
Radar's appearance, though, was just promotional for his own spinoff series, which never filmed more than a pilot.
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5-30-2006 @ 3:32PM
Regina said...
Sure, but are we considering Trapper John, MD in the same vein as Frasier? If so, can't we say that was a successful show? I don't remember the ratings, but do remember watching it for more than a season or two. Maybe the success comes from taking a character and moving them away from the "norm" of the first show - Frasier went across the country, and except for a few guest shots, none of the Cheers gang was a member of the cast.
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5-30-2006 @ 3:36PM
Joel Keller said...
Regina, that's an interesting thought, but I never really thought of that show as a spinoff of M*A*S*H, mainly because a) a different actor played Trapper, and b) he rarely if ever mentioned his time in Korea. That doctor could have been named "Ben Smith" and the show wouldn't have been any different.
A better example of what you are talking about is Lou Grant, which took the character from the Mary Tyler Moore show, moved him across the country, and put him in the middle of a drama. That show lasted a number of years after MTM ended.
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5-30-2006 @ 3:54PM
David Tattersall said...
What they said about "Joey" is so unfair. It was a good show and wasn't given a chance. NBC are stupid. They are no longer the channel they used be. They lost Frasier, Will and Grace, Friends and now Joey. They are STUPID!!!!!!!!!
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5-30-2006 @ 3:57PM
Lloyd said...
Does Joanie Love Chachi count? Wasn't that around more than one season?
Or does a spin-off like Mork and Mindy work since Mork wasn't a regular character on Happy Days but got his start there.
Spin-offs generally aren't as good. Part of what made M*A*S*H* so good was the conflict between characters that didn't like each other (Hawkeye and Burns, Hawkeye and Winchester, etc.) but in AfterMASH they were all friends.
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5-30-2006 @ 3:57PM
Joel Keller said...
Folks, this post isn't for bitching about Joey. Does anyone have anything to say about the show I actually wrote about?
And Lloyd, the spin-offs I'm talking about are the ones that happened after the long-running parent show ended, shows like "AfterMASH", "Joey", "The Golden Palace", "Three's A Crowd", etc.
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5-30-2006 @ 4:00PM
Alan said...
We're all waiting for "After Lost," when the cast of Lost manages to get home and we see their lives after life on the island.
(You know, I shouldn't say these things out loud, for fear that some TV executive reads them and actually thinks it's a good idea.)
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5-30-2006 @ 4:02PM
Gig said...
No Joel, it looks like we don't.
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5-30-2006 @ 4:51PM
Ellie said...
Here you go, Joel:
AfterMASH was a terrible show for the reasons stated above, simply that MASH itself was simply about normal people being thrown together in terrible circumstances. Take away the terrible circumstances and all you have left are boring, normal people and frankly I don't need to watch those on TV.
People also forget that the dialogue and 'plots' (such as they were) in AfterMASH were downright terrible and the three main actors also happened to be the weakest actors from MASH (with the exception of Harry Morgan perhaps) and without Alan Alda, Mike Farrell et al to play off, it just came across as bland drivel.
They repeated this mistake with Joey, in my view. Matt Le Blanc is simply a terribly boring actor and the weakest of the Friends 6.
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5-30-2006 @ 5:47PM
elf said...
Joel, of course you're not going to get much of an on-topic response if for no other reason than the fact that the show hasn't aired anywhere in nearly 22 years except perhaps some hamster-wheel powered UHF station that a) Doesn't air continuous religious or home-shopping programming and B) Could no longer afford those high syndication fees for old "Hazel" and "My Mother The Car" reruns. If the average TVSquad reader is 30 years old (and I bet that's a high estimate), that would mean that AfterMASH first aired when that average reader was 7 or 8 years old, and likely to be very uninterested in the show. Hell, I just hit 40, so the show started when I was 17 and I have only vague memories of it, other than Radar making a return appearance and realizing that it just plain sucked. Actually I also remember thinking it should have been set something like ten years after the war since all the actors looked ten years older than they did when they debuted on MASH despite no more than three years having passed on the show.
And since everyone else is addressing Joey, I'll throw in my two cents. Matt LeBlanc is a good, funny actor. The Joey character just wasn't strong enough to be the center of a show. Joey was designed to be one-sixth of a whole, and despite ten years of character development on Friends, Joey just wasn't a fully-rounded character that could easily be transplanted to a new scenario. The reason Frazier worked so well was because the creators took a peripheral character from Cheers and moved him to the center by adding Niles, who was even more Frasier-like than Frasier, making Frasier seem normal by comparison. I think Joey might have worked better had they tried to find a character that was more Joey-like than Joey and let the original Joey mature a little bit.
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5-30-2006 @ 5:55PM
Allen said...
Joel you mentioned that part of the reason that AfterMASH failed was its serious topics. And is you mentioned, MASH did that almost to a fault. IMHO, MASH in fact reached that fault in its last two years - there were very few laughs in those years, it was always serious. AfterMASH just continued that.
But a bigger problem often with spinoffs ike AfterMASH is that they take what were secondary characters and make them the main characters. Hawkeye, BJ/Trapper and Margaret were the center of MASH. Supporting players rarely can support their own show unless they are absolutely incredible, deep characters (which those 3 weren't) or there is a new set of supporting characters that really round out the show (there were none on AfterMSH).
Alan - AfterLOST!!! Brilliant!! The suits are drooling.
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5-30-2006 @ 8:28PM
LC said...
"We're all waiting for "After Lost," when the cast of Lost manages to get home and we see their lives after life on the island."
LOL Now we are talking, though I would change the title to "FOUND".
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5-30-2006 @ 10:05PM
Superstomach said...
I dont even remember Aftermash. The kid from 2.5 men is well on his way to becoming a fine actor.
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5-30-2006 @ 11:00PM
Charles said...
As far as spin-offs go, AfterMASH is certianly one of the classic textbook examples of flameouts.. But as far as TV shows PERIOD, regardless of genres, Commander-in-Chief is one of the best examples of how a #1 show gets the boot really quickly.
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5-31-2006 @ 2:03PM
CCK said...
I think we should list all of the successful spin-offs just to show Joel what an idiot he is. Seriously dude, know what you are talking about before you write something
I'll start:
Benson from Soap
Facts of Life from Different Strokes
The Jeffersons from All in the Family
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5-31-2006 @ 2:33PM
Joel Keller said...
CCK, I was referring to shows that spun off of a successful show AFTER the parent show ends. It's a very small subset of spin-offs, and none of the shows you listed of are in that category.
Of course there are many successful show spin-offs. Obviously I wasn't clear enough in my post. No reason to to throw insults, though.
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