January 16, 2019 • 17 mins
What was the worst cartoon inspired by Happy Days? Why did The Golden Girls try to open a hotel? And which dysfunctional character from The Office almost got a starring role on Parks and Rec? Will and Mango explore the weird world of sitcom spin-offs in today's 9 things.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess what mango? What's that? Will? All right? So
the other day you and I were talking about albums
that we wanted to buy, or like movies we wanted
to watch as kids. But you know, these are the
ones that our parents weren't so sure about. They were
a little nervous about letting us have them. So I
think my favorite was that you begged to go buy
the DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince album with Yeah,
what was it? It was parents just don't understand that
(00:24):
was on as just don't understand. They really they still
don't be honest with it. It's such a tame song.
I love that you had to beg for it, but like,
I'm totally in the same boat because, like, my mom
didn't let me watch Silver Spoons for some reason. Apparently
she didn't like the fact that like you would just
cause all this trouble and then it was resolved with
(00:45):
like a sorry in the last two minutes or something.
That's pretty hilarious. So there was another one that was
my begging and finally getting to be Bart Simpson for Halloween.
I think this was fifth grade. It might have been
sixth grade, but I know it was around there, but
I was sure I was one of millions of kids
running around in that same ridiculously heavy and pretty much
suffocating rubber Bart mass saying things like don't have a
(01:08):
cow man, and eat my shorts and all the great
Bart lines. That is so funny. I had no idea
you were Bart Simpson for holloween was It is funny,
like how shocking Bart was when in those early years,
like like I remember some kid wore a shirt in
and I think it said like, who the hell are you?
And and a teacher put masking tape over the party.
(01:32):
Such a badass? Well, I mean, who knew that more
than twenty five years since then the Simpsons would still
be going so strong on TV. I mean, it's, of
course now the longest running scripted primetime series in American history,
currently in its thirtieth season, recently passing six hundred and
fifty episodes, So this puts it past gun Smoke, which
(01:53):
ran for I think six thirty five. But it's just incredible. Yeah,
you know, I saw this thing in Entertainment Weekly that
said something about how like the Simpsons were so off
putting to America initially and now they're one of the
longest going like church families. Like really, uh, it is
funny to think that it's spun off from the Tracy
(02:13):
Ullman Show. And it wasn't even the original idea that
the producers of The Allman Show approach mac Grainig about, right,
you know, they'd originally actually approached him about his life
and Hell comic strip. But you know, he didn't want
to have to give up the rights to that, or
at least to the characters, and so he decided to
come up with a new concept and a completely different
cast of characters. And it's funny because most of them
(02:35):
were based on and even named after the people in
his own life, like mainly his family members. Oh, I mean,
it was a smart call to go in that direction,
no kidding. Well, thinking about the spinoff made us want
to revisit some of the most successful or maybe the
most bizarre TV spinoffs in TV history. So that's exactly
what we're doing today. Let's dive in. H Hey, their
(03:15):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and it's always I'm joined by my good friend Manes
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass,
not just wearing a Mark from Orc T shirt, but
fully dressed in the costume that Mark always were. That's
our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. You know, I always
appreciate his commitment to these costumes, but it's pretty clear
(03:36):
that the show was like from before his time, and
he's not seen an episode because like everything he responds
to is just nanu. Nanu is kind of ridiculous. Do
you think he thinks that's that's all Mark said or
what I think? So all right, Well, Tristan is a
busy guy, so I guess we'll cut him a little
bit of slack now. And anyway, let's come back to
(03:57):
the topic of Mark later, because that's actually one of
my facts for today. And today, of course we're talking
about TV spinoffs, and it's easy to think that this
is a much more recent phenomenon, but we can actually
look way back to like the nineteen fifties when a
show like The Honeymooners would spin off from a variety
series called Cavalcade of Stars. And this is really one
of the first big sitcoms in America, So spinoffs are
(04:20):
definitely not a new thing. But anywait where do you
want to start? Well, I mean, why don't we talk
about one of the most prolific spinoff machines in TV history,
and that is Happy Days. A good start. You know,
most people don't remember this, but Happy Days itself was
weirdly a spinoff. It was from a show in late
sixties and early seventies called Love American Style. So during
(04:41):
the run of that show, the TV producer Gary Marshall
had this idea for a sitcom about teenagers in the
nineteen fifties, and he made a pilot. He shopped it around,
but unfortunately no one was biting, so he ended up
selling the rights to the pilot to be an episode
on Love American Style. And actually two big things happened here.
First off, George Lucas saw Ron Howard in this pilot
(05:03):
and he asked him to be in his film American Graffiti.
And then ABC executives took notice. And you know, when
when you fast forward a couple of years with American Graffiti,
the musical Greece had come out, and like those both
being such big hits, like it was clear that fifties
nostalgia was this super sellable thing. So they went back
to Gary Marshall and they said about that pilot like
(05:24):
we'd love to do it. Yeah. I mean it's weird
to think how different TV history would have been of
Happy Days had never been on the air, because, you know,
as you had said before, so many shows spun off
from it. I was actually looking at the list and
I didn't even remember some of them. But there were
at least five live action spinoffs and I think three
cartoons series all that's spun off from Happy Days. Yeah,
(05:46):
it's crazy, but I know I was setting you up
to talk about Morgan Mindy, but I do feel like
we should mention the first and most successful of the
Happy Days spinoffs. Oh, that would be Laverne and Shirley, right, exactly,
Laverne and Shirley. So Laverne who was played by Henny
Marshall and Shirley, who was played by Cindy Williams. They
they both showed up in the season three of Happy
(06:06):
Days as friends of the Fons, and uh, within just
a year they actually had their own show. It was
a spin off that was so successful that it hit
the top of the charts and it often outperformed Happy
Days during the run when both shows were on. It's
pretty amazing. The show actually lasted eight years, But there
was also a weird anime it spin off from that
that most people don't remember. It's called Laverne and Shirley
(06:28):
in the Army. Where as you might imagine the duo
and listen to the military, they serve under the command
of a talking pig named Sergeant Squeally. And shockingly, that
show did not get a second season. That is so weird.
But actually I don't know if it's weirder than Mork
and Mindy and and thanks for the setup on this one.
(06:49):
But you know, the history of this one is one
that many people may not remember or even no And
this can actually be traced back to the Dick Van
Dyke Show. So in this one episode, Dick van Dyke's
character is watch seeing a sci fi movie and he
then dreams that this alien name Kolak I think it
is is trying to take over the Earth with walnuts
or something like that. And so here's where the Happy
(07:10):
Days part comes in. So the director of that episode
was a guy named Jerry Paris, who ended up directing
several episodes of Happy Days years later. Well, one day
he's on the set and Gary Marshall starts talking about
his son and how he's obsessed with Star Wars and
how he wishes there were more Aliens on TV. And
so this makes Paris remember the whole Walnut Aliens thing
(07:31):
and he decides to pitch a similar idea, and from
that Mark from Orc was born. That's really crazy. I
do feel like we could do a whole show on
Happy Days spinoffs. But since we've only got nine facts here,
I think we should talk about another one. So since
I shared to the first off the that like, I
feel like maybe you should take another stab of a
fact here. Yeah, I think I'll go with another Powerhouse
(07:55):
spinoff machine. And that's of course all in the Family. Now,
this legendary series about the Bunker family actually lead to
six spinoffs over its nine seasons, and a few of
them were very successful. There's of course Maud and Good Times,
and I thought about sharing some facts about that one,
but you know, the biggest hit was obviously The Jefferson's,
debuted in nineteen and of course focused on the former
(08:17):
neighbors of the Bunkers, which were George and Louise Jefferson.
So you know, I had definitely watched The Jeffersons a
little bit when I was a kid, but I remember
seeing Sherman Helmsley on David Letterman, and you know, he's
the guy who played George Jefferson if if you're listening
and weren't familiar with the show. But you know, what
I didn't realize was it was on the air for
a really long time, right like they were talking about
(08:39):
it and and it was a stunning amount of time
that that show continued. Yeah, it was actually on longer
than the show that inspired it. It It was on for
eleven seasons, two hundred and fifty three episodes. It's it's
actually second only to Tyler Perry's House of Pain in
terms of the longest running American sitcom TV shows that
have a majority African American cast. So it was a
(09:00):
pretty incredible run. And actually, interestingly, Sherman Helmsley's last acting
job was on an episode of House of Pain. He
appeared as George Jefferson on that episode. That's pretty cool. Okay,
So I know we've talked a good bit about successful
spinoffs of legendary shows, but there's actually one that I
had totally forgotten about, or maybe I blocked it out
(09:20):
because it was a colossal flop and that is Golden Palace.
Golden I don't even know what that is. It's the
follow up to Golden Girls, which you know, was one
of my friend Adam's favorite shows. He loved all the
ladies and I feel like he could give you words
to live by from each of them. But if you remember,
the show ended after seven seasons with the Arthur's character
(09:43):
Dorothy getting married and moving to Atlanta. So uh. The
spinoff apparently followed Rose Blanche and Sophia as they moved
to Miami and then tried to run a really nice
motel there. I guess the gimmick was that they invested
in this place, they ended up having to get involved
in the day to day work because things go wrong.
And you know, as I mentioned earlier, the show was
(10:04):
not a success. It only lasted one season. It's so
weird because I have no memory of that. But I
do feel like if you're going to talk about spinoffs
from the Golden Girls, you do have to talk about
the one successful spinoff from the show. I know, Empty
Nest the best. Well, that show actually followed the lives
of the girls neighbors and also ran seven seasons, and
(10:24):
all of the Golden Girls appeared multiple times on the show.
But here's something I had no memory of, and this
goes back to Golden Palace, But that's that Don Cheatle
was actually the manager of the hotel on that Golden
Palace show. It's kind of a shame because he got
type cast. He was later the hotel manager in uh
Hotel Rwanda, which is totally different. Maybe was his training
(10:47):
right to be ready for that one, I think so?
But what what do you have next? Well, all right, well,
I wanted to talk about a show whose creative team
actually didn't intend for it to be a spinoff. And
this one sounds weird when you hear about it because
it's Frasier, which seems like such an obvious one, But
in fact, this was one of the many things about
Dr Frasier Crane that were not intended to be long term.
(11:09):
So his first appearance was on Cheers and its third season,
and he was really just meant to be this temporary character,
but fans fell in love with him, and so by
the fifth season he was pretty much a regular cast member.
So you fast forward to the creative team working on
a show concept for Kelsey Grammer to kind of do
as his next project, and they were worried about the
(11:30):
show always being compared to Cheers, and so they actually
didn't want to make the show about Frasier for that reason,
and instead they had this plan for him to play
some sort of like magazine media mogul and he'd been
paralyzed after some sort of accident. Yeah, it's a very
different concept. But the studio wasn't having any of this idea,
(11:51):
and they insisted that the show be a spin off.
And you can actually still tell that this was scaring
the creative team, so they did as much as I
could to separate it. I mean, starting with moving the
character all the way across the country to Seattle from Boston.
But that said, most of the major cast members did
appear on the show at some point during its eleven seasons. Well,
(12:13):
Fraser was definitely one of the most successful spinoffs ever.
But we've got two more facts to get to. Before
we get to those, let's take a quick break. Welcome
(12:35):
back to Part Time Genius. We we're talking about TV spinoffs. Okay, Well,
what is your last fact of the day going to be?
All Right? Well, I started with one animated series that
made parents uncomfortable, and I think I'll end with another
one that made them even more uncomfortable. And I've talked,
of course about Beavis and butt Head, which I spent
many middle school hours watching and thinking was just hilarious.
(12:57):
And I actually never forget going to the movie that
they eventually did, and and and just as the lights
were getting darker after the previews kind of indicating the
movie was about to start, it seemed like the entire
crowd immediately went into their best Beavis and butt Had impressions.
It was just a weird experience that sounds like incredible
(13:19):
for the time and like a nightmare. Yeah, it was
exactly both of those. But what a lot of people
don't remember is that Beavis and butt Head was actually
a spin off in itself. So it came out of
this anthology show called Liquid Television, which featured all these
different animated segments, and he was also on MTV, and
you know, it was by far the most successful creation
(13:42):
to come from that series. So it was eventually spun
off as its own thing, and it was such a
stupid but you know, I have to say, wonderful show,
running for eight seasons, But of course it spun off
another show, Daria. Yeah, that's right. And you know, Daria
actually wasn't part of the original Liquid television series. I
mean she was actually added to Beavis and butt Head
(14:04):
at the request of MTV, and this is because they
wanted kind of more of a female presence on the show. So,
as Mike Judge explained, he created a character that was
kind of this mix of Darlene from Rosanne, which you
can definitely see, but also a high school girlfriend of his.
And and the name Daria came from someone he knew
in high school, apparently somebody that he used to call diarrhea,
(14:26):
which sounds about right when you think about and also
a reminder of how horrible high school students can be.
But anyway, it's a mega what what's your last fact
of the day. Well, I think I'm going to end
the show with a show that wasn't really a spinoff,
but could have been considered a spin off maybe for
for like a weird and funny reason. And this is
(14:49):
the relationship of The Office to Parks and Wreck. So
if you go back to the peak of the Office
is popularity. NBC asked the showrunner Greg Daniels and and
the writer Michael Shure first some spinoff ideas, and they'd
actually already been kind of hatching on this, Like at
first there was the possibility of a show with Jim
and Pam, but then of course they didn't want to
(15:09):
take their two most popular characters off the show. And
they also thought about Dwight and his family beat Farm,
which I would have loved that show. They actually did
make an episode about exactly about a few years later,
but it never turned into a spinoff, but ultimately Daniels
and Sure decided they would go and do just a
totally different mockumentary. One thing I loved is that there
(15:31):
was actually this idea of how to connect the two shows,
and it was the idea of the writer Paul Leverston,
who plays Um Toby on The Office. But here's how
a TV Guide described it. Quote On the Office, a
copy machine breaks and throughout the episode, wh repairman tries
to fix it. At the end of the episode, the
machine is loaded on a truck and refurbished in a warehouse.
(15:53):
Then the copier is loaded onto another truck and taken
to Pawnee, Indiana, where it's dropped off in the parks
and Wreck office. So in a twist on spinoff traditions,
the character spun off would have been the Coffee Machine,
but producers briefly considered the idea of ultimately Parks and
w rec was its own creation. That is hilarious. I mean,
I'm not sure why they wouldn't just go with this idea,
(16:15):
but but I love that anyway. It takes a lot
of guts to talk about a spinoff that's not really
a spinoff and even close the show with a manga.
So for just that bravery, I'm going to give you
the trophy today. And I mean I know that we
have a thing for coffee machines. Back in Mental floss
or Machine was called Shyde because she was such a
smooth operator. I'll happily grab the trophy this week. Anyway.
(16:38):
There's so many great and weird spinoffs out there, from
you know, the Perfect Strangers family Matters connection to the
Mash follow up which was called Aftermash. But if you've
got a terrible favorite spinoff, tell us all about a
part time genius at how stuff works dot com. We'd
love to talk about it. And from Kristan gave Will
and me thank you so much for listening. Tre
I guess what mango? What's that? Will? All right? So
the other day you and I were talking about albums
that we wanted to buy, or like movies we wanted
to watch as kids. But you know, these are the
ones that our parents weren't so sure about. They were
a little nervous about letting us have them. So I
think my favorite was that you begged to go buy
the DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince album with Yeah,
what was it? It was parents just don't understand that
(00:24):
was on as just don't understand. They really they still
don't be honest with it. It's such a tame song.
I love that you had to beg for it, but like,
I'm totally in the same boat because, like, my mom
didn't let me watch Silver Spoons for some reason. Apparently
she didn't like the fact that like you would just
cause all this trouble and then it was resolved with
(00:45):
like a sorry in the last two minutes or something.
That's pretty hilarious. So there was another one that was
my begging and finally getting to be Bart Simpson for Halloween.
I think this was fifth grade. It might have been
sixth grade, but I know it was around there, but
I was sure I was one of millions of kids
running around in that same ridiculously heavy and pretty much
suffocating rubber Bart mass saying things like don't have a
(01:08):
cow man, and eat my shorts and all the great
Bart lines. That is so funny. I had no idea
you were Bart Simpson for holloween was It is funny,
like how shocking Bart was when in those early years,
like like I remember some kid wore a shirt in
and I think it said like, who the hell are you?
And and a teacher put masking tape over the party.
(01:32):
Such a badass? Well, I mean, who knew that more
than twenty five years since then the Simpsons would still
be going so strong on TV. I mean, it's, of
course now the longest running scripted primetime series in American history,
currently in its thirtieth season, recently passing six hundred and
fifty episodes, So this puts it past gun Smoke, which
(01:53):
ran for I think six thirty five. But it's just incredible. Yeah,
you know, I saw this thing in Entertainment Weekly that
said something about how like the Simpsons were so off
putting to America initially and now they're one of the
longest going like church families. Like really, uh, it is
funny to think that it's spun off from the Tracy
(02:13):
Ullman Show. And it wasn't even the original idea that
the producers of The Allman Show approach mac Grainig about, right,
you know, they'd originally actually approached him about his life
and Hell comic strip. But you know, he didn't want
to have to give up the rights to that, or
at least to the characters, and so he decided to
come up with a new concept and a completely different
cast of characters. And it's funny because most of them
(02:35):
were based on and even named after the people in
his own life, like mainly his family members. Oh, I mean,
it was a smart call to go in that direction,
no kidding. Well, thinking about the spinoff made us want
to revisit some of the most successful or maybe the
most bizarre TV spinoffs in TV history. So that's exactly
what we're doing today. Let's dive in. H Hey, their
(03:15):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and it's always I'm joined by my good friend Manes
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass,
not just wearing a Mark from Orc T shirt, but
fully dressed in the costume that Mark always were. That's
our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. You know, I always
appreciate his commitment to these costumes, but it's pretty clear
(03:36):
that the show was like from before his time, and
he's not seen an episode because like everything he responds
to is just nanu. Nanu is kind of ridiculous. Do
you think he thinks that's that's all Mark said or
what I think? So all right, Well, Tristan is a
busy guy, so I guess we'll cut him a little
bit of slack now. And anyway, let's come back to
(03:57):
the topic of Mark later, because that's actually one of
my facts for today. And today, of course we're talking
about TV spinoffs, and it's easy to think that this
is a much more recent phenomenon, but we can actually
look way back to like the nineteen fifties when a
show like The Honeymooners would spin off from a variety
series called Cavalcade of Stars. And this is really one
of the first big sitcoms in America, So spinoffs are
(04:20):
definitely not a new thing. But anywait where do you
want to start? Well, I mean, why don't we talk
about one of the most prolific spinoff machines in TV history,
and that is Happy Days. A good start. You know,
most people don't remember this, but Happy Days itself was
weirdly a spinoff. It was from a show in late
sixties and early seventies called Love American Style. So during
(04:41):
the run of that show, the TV producer Gary Marshall
had this idea for a sitcom about teenagers in the
nineteen fifties, and he made a pilot. He shopped it around,
but unfortunately no one was biting, so he ended up
selling the rights to the pilot to be an episode
on Love American Style. And actually two big things happened here.
First off, George Lucas saw Ron Howard in this pilot
(05:03):
and he asked him to be in his film American Graffiti.
And then ABC executives took notice. And you know, when
when you fast forward a couple of years with American Graffiti,
the musical Greece had come out, and like those both
being such big hits, like it was clear that fifties
nostalgia was this super sellable thing. So they went back
to Gary Marshall and they said about that pilot like
(05:24):
we'd love to do it. Yeah. I mean it's weird
to think how different TV history would have been of
Happy Days had never been on the air, because, you know,
as you had said before, so many shows spun off
from it. I was actually looking at the list and
I didn't even remember some of them. But there were
at least five live action spinoffs and I think three
cartoons series all that's spun off from Happy Days. Yeah,
(05:46):
it's crazy, but I know I was setting you up
to talk about Morgan Mindy, but I do feel like
we should mention the first and most successful of the
Happy Days spinoffs. Oh, that would be Laverne and Shirley, right, exactly,
Laverne and Shirley. So Laverne who was played by Henny
Marshall and Shirley, who was played by Cindy Williams. They
they both showed up in the season three of Happy
(06:06):
Days as friends of the Fons, and uh, within just
a year they actually had their own show. It was
a spin off that was so successful that it hit
the top of the charts and it often outperformed Happy
Days during the run when both shows were on. It's
pretty amazing. The show actually lasted eight years, But there
was also a weird anime it spin off from that
that most people don't remember. It's called Laverne and Shirley
(06:28):
in the Army. Where as you might imagine the duo
and listen to the military, they serve under the command
of a talking pig named Sergeant Squeally. And shockingly, that
show did not get a second season. That is so weird.
But actually I don't know if it's weirder than Mork
and Mindy and and thanks for the setup on this one.
(06:49):
But you know, the history of this one is one
that many people may not remember or even no And
this can actually be traced back to the Dick Van
Dyke Show. So in this one episode, Dick van Dyke's
character is watch seeing a sci fi movie and he
then dreams that this alien name Kolak I think it
is is trying to take over the Earth with walnuts
or something like that. And so here's where the Happy
(07:10):
Days part comes in. So the director of that episode
was a guy named Jerry Paris, who ended up directing
several episodes of Happy Days years later. Well, one day
he's on the set and Gary Marshall starts talking about
his son and how he's obsessed with Star Wars and
how he wishes there were more Aliens on TV. And
so this makes Paris remember the whole Walnut Aliens thing
(07:31):
and he decides to pitch a similar idea, and from
that Mark from Orc was born. That's really crazy. I
do feel like we could do a whole show on
Happy Days spinoffs. But since we've only got nine facts here,
I think we should talk about another one. So since
I shared to the first off the that like, I
feel like maybe you should take another stab of a
fact here. Yeah, I think I'll go with another Powerhouse
(07:55):
spinoff machine. And that's of course all in the Family. Now,
this legendary series about the Bunker family actually lead to
six spinoffs over its nine seasons, and a few of
them were very successful. There's of course Maud and Good Times,
and I thought about sharing some facts about that one,
but you know, the biggest hit was obviously The Jefferson's,
debuted in nineteen and of course focused on the former
(08:17):
neighbors of the Bunkers, which were George and Louise Jefferson.
So you know, I had definitely watched The Jeffersons a
little bit when I was a kid, but I remember
seeing Sherman Helmsley on David Letterman, and you know, he's
the guy who played George Jefferson if if you're listening
and weren't familiar with the show. But you know, what
I didn't realize was it was on the air for
a really long time, right like they were talking about
(08:39):
it and and it was a stunning amount of time
that that show continued. Yeah, it was actually on longer
than the show that inspired it. It It was on for
eleven seasons, two hundred and fifty three episodes. It's it's
actually second only to Tyler Perry's House of Pain in
terms of the longest running American sitcom TV shows that
have a majority African American cast. So it was a
(09:00):
pretty incredible run. And actually, interestingly, Sherman Helmsley's last acting
job was on an episode of House of Pain. He
appeared as George Jefferson on that episode. That's pretty cool. Okay,
So I know we've talked a good bit about successful
spinoffs of legendary shows, but there's actually one that I
had totally forgotten about, or maybe I blocked it out
(09:20):
because it was a colossal flop and that is Golden Palace.
Golden I don't even know what that is. It's the
follow up to Golden Girls, which you know, was one
of my friend Adam's favorite shows. He loved all the
ladies and I feel like he could give you words
to live by from each of them. But if you remember,
the show ended after seven seasons with the Arthur's character
(09:43):
Dorothy getting married and moving to Atlanta. So uh. The
spinoff apparently followed Rose Blanche and Sophia as they moved
to Miami and then tried to run a really nice
motel there. I guess the gimmick was that they invested
in this place, they ended up having to get involved
in the day to day work because things go wrong.
And you know, as I mentioned earlier, the show was
(10:04):
not a success. It only lasted one season. It's so
weird because I have no memory of that. But I
do feel like if you're going to talk about spinoffs
from the Golden Girls, you do have to talk about
the one successful spinoff from the show. I know, Empty
Nest the best. Well, that show actually followed the lives
of the girls neighbors and also ran seven seasons, and
(10:24):
all of the Golden Girls appeared multiple times on the show.
But here's something I had no memory of, and this
goes back to Golden Palace, But that's that Don Cheatle
was actually the manager of the hotel on that Golden
Palace show. It's kind of a shame because he got
type cast. He was later the hotel manager in uh
Hotel Rwanda, which is totally different. Maybe was his training
(10:47):
right to be ready for that one, I think so?
But what what do you have next? Well, all right, well,
I wanted to talk about a show whose creative team
actually didn't intend for it to be a spinoff. And
this one sounds weird when you hear about it because
it's Frasier, which seems like such an obvious one, But
in fact, this was one of the many things about
Dr Frasier Crane that were not intended to be long term.
(11:09):
So his first appearance was on Cheers and its third season,
and he was really just meant to be this temporary character,
but fans fell in love with him, and so by
the fifth season he was pretty much a regular cast member.
So you fast forward to the creative team working on
a show concept for Kelsey Grammer to kind of do
as his next project, and they were worried about the
(11:30):
show always being compared to Cheers, and so they actually
didn't want to make the show about Frasier for that reason,
and instead they had this plan for him to play
some sort of like magazine media mogul and he'd been
paralyzed after some sort of accident. Yeah, it's a very
different concept. But the studio wasn't having any of this idea,
(11:51):
and they insisted that the show be a spin off.
And you can actually still tell that this was scaring
the creative team, so they did as much as I
could to separate it. I mean, starting with moving the
character all the way across the country to Seattle from Boston.
But that said, most of the major cast members did
appear on the show at some point during its eleven seasons. Well,
(12:13):
Fraser was definitely one of the most successful spinoffs ever.
But we've got two more facts to get to. Before
we get to those, let's take a quick break. Welcome
(12:35):
back to Part Time Genius. We we're talking about TV spinoffs. Okay, Well,
what is your last fact of the day going to be?
All Right? Well, I started with one animated series that
made parents uncomfortable, and I think I'll end with another
one that made them even more uncomfortable. And I've talked,
of course about Beavis and butt Head, which I spent
many middle school hours watching and thinking was just hilarious.
(12:57):
And I actually never forget going to the movie that
they eventually did, and and and just as the lights
were getting darker after the previews kind of indicating the
movie was about to start, it seemed like the entire
crowd immediately went into their best Beavis and butt Had impressions.
It was just a weird experience that sounds like incredible
(13:19):
for the time and like a nightmare. Yeah, it was
exactly both of those. But what a lot of people
don't remember is that Beavis and butt Head was actually
a spin off in itself. So it came out of
this anthology show called Liquid Television, which featured all these
different animated segments, and he was also on MTV, and
you know, it was by far the most successful creation
(13:42):
to come from that series. So it was eventually spun
off as its own thing, and it was such a
stupid but you know, I have to say, wonderful show,
running for eight seasons, But of course it spun off
another show, Daria. Yeah, that's right. And you know, Daria
actually wasn't part of the original Liquid television series. I
mean she was actually added to Beavis and butt Head
(14:04):
at the request of MTV, and this is because they
wanted kind of more of a female presence on the show. So,
as Mike Judge explained, he created a character that was
kind of this mix of Darlene from Rosanne, which you
can definitely see, but also a high school girlfriend of his.
And and the name Daria came from someone he knew
in high school, apparently somebody that he used to call diarrhea,
(14:26):
which sounds about right when you think about and also
a reminder of how horrible high school students can be.
But anyway, it's a mega what what's your last fact
of the day. Well, I think I'm going to end
the show with a show that wasn't really a spinoff,
but could have been considered a spin off maybe for
for like a weird and funny reason. And this is
(14:49):
the relationship of The Office to Parks and Wreck. So
if you go back to the peak of the Office
is popularity. NBC asked the showrunner Greg Daniels and and
the writer Michael Shure first some spinoff ideas, and they'd
actually already been kind of hatching on this, Like at
first there was the possibility of a show with Jim
and Pam, but then of course they didn't want to
(15:09):
take their two most popular characters off the show. And
they also thought about Dwight and his family beat Farm,
which I would have loved that show. They actually did
make an episode about exactly about a few years later,
but it never turned into a spinoff, but ultimately Daniels
and Sure decided they would go and do just a
totally different mockumentary. One thing I loved is that there
(15:31):
was actually this idea of how to connect the two shows,
and it was the idea of the writer Paul Leverston,
who plays Um Toby on The Office. But here's how
a TV Guide described it. Quote On the Office, a
copy machine breaks and throughout the episode, wh repairman tries
to fix it. At the end of the episode, the
machine is loaded on a truck and refurbished in a warehouse.
(15:53):
Then the copier is loaded onto another truck and taken
to Pawnee, Indiana, where it's dropped off in the parks
and Wreck office. So in a twist on spinoff traditions,
the character spun off would have been the Coffee Machine,
but producers briefly considered the idea of ultimately Parks and
w rec was its own creation. That is hilarious. I mean,
I'm not sure why they wouldn't just go with this idea,
(16:15):
but but I love that anyway. It takes a lot
of guts to talk about a spinoff that's not really
a spinoff and even close the show with a manga.
So for just that bravery, I'm going to give you
the trophy today. And I mean I know that we
have a thing for coffee machines. Back in Mental floss
or Machine was called Shyde because she was such a
smooth operator. I'll happily grab the trophy this week. Anyway.
(16:38):
There's so many great and weird spinoffs out there, from
you know, the Perfect Strangers family Matters connection to the
Mash follow up which was called Aftermash. But if you've
got a terrible favorite spinoff, tell us all about a
part time genius at how stuff works dot com. We'd
love to talk about it. And from Kristan gave Will
and me thank you so much for listening. Tre
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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