Curse of the Backdoor Pilot

This is an installment of a look at things television show's do that bother me.

I have always hated the concept of back door pilots. These are when writers on an established show attempts to create a new show using the structure of the existing show. Unlike spinning off an established character we already like, they throw totally unknown characters at us using the show and characters we do love.

The one’s I really hate are the episodes where the main cast inexplicably becomes supporting characters in someone else’s story. This is the inherent problem with this concept. One of the best examples of what I am talking about was "The Brady Bunch" episode “Kelly’s Kids”. In this episode the Brady’s take a backseat for a new story about another family. The point is, when I watched the Brady Bunch I wanted to see the Brady’s! This episode is boring and I always felt myself wondering what I was missing on the show I was supposed to be watching. My point is giving the main characters supporting duties doesn’t make us want to watch the new show it makes us hate the episode because it’s about people we don’t know or care about.

Another example of this is "The Golden Girls" episode “Empty Nest.” In this episode we are introduced to the girls’ neighbors, a middle aged couple dealing with the fact that their daughter’s have gone on to college and they are alone now. If this doesn’t sounds like the series that made it to air, it’s because after this episode they revamped the concept with Richard Mulligan as a widower. The only things to remain were the set which was the exact same and David Leisure, who was in the Golden Girls episode but his character was different. The girls are hardly in this episode which is arguably one of the most forgettable.

I could go and on with examples. "Who’s The Boss?" tried this three times, to no avail. Though "Living Dolls" and "Princesses" made it to air even if briefly, while "Mona" went nowhere. "Cosby Show" ended its first season with an episode about a youth center where the Huxtables disappear for most of the second act. Of course there is the original "Star Trek" episode “Assignment:Earth” where Kirk and Spock literally stand around for half the episode letting Gary Seven have the spotlight.

The show’s which did this successfully do so because they didn’t shunt the main characters off to the background. That’s why "Happy Days" did very well with "Laverne and Shirley", for example, or when "Home Improvement" tried it they didn’t deviate from the basic structure of the series.

Spin-off’s work fine when it is a character we know and love. "Growing Pains", for instance, when it spun off Coach Lubbock into "Just the Ten of Us" was just fine because we knew the coach and had spent time with him. Just springing new characters on us that we never met and will never see again just doesn’t work. "Deep Space Nine" also used a supporting character we already loved, and introduced the main structure of their show in their own show, rather than being crammed into a "Next Generation" episode. "Deep Space Nine" is a great example of a good backdoor pilot, one that spins off from the main source material without compromising it.

 This is still done, for example "CSI" and most recently "Criminal Minds", but the bottom line is most of these fail, leaving us with a boring episode of an established series we normally love.