Sitcom Crossover Hell

It seems like a good idea, take a character or character’s from one show and put them into another. I mean, what can go wrong? I already talked about the curse of backdoor pilots, but that was focused on spinning off show’s from an existing one which was already popular. What happens if we take a show that is not as good and dump a character from a more popular show in it?

I am not sure when this started exactly, I know spin-off’s go back as far as the Andy Griffith Show (which was a spin-off of the Danny Thomas Show, did everyone know that?). But what about crossovers, those stunts in sweeps periods were two perfectly good shows mingle their casts together.

The most infamous example of this has to be The Golden Girls. This show has a spin-off called Empty Nest, and there was another show called Nurse’s. Nurses could have been a spin-off of Empty Nest though I don’t think it is officially. However, because all three were created by the same person and filmed on the same lot (not to mention on the same night), it was a no brainer that we would get crossover’s. They had a couple where the characters of Empty Nest and Golden Girls would appear on each other’s shows. For example one episode The Golden Girls had Barbara Weston intervene when we discover Rose is dating a killer for hire (it’s a long story). Then Empty Nest had an episode with B story all about Rose getting into a minor car accident with Harry.

Then in 1991-1992 NBC decided to do a big stunt. This was called “Hurricane Saturday”, and the idea was that a hurricane was going to impact all three shows. The problem was with the crossovers in these episodes. There is no reason for Carol to appear on Golden Girls, and Sophia’s appearance on Empty Nest feels forced. The Nurse’s episode has two crossover’s, Laverne from Empty Nest (which makes no sense if you just watched the Empty Nest episode that followed it), and Rose from Golden Girls which makes a little sense. The writers couldn’t even keep it the same storm, I guess they figured Golden Girls needed a happy ending so we find the storm ending, and when Empty Nest begins another storm is coming.

Apparently the stunt was successful enough because NBC did it again in February. “Full Moon Saturday” had the full moon as the common thread between the three shows. This time, to the writer’s credit, they made the crossovers make sense. Carol and Barbara appear on Golden Girls logically, then on Empty Nest Rose appears (I know, Rose again?) and continues her story from the Golden Girls episode. On Nurse’s, not only do we get Blanche (and her appearance makes sense, it ends her story from the Golden Girls episode which was kind of left hanging) we get Charlie from Empty Nest. Charlie is even wearing the same outfit, since this was supposed to be the same day, or that night, of the Empty Nest episode that just ended. This was a much better crossover, attention was made to detail and it almost feels like a continuous story unlike the poorly done Hurricane episodes.

After Golden Girls went off the air Nurse’s and Empty Nest kept crossing over regularly, in a few instances stories begun in one show would end in the other. For example, Geraldo Rivera was on Empty Nest and when he is injured in the end, he goes to Nurse’s for treatment. Clever, but it didn’t keep Nurse’s alive.

NBC wasn’t about to be undone though. When they realized that Mad About You, Friends, Seinfeld, and a horrible show called Madman of the People were all New York comedies which aired on the same night, the solution was obvious. A crossover stunt! Blackout Thursday would start on an episode of Mad About You where Jamie would cause a city wide blackout which would send the other show’s in the dark. There was only one problem, Larry David refused to participate. Seinfeld was THE show on the network at the time, so what could NBC do? Seinfeld did a normal episode and the whole stunt was spoiled. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I am proud that Seinfeld didn’t cave in to pressure. So, Friends gets plunged into darkness but the problem is there are no crossover’s of any kind. Anyone who watches this show in re-runs has no idea why the blackout started, just as people who catch the Mad About You episode has no idea how the blackout was resolved. As for the Madman of the People, they did do a blackout episode but the show was horrible and was soon canceled, so who cares? NBC should have made this strictly a Mad About You-Friends crossover, which is what it basically turned into.

As we see sometimes these stunts kind of work, but usually they fail. You can almost feel the writers forcing the situation. ABC did a stunt which was worst than anything NBC tried to do. Back in 1998 The show’s Grace Under Fire, Drew Carey, Coach, and Ellen were on the same night. ABC was desperate to do a crossover even though the show’s had nothing in common, so they decided what they would do is get each show to Las Vegas, where the casts would meet each other. Sounds great, right? Wrong. Talk about being forced, Called Viva Las Vegas night the episodes don’t flow into each other at all. All the character’s meet at a roulette wheel but each episode handled the scene differently. The scenes don’t match and except for Drew Carey Show the crossovers are pointless. From what I understand there were problems getting these cast members together, not helped by the fact that the main cast of Coach and Ellen refused to participate.

ABC had better luck with their TGIF crossover event which started on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. Salem the cat would eat a time ball, which causes the surroundings to change into whatever time period the mortals thought of. In Sabrina’s episode it was the 60’s. Salem escaped before it could be retrieved and winds up at the school in Boy Meets World. They had just learned all about World War 2, so that’s where everyone is transported. Fortunately, mortals are not aware of these changes. Salem then wanders into the show’s Teen Angel and You Wish which were canceled soon after. However, they did a great job of tying all four shows’ together. Rather than show the resolution of each episode, they waited until the story was resolved then showed all four show’s being resolved. Just a great way to make the story actually work, and I always regret that I didn’t record that one.

CBS was not immune to this kind of stuff. They did a “Shameless Crossover Monday” with the show’s King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Cosby. There was no running story, basically the actors of one show appeared in the others. For example Cosby had an episode about Frank Barone which of course also featured Ray. Ray appeared in a few King of Queens episodes. The oddest one came on a second “Shameless Crossover Monday”, which really wasn’t that kind of stunt. The new series Becker had premiered, and the idea was that Hilton from Cosby, Doug from King of Queens, and Ray from ELR would all meet in Becker’s waiting room. What they really did was take the beginning of the Becker episode, and show pieces of it. So Cosby ended with Hilton showing up in Becker’s office, problem is this is really the beginning of Becker not the end of the actual Cosby episode we had just seen. The reason I say that is to this day when I see program listings from the King of Queens and Raymond episodes, the listing always has “Ray meets Doug at Dr.Becker’s office” or vice versa. If you watch the actual episodes, we don’t see Ray meet Doug anywhere! I often wonder if people come across this in reruns and wonder why the description says that when the episode doesn’t show it. The answer is, because it was really the beginning of a Becker episode where all three arrive in the office. By the way, it’s just for the teaser in the start the episode has nothing to do with these cameos, which is basically all they are.

The late great Elizabeth Taylor was the subject of another stunt. It started on the Nanny when Fran lost Elizabeth Taylor’s necklace, and the search continued through the remaining shows. Two of them were horrible show’s which quickly disappeared, the other was Murphy Brown and like I had just said about the Becker crossover, it was more of a cameo then a crossover because after the first five minutes the Elizabeth Taylor story disappeared and the real episode began. What I liked though was when the necklace was found in the fourth show, just like the Sabrina stunt had done, the ending cut back to The Nanny which was a great way to tie the stories together (even if it subsequently made the story make no sense).

Crossover stunts don’t have to cover the whole night. It can just be between two shows. On one clever episode of Family Matters, Steve Urkel has a new invention which sends him flying through the roof of the Winslow house and into the sky. He keeps flying until he finally lands in the Lambert’s back yard on Step By Step. Of course Urkel also appeared on a Full House episode. Back in the day, Happy Days did an episode where a wedding began on Happy Days and ended on Laverne & Shirley. At the end of the Happy Days episode Fonz and Richie are in trouble, so Richie runs for help and right into the Laverne & Shirley episode. I caught this on Nick @ Nite a few years back, and loved it. Diff’rent Strokes did lots of these with Facts of Life, Hello Larry, and even Silver Spoons believe it or not. Probably one of the wildest was when Carl Reiner brought his Alan Brady character from The Dick Van Dyke show onto Mad About You.

The list goes on and on, and yes does include drama's. Since ER and Third Watch shared producers, it was easy to have a story begin on ER and end on Third Watch. In fact this crossover was handled very well. Charlie's Angels appeared on Love Boat, Magnum PI met Jessica from Murder She Wrote among others, and X-Files even appeared on the Simpsons once. 

Well, there you have it. A little look back at when networks want ratings. Seriously, if done correctly these can be fun and enjoyable. Which were your favorites? I'm not sure how much this happens now, but in researching this I found out CSI did a crossover with Two and a Half Men. Now that I want to see!