Five Crazy TV Crossover's That Really Worked

I am a sucker for Crossover’s, I will watch a series I usually never do if it’s crossing over with another one. For instance when ER crossed over with Third Watch. Which wasn’t a bad episode. And while some crossover’s make logical sense, others make you wonder how in the world they ever thought the idea up.




Here are five TV crossover’s which make no sense..and yet they worked somehow.These have to be official crossover’s that last more than a cameo. And it has to be the actual universe’s meeting and not just the actor pretending. For instance, “Superman” appeared on I Love Lucy but in the episode it was really George Reeves in character (though the episode tries to pretend he’s Superman by never referring to the actor’s name, but I doubt Superman would be doing public appearances at malls). There was also a Mork & Mindy episode where William Shatner sort of played Captain Kirk..but not really. Or that time Kramer appeared on Murphy Brown, it was clear Murphy Brown was a TV show in Seinfeld’s world.

And there was that time Webster appeared with Worf from Star Trek The Next Generation (it happened! I swear!!Look—

 but that was clearly not set in the real TNG universe and was in fact a clip show (yawn).





Batman and The Green Hornet













I actually hated this episode as a kid, though I’m not sure why. I think it’s because I ha dno idea who the special guest hero was. So it almost felt like a bad backdoor pilot. Now that I know Green Hornet was a real thing..this was a pretty cool crossover. The two heroes worked well and I can even by that Britt Reid and Bruce Wayne had been old friends once. The only problem with this idea is Green Hornet was not campy like Batman, so having these two different styles mesh would not be easy. And maybe that’s why I hated this episode as a kid, the Green Hornet stuff was straight up boring to me.






St.Elsewhere and Cheers













This should make sense in theory, since St.Elsewhere and Cheers took place in the same exact city. And it seems reasonable three of the doctors would stop off there for a drink after work. But the thing is, these were very very different shows. Usually you see sitcoms crossover with sitcoms and drama’s crossover with drama’s, but doing a comedy on a drama would be awkward..just like this episode is. They do try to make it feel like Cheers with the characters and some jokes, but it comes off as a dark alternate Cheers where the characters are mocked and made fun of. It needs to be seen to believed and thanks to YouTube it can be.






Cops and The X-Files











Think mashing a drama and sitcom is hard? How about a sci fi fictional show with a reality show set very much in the real world? I hardly watched Cops and I never watched X-Files. But man, when I hard about this one I HAD to watch it. How could I not? I mean, how in the world could this work? The answer…surprisingly well! The reason it worked is because it starts as a Cops episode, and doesn’t stop being a COPS episode. We even get the typical COPS opening and credits. It’s sort of like when a TV show will do an episode from the viewpoint of film crew there for some reason..only here the reason makes perfect sense. As the ad in the TV Guide that week said the episode was part COPS, part X-Files..totally bizarre.






Sabrina The Teenage Witch/Boy Meets World













A lot of crossover’s make sense in universe. The Golden Girls and Empty Nest were supposedly on the same street, so it makes sense they would know each other. Becker, King of Queens, and Everybody Loves Raymond were all based in New York so why couldn’t they meet each other? Heck even the fact that Kramer on Seinfeld was subletting his apartment from Paul on Mad About You isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever heard (yeah both shows retconned it later but still). Or Michelle from Full House ending up in Cooper’s class in an early Hanging with Mr.Cooper. Or Steve Urkel showing up on Full House…..Ok that one is hard to swallow.

Sabrina and Boy Meets World? What do they share besides being on the same night? But the real odd thing…the episode really works. It starts on Sabrina involving a time ball which Salem eats..and then brings to Boy Meets Word (and two other shows we thankfully have forgotten). Thankfully mortals don’t remember anything so we get an episode of Boy Meets World about the gang being stuck in WW2. But the truth is while the episode was good and the crossover stunt was one my favorites I’ve ever seen,  you really needed to see Sabrina first. I do wonder what people who come across that episode with no knowledge of that Sabrina episode must think of it. Does it make any sense? Given the review I found online I’m gonna go with no.






Simpsons and Family Guy
 
I talked about this at length already but man did this work. It’s one of those things where you could feel they really tried to make this a good episode. And it showed. Ok it wasn’t perfect (the fight in the end was waaayyyy to long) but we get what we wanted. The characters interacting, all kinds of 4th wall gags, and we can clearly see that while these shows can be similiar they can also be very different in style and humor.





Some crossover’s fail miserably. Like NBC’s blackout Thursday which was just awful. Ok Mad About You causing the blackout on Friends was ok but that hardly makes it a “crossover”. How about that ABC stunt where all the characters from their shows one night met in Vegas. Great idea except the episodes felt rushed and it was a jumbled mess. Or the forced crossover’s with Diff’rent Strokes and Hello Larry in a desperate attempt to keep Hello Larry alive.





But the best crossover I have seen in a long while came this year, when two shows from different networks met in a pretty good episode.
 


The Flash/Supergirl crossover wasn’t perfect but it did what it was supposed. Get Supergirl some much needed attention, and the fact Flash was in National City made perfect sense. I loved that episode.