What were you thinking? Bad Sit-Coms

I know of this because, during the glory days of MST3K on Comedy Central, CC would show this all the damn time. I think the broadcast rights came free with a purchase of $50 or more at K-Mart.

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DON KIRSHNER ?! :open_mouth:

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I barely knew 'er!

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Frustrated Here We Go GIF by Sesame Street

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The Brady Buch got a bunch of spinoffs and specials. It is crazy.

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That looks like a Love, American Style sketch stretched out to series length. I was digging the music then saw at the end it was by jazz trumpeter Shorty Rogers. No wonder I liked it.

Also Associate Producer Paul Junger Witt was an AP on TV Frank’s favorite show The Second Hundred Years and would go on to Executive Producer credits on Soap, Benson, Beauty and The Beast, Herman’s Head, Blossom and The Golden Girls among others

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It sounded like “Food Glorious Food” from Oliver!

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Not exactly a “sitcom,” technically, but the infamous Turn On got cancelled after one episode. I actually saw it at the time. Now you can join in and even watch the second, never broadcast episode!

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Huh. I’d always heard of Turn-On and assumed it was probably just ahead of its time. But no… it was agelessly terrible.

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Can I suggest the Barney Miller spinoff, Fish belongs in this discussion. I love Abe Vigoda and the Fish character he unforgettably brought to life on Barney Miller. But the concept they thought up for his own series was horrible. Fish and his wife were like foster parents to a diverse group of spunky preteens. Bleeeech!

Why couldn’t they have had Fish retire from the NYPD and open up his own private detective agency. Throw in a sassy, sexy female secretary, a young street-smart ethnic partner, the wisecracking mailman who pops in each week and all the various wacky characters who would come to Fish for detective work and you might have had a hit show – kind of a ripoff/clone of Barney Miller perhaps, but a hit show.

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There were a lot of spinoffs, but the shows I posted weren’t just bad because they were spinoffs of the Brady Bunch, they were horribly bad on their own merits.
I included The Bradys as a sitcom because at least half the show was attempted comedy, as the laugh track tells us when Marcia has a few drinks and then gets into the car but fumbles with the keys.

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A couple more failed pilots: Mr. and Mrs. Dracula. The Draculas move to an apartment in New York. This one actually had two pilots that got nowhere.

And-

A family adjusting to life on Mars, where they live next door to a Soviet technician and his American-stripper wife.

Apparently that one would have gone forward if not for a writer’s strike.

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One more, this with a pre-M*A*S*H Alan Alda.

Arnold Barker starts every day by going out on his porch to pick up the milk and the newspaper but on this he brings in something different - an invisible alien baby who’s been left on his doorstep.

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Not gonna lie, I would watch the HELL out of Mr. & Mrs. Dracula.

Let me guess- FOX?

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CBS, surprisingly.

It was also an early role for the tragic young heartthrob, Jonathan Brandis.

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I can’t find any info on this from the IMDB, it comes from a website quoting someone’s book on unsold pilots, so take it with a grain of salt, but I want it to be true.

YAZOO NBC-1984 – William Conrad (the Fat Man from Jake &) is a widowed journalist who goes fishing one day, falls asleep in the boat, and wakes up in a magical world called Yazoo, populated by the Peppercorn Puppets.

I assume this was meant for kids, not a sitcom, but I had to share.

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A widow discovers her late husband has programmed his personality into a computer that operates their house.

With Susan St. James!

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My Husband the House?

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I’m really enjoying these rejected sitcom pilots. You have to wonder who ever thought it was a good idea to even let it get that far with a lot of these.

This rejected CBS 1964-1965 sitcom pilot starred Pat Hingle as the ghost of Lt. Col. George A. Custer and comedian Ben Blue as his Indian sidekick, Running Dog, who “return from the happy hunting ground to gambol with a typical American family.” By means that go unexplained in the pilot, the two frequently materialize from images in a painting hanging in a West Los Angeles residence (once owned by Benjamin Custer, a relative of the colonel) into living form, causing much mischief. In the pilot, a real-estate agent (Jack Weston) rents the house to Helen and Tom Woodley (Lisa Gaye and Curtis Taylor), who move in along with their young children, Liz (Kym Harath) and Larry (Randy Whipple).

Seriously, Custer and his Native American sidekick? What?!

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Even Norman Lear was not immune to terrible TV show ideas.

A Dog’s Life is a 1979 television pilot created by Charlie Hauck for NBC and the last television concept developed by Norman Lear to become a pilot. The show starred Barney Martin, Beej Johnson, Charles Martin Smith and Sherry Lynn. Only one half-hour pilot episode was made of this offbeat costume comedy. It was shown only once on NBC on June 15, 1979 at 8:00 PM EST.[1] The show featured the actors portraying the roles of the family dogs and wearing dog costumes. Lear’s intention was to do an All in the Family-style show by using the dog’s point of view to discuss controversial social and racial biases.

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