Today, we look at how Christina Applegate’s sitcom, Jesse, was totally revamped in an attempt to save it.
This is “Gonna Make a Change,” a new feature where I spotlight shows that underwent major revamps during their runs to avoid cancellation. Note that I mean MAJOR revamps, not, like, M*A*S*H getting more serious as it went on or Cheers becoming more of an ensemble comedy once Shelley Long left.
Show: Jesse.
Probably one of NBC’s biggest regrets over the years is that it never actually developed a sitcom in the time slot that followed its megahit, Friends. It basically led to Thursday’s “Must See TV” lineup falling apart once Friends ended, as there just weren’t any successors to follow it. Only Will & Grace stood out, and one show is not enough to build a lineup around, especially as Will & Grace was never even close to as popular as Friends (it only hit the top ten once in its run, and that was when Friends was still on the air).
Oddly enough, it took until the 1997-98 season for NBC to try what seems to be me to be an obvious answer, which was to allow David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the creators of Friends, to create a new sitcom. Their attempt, Veronica’s Closet (starring Kirstie Alley) wasn’t all that good, but it was better than the other shows NBC had tried. Oddly enough, though, Veronica’s Closet debuted after NBC’s OTHER megahit sitcom, Seinfeld, instead.
So it wasn’t until the following year that Crane and Kauffman (now joined by the longtime Friends producer, Kevin S. Bright, who they finally let create a show with them) created a show that aired after Friends. Starring Christina Applegate in her first solo sitcom, a couple of years after Married…with Children went off the air, Jesse was a bizarre concept for a sitcom.
Original Concept: Applegate is a single mother (Eric Lloyd plays her son) who works in her father’s German-themed bar in Buffalo, New York. The great George Dzundza played her dad.
Her brothers (John Lehr and David DeLuise) also worked there, as well as her best friends, Linda (Liza Snyder) and Carrie (Jennifer Milmore). She met a Chilean man named Diego (Bruno Campos) and she fell for him hard, but things were complicated by her ex-husband, Roy (Michael Weatherly) returning to try to win her back.
The show finished in the top five for the year, but that was because NBC had the number one show on television (ER), the number two show (Friends) and the number three show (Frasier) and they were all on Thursday night, so Jesse and Veronica’s Closet both finished tied for fourth for the season. However, it obviously lost a lot of the Friends audience, so the producers decided to drastically revamp the show for Season 2.
Revamped Concept: Gone without explanation were Jesse’s father and brother (as well as her ex-husband), and now Jesse (who got into nursing school in the Season 1 finale) was now attending nursing school and working as a nurse’s aide at a health center, with a doctor played by Kevin Rahm and a nurse played by Darryl Theirs (Theirs had appeared as a nurse in a Season 1 episode, and I guess he impressed). The show became more of a Friends-style show, as Carrie and Linda got different jobs, as well, and they all just sort of hung around like on Friends.
Here’s Jesse at her job as a nurse’s aide…
Diego ends up needing to get a Green Card marriage to stay in the country. Jesse doesn’t feel right about it, so Linda agrees to do it. In the end, though, Jesse decides that she WANTS to marry Diego for REAL, but as she travels to his wedding to stop it, she gets there too late, as he is already married to Linda.
Did it get the show more than one last season?: No. The cliffhanger never got resolved, as the shoe was canceled after two seasons.
Okay, that’s it for this first installment of “Gonna Make a Change,” please send in suggestions for other good revamps to my e-mail address of brian@popculturereferences.com.!
Facts of Life went through 2 or 3 major revamps, stating with season 2 when half the cast disappeared.
If you want a show with a drastic amount of cast and premise changes, I’ll go with a less well known example: 1995’s revamp of “FLIPPER” (sometimes called “FLIPPER: THE NEW ADVENTURES”). It ran for 4 seasons (2 in standard broadcast syndication, 2 on the PAX Network) and is mostly known for being Jessica Alba’s star vehicle. But what isn’t as readily known is how drastically the show changed course over 4 seasons and two networks, and how 50-75% of the cast would change and leave every season.
The first season is intended to be a sequel to the original 1964 series, with a now adult Keith “Bud” Ricks (Brian Wimmer) as an aquatic researcher in the Florida Keys. One episode even sees a grown up version of his brother, Sandy, from the original show. A Naval researcher, Dr. Pam Blondell (Colleen Flynn), and her snotty teenage son, Mike (Payton Haas), move in, with Alba playing a local, Maya Graham, from a broken home with an affinity for dolphins. Naturally, they meet one (played by two dolphins I think) and inspired by Dr. Ricks’ childhood tales, dub him Flipper. It is an adventure show with plots involving some crime solving and general pollution shenanigans.
By season 2, everyone but Alba’s Maya is gone; she gives some generic exposition in the premiere that they “moved away” and that is it. Now Alba is the unofficial star, without any of her old supporting cast. Dr. Jennifer Daulton (Elizabeth Morehead) takes over as the researcher with her estranged dad, Edward “Cap” Daulton (Gus Mercurio) hovering around alongside supporting cast interns for Maya to interact with, Dean Gregson (Scott Michaelson) and Holly Myers (Anja Coleby). Also added to the cast are Deputies Tom Hampton (Whip Hubley) and Quinn Garnett (Wren T. Brown), from the Air Sea Rescue station that handles all crimes or emergencies. The show starts to become more action oriented, since official deputies are part of the regular cast now. A romantic subplot is alluded to between Dr. Daulton and Tom Hampton. Any connection to the original show beyond a dolphin named Flipper is gone. The season ends alluding to magic being real and Maya having a psychic bond with Flipper (seriously).
Here comes season 3, and then EVERYONE is gone aside for Tom Hampton (Whip Hubley), Holly Myers (Anja Coleby), and Edward “Cap” Daulton (Gus Mercurio). Cap’s entire reason to be on the cast was to rebuild ties with his daughter, but now her character is gone but he’s still around. Holly, especially, is given almost nothing to do ever again but functional dialogue (i.e. exposition or giving someone else lines to bounce off). A new Naval character, Lt. Alex Parker (Tiffany Lamb), starts the season by marrying Tom Hampton right off and this acting as a resolution for last season’s romantic subplot, albeit with a new leading lady. Deputy Mark Delaney (Darrin Klimek) replaces Quinn/Brown as Tom’s partner. Alex was a widow with two kids, Chris (Craig Marriott) and Jackie (Laura Donaldson). While rescues and crime plots happen, the show shifts into being more of a domestic drama as Tom is trying to get used to married life and connect with his new step-kids. And they all have interactions with a super-smart dolphin of course.
No one leaves by season 4, but they add Skye Patch as Courtney Gordon, Tom’s niece. And they decide to hand Maya’s “psychic dolphin powers” to Jackie with Tom acting as if they’re new and strange. At least two episodes out of 4 seasons are clip shows revolving around hurricanes. And the series ends on an uncharacteristic downer implying that Flipper dies.
It is a weird, weird run of a show. Even most “daytime syndicated” shows of the era like XENA or HERCULES usually had more stable casts. I caught all this when the show reran on LIGHT TV years ago, and it was pretty odd.
I liked the first season but IIRC correctly I bailed quickly on Season 2.
The Doris Day Show from the end of the 1960s rebooted her from a Mom with two kids into a single woman with no explanation IIRC.
Sadly, Applegate’s best sitcom Samantha Who was cancelled by some ding dong at NBC. It starred Applegate, Jean Smart as her mother, and Melissa McCarthy as her best friend. A trifecta of excellent comediennes. The excellent Tim Russ, Tuvoc from ST Voyager, was her laconic/sarcastic doorman. Her dad was Kevin Dunn, and her ex-best friend was Jennifer Esposito. It was great. Give it a watch.