Today, I want to know who you think was the worst way that an actor was temporarily written out of a TV show to film a movie.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
One of the tricks with popular TV shows is sometimes the actors on the show become movie stars. That’s good for the TV show to have a cast member become a star, so TV shows will often bend over backwards to make things as easy as possible for the actor to continue their film career (and not, you know, leave the show). So there are often excuses for why a character has to take a break from the main narrative, and I want to know what you think was the WORST explanation given to excuse an actor so that they could film a movie?
I’m going with Ed Helms’ Andy Bernard on The Office, who went on a boat trip for months in Season 9 to give Helms time to film The Hangover Part III. It made Andy look like such a jerk to abandon both his job, but also his romance with Erin, to go on a boat trip. It really hurt his character a lot. He never quite recovered.
Okay, that’s my answer. How about you?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at brian@poprefs.com!
Fiona on Shameless, although I’m not sure if it was to make a movie.
It may not be the worst, but “THAT 70’s SHOW” was done no favors when two of their stars, Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher, became movie stars and ditched the show after season 7 (though the show was dragging by then). Grace just ditched season 8 entirely (beyond for an uncredited cameo in the series finale), though Kutcher stuck around for the first 4 episodes of the season to ease his character out of it (which about 15% of the season anyway). Until that point, the show was trying loosely to have his character, Michael Kelso, grow up slightly by assuming responsibility for siring a kid with a one night stand, and becoming a bumbling local cop (which is a perfectly reasonable job for an athletic doofus in a small town).
Then in season 8 he ditches all that to go work for the Playboy Mansion. It just seemed like a wish fulfilment exercise. They may as well had him win the lottery (though that plot point did ROSEANNE no favors).
I know that technically Kutcher was a “reoccurring guest star” in the 8th season, but he still appeared in 5 episodes out of 22, which was, again, almost 20% of the season. It felt like the show was willing to allow him to do both if he was willing to play ball (unlike Grace, who left without much, well, grace).