The Surprising Origins of 9 TV Spin-Offs

was on as just don't understand. They really they still don't be honest with it. It's such a tame song. I love that you had to beg for it, but like, I'm totally in the same boat because, like, my mom didn't let me watch Silver Spoons for some reason. Apparently she didn't like the fact that like you would just cause all this trouble and then it was resolved with like a sorry in the last two minutes or something.

That's pretty hilarious. So there was another one that was my begging and finally getting to be Bart Simpson for Halloween. I think this was fifth grade. It might have been sixth grade, but I know it was around there, but I was sure I was one of millions of kids running around in that same ridiculously heavy and pretty much suffocating rubber Bart mass saying things like don't have a cow man, and eat my shorts and all the great

Bart lines. That is so funny. I had no idea you were Bart Simpson for holloween was It is funny, like how shocking Bart was when in those early years, like like I remember some kid wore a shirt in and I think it said like, who the hell are you? And and a teacher put masking tape over the party. Such a badass? Well, I mean, who knew that more than twenty five years since then the Simpsons would still

be going so strong on TV. I mean, it's, of course now the longest running scripted primetime series in American history, currently in its thirtieth season, recently passing six hundred and fifty episodes, So this puts it past gun Smoke, which ran for I think six thirty five. But it's just incredible. Yeah, you know, I saw this thing in Entertainment Weekly that said something about how like the Simpsons were so off putting to America initially and now they're one of the

longest going like church families. Like really, uh, it is funny to think that it's spun off from the Tracy Ullman Show. And it wasn't even the original idea that the producers of The Allman Show approach mac Grainig about, right, you know, they'd originally actually approached him about his life and Hell comic strip. But you know, he didn't want to have to give up the rights to that, or at least to the characters, and so he decided to come up with a new concept and a completely different

cast of characters. And it's funny because most of them were based on and even named after the people in his own life, like mainly his family members. Oh, I mean, it was a smart call to go in that direction, no kidding. Well, thinking about the spinoff made us want to revisit some of the most successful or maybe the most bizarre TV spinoffs in TV history. So that's exactly what we're doing today. Let's dive in. H Hey, their

podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and it's always I'm joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass, not just wearing a Mark from Orc T shirt, but fully dressed in the costume that Mark always were. That's

our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. You know, I always appreciate his commitment to these costumes, but it's pretty clear that the show was like from before his time, and he's not seen an episode because like everything he responds to is just nanu. Nanu is kind of ridiculous. Do you think he thinks that's that's all Mark said or what I think? So all right, Well, Tristan is a busy guy, so I guess we'll cut him a little

bit of slack now. And anyway, let's come back to the topic of Mark later, because that's actually one of my facts for today. And today, of course we're talking about TV spinoffs, and it's easy to think that this is a much more recent phenomenon, but we can actually look way back to like the nineteen fifties when a show like The Honeymooners would spin off from a variety series called Cavalcade of Stars. And this is really one of the first big sitcoms in America, So spinoffs are

definitely not a new thing. But anywait where do you want to start? Well, I mean, why don't we talk about one of the most prolific spinoff machines in TV history, and that is Happy Days. A good start. You know, most people don't remember this, but Happy Days itself was weirdly a spinoff. It was from a show in late sixties and early seventies called Love American Style. So during the run of that show, the TV producer Gary Marshall had this idea for a sitcom about teenagers in the

nineteen fifties, and he made a pilot. He shopped it around, but unfortunately no one was biting, so he ended up selling the rights to the pilot to be an episode on Love American Style. And actually two big things happened here. First off, George Lucas saw Ron Howard in this pilot and he asked him to be in his film American Graffiti.

And then ABC executives took notice. And you know, when when you fast forward a couple of years with American Graffiti, the musical Greece had come out, and like those both being such big hits, like it was clear that fifties nostalgia was this super sellable thing. So they went back to Gary Marshall and they said about that pilot like

we'd love to do it. Yeah. I mean it's weird to think how different TV history would have been of Happy Days had never been on the air, because, you know, as you had said before, so many shows spun off from it. I was actually looking at the list and I didn't even remember some of them. But there were at least five live action spinoffs and I think three

cartoons series all that's spun off from Happy Days. Yeah, it's crazy, but I know I was setting you up to talk about Morgan Mindy, but I do feel like we should mention the first and most successful of the Happy Days spinoffs. Oh, that would be Laverne and Shirley, right, exactly, Laverne and Shirley. So Laverne who was played by Henny Marshall and Shirley, who was played by Cindy Williams. They they both showed up in the season three of Happy Days as friends of the Fons, and uh, within just

a year they actually had their own show. It was a spin off that was so successful that it hit the top of the charts and it often outperformed Happy Days during the run when both shows were on. It's pretty amazing. The show actually lasted eight years, But there was also a weird anime it spin off from that that most people don't remember. It's called Laverne and Shirley in the Army. Where as you might imagine the duo and listen to the military, they serve under the command

of a talking pig named Sergeant Squeally. And shockingly, that show did not get a second season. That is so weird. But actually I don't know if it's weirder than Mork and Mindy and and thanks for the setup on this one. But you know, the history of this one is one that many people may not remember or even no And this can actually be traced back to the Dick Van

Dyke Show. So in this one episode, Dick van Dyke's character is watch seeing a sci fi movie and he then dreams that this alien name Kolak I think it is is trying to take over the Earth with walnuts or something like that. And so here's where the Happy Days part comes in. So the director of that episode was a guy named Jerry Paris, who ended up directing

several episodes of Happy Days years later. Well, one day he's on the set and Gary Marshall starts talking about his son and how he's obsessed with Star Wars and how he wishes there were more Aliens on TV. And so this makes Paris remember the whole Walnut Aliens thing and he decides to pitch a similar idea, and from that Mark from Orc was born. That's really crazy. I do feel like we could do a whole show on Happy Days spinoffs. But since we've only got nine facts here,

I think we should talk about another one. So since I shared to the first off the that like, I feel like maybe you should take another stab of a fact here. Yeah, I think I'll go with another Powerhouse spinoff machine. And that's of course all in the Family. Now, this legendary series about the Bunker family actually lead to six spinoffs over its nine seasons, and a few of

them were very successful. There's of course Maud and Good Times, and I thought about sharing some facts about that one, but you know, the biggest hit was obviously The Jefferson's, debuted in nineteen and of course focused on the former neighbors of the Bunkers, which were George and Louise Jefferson.

So you know, I had definitely watched The Jeffersons a little bit when I was a kid, but I remember seeing Sherman Helmsley on David Letterman, and you know, he's the guy who played George Jefferson if if you're listening and weren't familiar with the show. But you know, what I didn't realize was it was on the air for a really long time, right like they were talking about it and and it was a stunning amount of time that that show continued. Yeah, it was actually on longer

than the show that inspired it. It It was on for eleven seasons, two hundred and fifty three episodes. It's it's actually second only to Tyler Perry's House of Pain in terms of the longest running American sitcom TV shows that have a majority African American cast. So it was a pretty incredible run. And actually, interestingly, Sherman Helmsley's last acting job was on an episode of House of Pain. He

appeared as George Jefferson on that episode. That's pretty cool. Okay, So I know we've talked a good bit about successful spinoffs of legendary shows, but there's actually one that I had totally forgotten about, or maybe I blocked it out because it was a colossal flop and that is Golden Palace. Golden I don't even know what that is. It's the follow up to Golden Girls, which you know, was one of my friend Adam's favorite shows. He loved all the ladies and I feel like he could give you words

to live by from each of them. But if you remember, the show ended after seven seasons with the Arthur's character Dorothy getting married and moving to Atlanta. So uh. The spinoff apparently followed Rose Blanche and Sophia as they moved to Miami and then tried to run a really nice motel there. I guess the gimmick was that they invested in this place, they ended up having to get involved in the day to day work because things go wrong. And you know, as I mentioned earlier, the show was

not a success. It only lasted one season. It's so weird because I have no memory of that. But I do feel like if you're going to talk about spinoffs from the Golden Girls, you do have to talk about the one successful spinoff from the show. I know, Empty Nest the best. Well, that show actually followed the lives of the girls neighbors and also ran seven seasons, and all of the Golden Girls appeared multiple times on the show.

But here's something I had no memory of, and this goes back to Golden Palace, But that's that Don Cheatle was actually the manager of the hotel on that Golden Palace show. It's kind of a shame because he got type cast. He was later the hotel manager in uh Hotel Rwanda, which is totally different. Maybe was his training right to be ready for that one, I think so? But what what do you have next? Well, all right, well, I wanted to talk about a show whose creative team

actually didn't intend for it to be a spinoff. And this one sounds weird when you hear about it because it's Frasier, which seems like such an obvious one, But in fact, this was one of the many things about Dr Frasier Crane that were not intended to be long term. So his first appearance was on Cheers and its third season, and he was really just meant to be this temporary character, but fans fell in love with him, and so by the fifth season he was pretty much a regular cast member.

So you fast forward to the creative team working on a show concept for Kelsey Grammer to kind of do as his next project, and they were worried about the show always being compared to Cheers, and so they actually didn't want to make the show about Frasier for that reason, and instead they had this plan for him to play some sort of like magazine media mogul and he'd been paralyzed after some sort of accident. Yeah, it's a very

different concept. But the studio wasn't having any of this idea, and they insisted that the show be a spin off. And you can actually still tell that this was scaring the creative team, so they did as much as I could to separate it. I mean, starting with moving the character all the way across the country to Seattle from Boston. But that said, most of the major cast members did

appear on the show at some point during its eleven seasons. Well, Fraser was definitely one of the most successful spinoffs ever. But we've got two more facts to get to. Before we get to those, let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We we're talking about TV spinoffs. Okay, Well, what is your last fact of the day going to be? All Right? Well, I started with one animated series that made parents uncomfortable, and I think I'll end with another

one that made them even more uncomfortable. And I've talked, of course about Beavis and butt Head, which I spent many middle school hours watching and thinking was just hilarious. And I actually never forget going to the movie that they eventually did, and and and just as the lights were getting darker after the previews kind of indicating the movie was about to start, it seemed like the entire crowd immediately went into their best Beavis and butt Had impressions.

It was just a weird experience that sounds like incredible for the time and like a nightmare. Yeah, it was exactly both of those. But what a lot of people don't remember is that Beavis and butt Head was actually a spin off in itself. So it came out of this anthology show called Liquid Television, which featured all these different animated segments, and he was also on MTV, and you know, it was by far the most successful creation

to come from that series. So it was eventually spun off as its own thing, and it was such a stupid but you know, I have to say, wonderful show, running for eight seasons, But of course it spun off another show, Daria. Yeah, that's right. And you know, Daria actually wasn't part of the original Liquid television series. I mean she was actually added to Beavis and butt Head at the request of MTV, and this is because they

wanted kind of more of a female presence on the show. So, as Mike Judge explained, he created a character that was kind of this mix of Darlene from Rosanne, which you can definitely see, but also a high school girlfriend of his. And and the name Daria came from someone he knew in high school, apparently somebody that he used to call diarrhea, which sounds about right when you think about and also a reminder of how horrible high school students can be.

But anyway, it's a mega what what's your last fact of the day. Well, I think I'm going to end the show with a show that wasn't really a spinoff, but could have been considered a spin off maybe for for like a weird and funny reason. And this is the relationship of The Office to Parks and Wreck. So if you go back to the peak of the Office

is popularity. NBC asked the showrunner Greg Daniels and and the writer Michael Shure first some spinoff ideas, and they'd actually already been kind of hatching on this, Like at first there was the possibility of a show with Jim and Pam, but then of course they didn't want to take their two most popular characters off the show. And they also thought about Dwight and his family beat Farm,

which I would have loved that show. They actually did make an episode about exactly about a few years later, but it never turned into a spinoff, but ultimately Daniels and Sure decided they would go and do just a totally different mockumentary. One thing I loved is that there was actually this idea of how to connect the two shows, and it was the idea of the writer Paul Leverston, who plays Um Toby on The Office. But here's how

a TV Guide described it. Quote On the Office, a copy machine breaks and throughout the episode, wh repairman tries to fix it. At the end of the episode, the machine is loaded on a truck and refurbished in a warehouse. Then the copier is loaded onto another truck and taken to Pawnee, Indiana, where it's dropped off in the parks

and Wreck office. So in a twist on spinoff traditions, the character spun off would have been the Coffee Machine, but producers briefly considered the idea of ultimately Parks and w rec was its own creation. That is hilarious. I mean, I'm not sure why they wouldn't just go with this idea, but but I love that anyway. It takes a lot of guts to talk about a spinoff that's not really a spinoff and even close the show with a manga. So for just that bravery, I'm going to give you

the trophy today. And I mean I know that we have a thing for coffee machines. Back in Mental floss or Machine was called Shyde because she was such a smooth operator. I'll happily grab the trophy this week. Anyway. There's so many great and weird spinoffs out there, from you know, the Perfect Strangers family Matters connection to the Mash follow up which was called Aftermash. But if you've got a terrible favorite spinoff, tell us all about a part time genius at how stuff works dot com. We'd

love to talk about it. And from Kristan gave Will and me thank you so much for listening. Tre