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Sunday, Animation Domination night, I turned on the TV to see a man with a nasally voice announcing his departure. As he pulled his car out of Quahog, the sharp-tongued baby echoed my thoughts exactly: “What the hell. He's getting his own show?!”
Seth MacFarlane, creator of the three-time Emmy Award winning Family Guy, recently plucked side character Cleveland Brown from the show and starred him in his very own spin-off on Fox, named The Cleveland Show. The first four minutes of the pilot were good, very good. But then I realized why: those moments were just Cleveland's perspective from Family Guy transitioning into The Cleveland Show.
With what I call the reverse renaissance of television, ever since The Andy Griffith Show spun-off from The Danny Thomas Show in 1953, it seems the media has run out of fresh ideas.
We first saw Cleveland as Peter Griffin’s awkward black friend who lacked character development. We see him now as that same guy, only complete with his own family — the black Griffins. His son is as obese and dimwitted as Chris Griffin and the toddler is a smart-mouthed heterosexual Stewie with an afro. Although the pilot debuted at a strong 9.4 million views, according to Entertainment Weekly, the positive reception does not reflect its popularity accurately. In fact, viewers on tv.com rated the show 5.3 on a scale of 10, casting it as “mediocre.” Critics have also speculated that the show has a sweeter tone than Family Guy, even going as far as recycling that infamous prolonged barf scene in a romantic flashback sequence. Spin-offs must acquire different qualities from their parent series’ in order to be successful, but sweet and Seth MacFarlane do not belong in the same sentence.
Fox is not the only network to take blows from TV blunders. The CW network is home to 90210, the updated spin-off of Fox’s Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-2000), now in its sophomore season. The network has also begun to air an updated version of Melrose Place (1992-1999), originally a spin-off of 90210, and (just when things start to get even more confusing) had also spawned a reject that did not survive past its first season, Models Inc. (1994-1995). Yes, spin-offs of spin-offs exist, and the day when The CW decides to take in a re-make of a spin-off spun-off from a spin-off will be a very sad day. Big wigs in the TV industry have to recognize that starring favorite supporting characters from the original shows does not automatically justify copycat shows lacking substantial plots.
On the other hand, The CW scored by picking up the adaptation of the New York Times Bestseller Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar, bringing in an even wider audience to its loyal teenage viewers. Perhaps it was a good decision for the show to develop a different storyline from the novels, as Brooklyn insider Jenny Humphrey from the book series eventually gets expelled from Constance Billard and enrolls in the boarding school world of Waverly Academy in the ghostwritten series The It Girl. But the TV writers knew they had better keep her in the city. Now that queen bee Blair has gone off to college this season, who else could lead the snobfest on the Upper East Side other than the very qualified spunky Humphrey?
While Jenny will not be the “it girl,” rumors circulated earlier this year about another proposed show. According to a March BuddyTV article, Valley Girls, the May 11th episode of Gossip Girl, had been speculated to be a backdoor pilot for a spin-off series in the making which would have followed Manhattan socialist Lily van der Woodsen, Serena’s mother, in her wild ’80s days. But during The CW's Television Critics Association press tour on August 4, The CW'S CEO Dawn Ostroff said the show was “unlikely” to get made for the time being, and Valley Girls did not appear on the fall line up.
Although the 20-minute flashback did not show enough promise for The CW, executive producer Josh Schwartz expressed interest in planning a Valley Girls crossover with The O.C. That is too bad for Schwartz, but fortunate for the rest of us with gag-reflexes who shudder at the thought of crossovers monopolizing separate TV shows into one single mindless form.
Despite their notorious reputation, a few worthy spin-offs debunk the notion that offspring shows never rise to their parent series’ level. Remember the good old days in the early 2000s when we had the leisure of catching up on the latest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on The WB? Remember how devastating it was when Angel left girlfriend Buffy, not for another girl, but another supernatural drama? As it turns out, creator Joss Whedon knew what he was doing, because Angel performed better than Buffy for brief periods. In his own much darker toned show, Angel heroically battled demons as well as his own demonic nature, and no longer needed to fall back to the shadow as a supporting character.
In some rather inconceivable instances, spin-offs have had gained a bigger fan-base than their parent series. Following Cheers’ (1982-1993) widely watched series finale, its set was replaced by Frasier’s set on the same stage, signaling the commencement of an even more exceptional sitcom. Frasier won a record 37 Emmy Awards, compared to the 28 Emmys received by its parent series, Cheers. Over the span of those twenty long years, the shows transitioned with ease, because audience members of Frasier, with the help of the show’s supporting characters, did not need much prior knowledge of Cheers in order to follow the plot.
Face it: standards for television have increased tremendously over the decades as new filming techniques are adopted. The spin-off phenomenon is visual vomit regurgitated in our TV screens. And don’t even get me started on all the CSIs and Law & Orders. |
