12

Jul

2013

Friday Five – Spin-offs

Posted By on Friday July 12, 2013 at 2:26 pm
To Friday Five, Television

Happy Days
 
Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week I help you get to know me a bit better with the help of a top five list. This week’s category: Spin offs.
 
Many times producers will try to spin off their breakout star into their own series to milk that cash cow a little bit. Many times it doesn’t work, and you end up with The Tortellis, Golden Palace, Three’s A Crowd, Vinnie and Bobby, or Joey (Man, Matt LeBlanc was lucky he got Friends, wasn’t he?). But sometimes, a spin off ends up working out OK, or often times, surpasses it’s originating parent show.
 

  1. Pokemon Snap – Why has this game not been remade for new generations of Pokemon!

    2.  

  2. The Simpsons – Most people forget this show started as a series of poorly drawn skits on The Tracy Ullman Show.

    3.  

  3. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Still my favorite Star Trek

    4.  

  4. Saved by the Bell: The New Class – This started out as pretty much a clone of SBBT, but once they realized that was a dumb idea and fired the entire cast at the end of the first season, it actually wasn’t half bad. In fact, it actually ran for two more seasons than SBBT did.

    5.  

  5. Wayne’s World – One of the few movies spun from Saturday Night Live that was any good.

 
Runner Up – Happy Days, which itself was spun from Love, American Style, and lead to more spin-offs, like Mork and Mindy, Laverne and Shirley, Joanie Loves Chachi, and The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, in which an animated Fonz travels through time with anthropomorphic talking dog. The only thing that could be cooler was if the Fonz jumped the Sharknado on his motorcycle.
 

is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company.

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