Despite being runners'-up during pilot season, these mid-season
cast-offs went on to become classics. Premiering immediately after the Super Bowl,
"The Wonder Years" got a relatively rare boost for a mid-season replacement show.
This prestigious time slot often carries over a significant number of viewers from one of the
most popular telecasts each year. It also usually contains an established show with
some kind of high-profile gimmick. In January 1988, perhaps as a bit of counterprogramming,
ABC used the opportunity to launch a heartfelt, modest show about coming of age in the suburbs.
Following in the footsteps of other nostalgic TV sitcoms like "Happy Days" and "M*A*S*H,"
"The Wonder Years" is set in the late '60s and early '70s. This results in a killer soundtrack,
exemplified by Joe Cocker's immortal cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends" in the
opening credits of every episode. For its time, "The Wonder Years" was pioneering in expanding the
22-minute sitcom format to include more depth. Its characters had nuance not usually found in the TV
suburbs, especially lead actor Fred Savage as the sensitive, awkward main character Kevin Arnold.
"Grey's Anatomy" premiered in 2005, in the relative TV season dead zone of March. The
late-season medical drama, of course, became an instant hit and has gone on to an incredible 19
seasons and counting, with a sprawling cast and timeline. "Grey's Anatomy" focuses on the personal
lives of its over-worked characters, especially their relationships and rivalries. It was also
notable at the time for its diverse cast and its focus on complex female roles, something
that show creator Shonda Rhimes would carry over to later hits like "Scandal" and "Bridgerton."
As of the early 2020s, "Grey's Anatomy" has been on the air several seasons longer than
"ER" and will even outlast its titular main character — Meredith Grey actor Ellen Pompeo
left "Grey's Anatomy" in Season 19. It's unclear if there are plans to rename the
show to simply "Anatomy," but as long as there are attractive surgeons to
save lives and fall in love, perhaps it will outlast even the streaming wars themselves.
"Yay!" "The Simpsons" is not just
one of the longest-running TV shows in general — it holds the somewhat technical distinction of
being the longest-running scripted primetime show ever. With 34 seasons and well over 700 episodes,
it might be surprising that the first full-length episode of "The Simpsons" was actually billed as
a Christmas Special. "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" aired on December 17th,
1989. Adapted into sitcom-length from a series of shorts on "The Tracey Ullman Show," "The
Simpsons" was actually meant for fall, but an animation snafu led to its winter debut.
Showrunner Al Jean, speaking with SlashFilm, revealed that the episode "Some Enchanted
Evening" was originally intended to be the first episode, but it had problems due to
its initial director sending bad instructions to the Korean animation studio. According to Jean,
"It could've wrecked everything, but fortunately it didn't."
"The Simpsons" snagged "Open Fire," technically the eighth episode produced,
as a Christmas-adjacent premiere, and the rest is history.
We wouldn't have Chuck Norris without "Walker, Texas Ranger." The series stars Norris as Cordell
Walker, a Texas ranger in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In the show, that area is home to an endless
amount of bank robbers, escaped convicts, gang members, and other cartoonishly evil villains
that exist solely for Walker to beat up. "Walker, Texas Ranger" isn't exactly a good show — in fact,
it includes some of the most poorly acted scenes in TV history. But its straight-ahead commitment
to cheesy one-liners and epic fights has made it a cultural mainstay, ironically or not.
"That's our ride, kid."
"Walker, Texas Ranger" premiered with a series of TV-movies late in the "season" in April 1993,
and it was perhaps inspired by Chuck Norris' role as a Texas ranger in the movie "Lone Wolf
McQuade." In fact, the team behind "Lone Wolf McQuade" sued CBS and Chuck Norris for $500
million in 1997. The movie's director, Steve Carver, would later tell "The Flashback Files”,
"MGM and CBS had bigger and better and more lawyers than we did, all the way to
the Supreme Court. We failed to convince the Supreme Court that there were similarities."
The suit was dismissed, and Walker went on to eight seasons and another TV movie,
before being rebooted on The CW as "Walker." One of the most popular, acclaimed, and enduring
sitcoms of all time, "Seinfeld," premiered on NBC as "The Seinfeld Chronicles" on July 5th,
1989. "Premiered" is actually too fancy of a way to put it; the pilot was essentially dumped off
without a series order by confused executives who weren't encouraged by poor test audience data.
But as has become legend, late NBC executive Rick Ludwin helped save the show from certain death by
rearranging some funds. By canceling a planned Bob Hope comedy special, he secured an order for
four more episodes. The following summer, the four new episodes would do well enough to earn
a second season, and the show was finally on its way to TV legend status. The "show about
nothing" had to survive two trials by fire over the summer to finally make the fall schedule.
"Malcolm in the Middle" might be one of the most influential sitcoms that you hear the least about.
Premiering mid-season in January 2000, it was made with a frenzied, experimental bravado that
brought cinematic flourishes to the relatively repetitive sitcom format. It was influential
in popularizing cold opens that had nothing to do with the plot of the episode, whip-pans
as rapid transitions, and was also one of the earliest sitcoms to do away with a laugh track.
Main character Malcolm, a boy genius struggling to fit in, also speeds up the
storytelling by breaking the fourth wall and narrating directly to the audience.
"I picked this trick up in camp last year. This is gonna be great."
The show also features dream sequences and stories told in flashback or otherwise out of order,
and usually avoids the easy resolutions to its characters' problems associated with family
sitcoms of the past. "Malcolm in the Middle" ran for seven seasons, all of them full of the kind
of chaotic but warm and human storytelling that would define many of the best sitcoms to follow.
There are many reasons why "Twin Peaks" shouldn't have worked. It premiered on ABC late in the
season on April 8th, 1990, a Thursday night that put it up against NBC's popular "Must See TV,"
anchored by the massively popular sitcom "Cheers." "Twin Peaks" was co-created by David Lynch. With
the exception of 1977's "Eraserhead," the series is just as enigmatic and surreal as any of Lynch's
films up to that point. When "Twin Peaks" isn't dreamlike or strange, its plot depends on the
serialized mystery surrounding the gruesome and deeply upsetting death of a teenage girl.
"Who killed Laura Palmer?"
Even if conventional wisdom said it was too dark for network TV, "Twin Peaks" took hold anyway,
changing TV as we know it and charting its own, idiosyncratic path. In the end, after the surprise
Season 3, "Twin Peaks: The Return," in 2017, David Lynch and Mark Frost's vision is arguably
more about a journey through the human psyche than the mystery of the story's particulars.
Quietly premiering in March 1997, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" quickly became a cult hit that
defined the early days of fledgling network The WB. Like many mid-season success stories,
"Buffy" almost didn't happen. The poor reception of the 1992 movie,
written by series creator Joss Whedon, didn't inspire confidence.
But Whedon's vision, which turned the image of the helpless blonde cheerleader victim on its head,
overcame the odds and ran for seven seasons. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" would set the tone for
the internet age to come, with Whedon's trademark mixture of snarky one-liners and gothic horror.
At its highest points, it could be heart wrenching and emotional or even experiment with musical and
silent episodes. Well before "Twilight" or "True Blood" made vampires sexy, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer" broke new ground in combining the undead with the hormonal angst of high school.
It's impossible to imagine the U.S. version of "The Office" as anything but the ubiquitous
cultural phenomenon that it is now. But long before it was streamed on repeat and quoted
endlessly in dating profiles, it was a mid-season remake of the original British show. NBC hedged
its bet and aired the first episode on March 24th, 2005. If the short first season floundered,
it would join the countless other terrible American remakes of British shows lost to history.
As we all know, after an indifferently received first six episodes,
"The Office" survived by retooling itself in Season 2 to be more upbeat,
writing to the individual strengths of its American cast. Rather than imitating the bleak,
harsher tone of the British version, it found a sweeter spot that paired the ennui of office
life with the surrogate family feeling that workplaces can afford us. In the following years,
we fell in love with the more relatable characters of "The Office," especially
Steve Carell's endlessly quotable Michael Scott. And what started as a mid-season
experiment in cultural adaptation became one of the most beloved sitcoms in recent memory.
"Prison Mike, what was the food like in prison?" "Gruel."
"Fresh Off the Boat" made history when it debuted in the relatively low-profile month of February,
2015. It was the first TV show about an Asian-American family on the air in
more than 20 years. Simply by following the lives of Eddie Huang and his family without
making them the butt of the joke, "Fresh Off the Boat" was a breath of fresh air.
"Fresh Off the Boat" also raised the profile considerably of Constance Wu and Randall Park,
who play Eddie's parents. The show subverts stereotypes instead of relying on them,
and nuanced humor allows issues of race to actually be discussed openly on the show.
"Mom, no. I don't want Chinese lunch! I want white people food!"
Like its ABC contemporary "Black-ish," "Fresh Off the Boat" in its six seasons manages to mine
plenty of drama and humor from race relations without being about race exclusively.
"Quantum Leap," which premiered on March 26th, 1989, is really just a Western with a
sci-fi premise that takes the long way around. Much like Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name,
or Caine from Kung Fu, Scott Bakula's Sam wanders from place to place,
helping the locals when he can. But instead of a drifter with a troubled past,
he's a scientist that turned on Project Quantum Leap before it was ready and is now
unstuck in time. Essentially, Sam replaces people in their own bodies temporarily,
until he can accomplish some unfinished business or goal for them and then "leap" away.
Weekly adventures aside, the original "Quantum Leap" succeeded largely because of the chemistry
between Bakula's Sam and co-star Dean Stockwell's Al — a colleague who keeps
Sam company as a holographic projection. Over the course of five seasons and a sprawling,
somewhat contradictory timeline, they define the tone of the show with a mixture of banter and
philosophical pondering about Sam's predicament. The full name of Bakula's character, Sam Beckett,
is an unmistakable reference to playwright Samuel Beckett of "Waiting for Godot" fame. Despite its
sci-fi trappings, "Quantum Leap" is a show about the existential ache of the human condition;
everywhere Sam goes, he helps people feel a little less trapped by their circumstances.
Picking up where classic sitcoms like "My Favorite Martian" and "Mork & Mindy" left off,
"3rd Rock from the Sun" premiered in January 1996 and upped the ante from one alien to an
entire family. It featured John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, French Stewart, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
as bumbling, often confused outer space visitors on a mission to study Earth and its inhabitants.
Original "Saturday Night Live" cast member Jane Curtin anchored the main cast as their most
consistent human foil, providing a bemused but frustrated counterbalance to Lithgow's
histrionic energy and excellent physical comedy. Although often broad and crass,
"3rd Rock" mined its premise for surprisingly earnest emotion at times. The show ran for six
seasons, never quite matching the first seasons' ratings because NBC changed the
timeslot a grand total of 21 times, leaving us with a surprisingly dark finale in 2001.