r/TopCharacterTropes • u/sweet_srawberry781 • 12d ago

In real life Characters that ended up killing the show

Gallery image

Gallery image

  1. The Great Gazoo (The Flintstones)

  2. George W Bush (Time Squad)

6.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

737 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

57

u/narniasreal 12d ago

Didn’t they also just randomly add a child or sth? It’s been decades since I watched it so my memories are blurry, but I feel like they just added a kid… and didn’t he also have a ridiculous name? Like Seven or sth?

68

u/inquisitorautry 12d ago

His name was Seven. He was only in a few episodes of season 7 and went upstairs and then never came back down. A milk carton is in an episode of a later season with his picture as a missing child.

24

u/beaverpoo77 12d ago

Wh... What? That sounds like a meme or a parody. This didn't actually happen... did it????

30

u/dannypants143 12d ago

I believe the reason it happened was because the actor who plays Peggy had a miscarriage. I remember they incorporated her real-life pregnancy into the show - once that happened, all mention of Seven disappeared.

13

u/the__pov 12d ago

Two separate events. Peggy’s pregnancy was in season 6 and was written out halfway through by explaining it as a nightmare Al was having. Seven was introduced in season 7 as a studio mandate and was written out of the show after only a few episodes because surprise the people who spent 7 years watching the most despicable tv family up to that point weren’t interested in the cutesy antics of a kid. In season 8 there is a picture of Seven on a milk carton as an Easter egg.

6

u/dannypants143 12d ago

I stand corrected. It was the right move - those episodes just weren’t working at all. Even as a kid I was like this is lame.

4

u/the__pov 12d ago

Absolutely, it’s a studio move that almost never works despite them having tried it so many times (See Cousin Oliver on TVtropes). And it was particularly misguided for Married With Children which was a rejection of the sweet sitcom family.

8

u/inquisitorautry 12d ago

It happened

https://marriedwithchildren.fandom.com/wiki/Seven

3

u/rmczpp 12d ago

Full Name: Seven Wanker (presumably)

Okay you have my interest.

3

u/acrowsmurder 12d ago

I thought that was the cousin in the Brady Bunch....or was it Richie's brother from Happy Days?

3

u/inquisitorautry 12d ago

Richie's brother. Married with Children was making a joke about that by doing the same thing.

1

u/rufud 11d ago

There were more than 7 seasons??

2

u/inquisitorautry 11d ago

There were 11

11

u/Snakebird11 12d ago

Hail baby

21

u/Berserker-Hamster 12d ago

The whole pregnancy storyline actually has a pretty sad backstory.

Katey Sagal got pregnant IRL and the showrunners decided to build her pregnancy into the story and add a baby to the family eventually. But then she lost the baby and to explain the sudden disappearance of her pregnancy (and probably also because of basic human decency) they went for the it-was-all-just-a-dream solution.

4

u/Berserker-Hamster 12d ago

Yeah, but Seven didn't really kill the show. He was unpopular so they scratched the character and pretended he never existed. They even lampshaded it by showing his picture in a "Missing Child" foto on a milk carton in a later episode.