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Sooner or later, every TV viewer discovers the awful truth: Major
characters on favorite TV shows, including those characters that one loves
the most, are not necessarily permanent fixtures. You tune in one day, and
your program's flawed hero or his vulnerable best friend or an inspiring
mentor or Junior's wacky mom, etc., have pushed (or are about to be
pushed) on, written out of a show and leaving the audience to cope.
Why? Sometimes actors, even starring actors on successful series,
leave. Sometimes they
get sick or die. Occasionally they're sacrificed
to the designs of producers trying to shake
things up. Once in a while,
an actor proves enough of a pain behind the scenes to
become
expendable.
From a viewer's perspective, that makes television, on occasion, a
medium of loss --
sometimes traumatic loss. So prepare to be shattered
anew as we look at examples of
television's most dramatic exits.
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'The Avengers'
Character: Mrs. Emma Peel (Diana Rigg)
The story: In an episode called "The Forget-Me-Knot," shown on American
television on March 20, 1968, Mrs. Peel's long-lost, offscreen
husband returned from nowhere. The stylish spy's professional (and
ambiguously personal) partnership with the elegant and playful John
Steed (Patrick Macnee) thus came
to an end. A small kiss and a few whispered words with Steed, and
Mrs. Peel was off in her rather wooden-looking spouse's roadster.
Moments later, Steed's new partner, the very mini-skirted Tara King
(Linda Thorson), drifted
through his door.
Behind the scenes: The 51 Macnee-Rigg episodes
of "The Avengers" (following the Macnee-Honor Blackman years on
the show) were one of the most creative and defining TV experiences
to come out of Britain in the 1960s. Why break up a good thing?
According to Macnee, Rigg had grown restless and was eager to pursue
other opportunities in film.
The fallout: "The Avengers" retooled itself
slightly, becoming even more surreal and turning the character
Mother (Steed's handicapped, corpulent supervisor, played by Patrick Newell) into a
regular. Tara was fun, but Mrs. Peel's cat-suited, authoritative,
vaguely dominatrix-like bombshell couldn't be replaced. (Macnee has
said he was frustrated by the Thorson
years.) | |
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'Buffy the Vampire
Slayer'
Character: Joyce Summers (Kristine
Sutherland)
The story: Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
lost her strong, single mom, Joyce, in a remarkable, Feb. 27, 2001,
episode (written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon) called "The Body." Joyce, a regular on the
show since its 1997 debut, had always been Buffy's anchor, even
before she knew about her daughter's calling as the Chosen One.
Having been treated for a brain tumor, Joyce did not die
unexpectedly. But her demise arrived with much of the suddenness and
disorienting shock of a loved one's death in real life. Joyce's eyes
were open, her body at an awkward angle on a couch. She was there
... and, yet, not there.
Behind the scenes: Season 5 of "Buffy" was the year
Whedon gave his heroine loads of grief (including the
goddess-villain Glory, and a pesky little sister who turned out to
be the much-sought-after "key" separating dimensions). Six episodes
after "The Body," Buffy herself would die (albeit temporarily) in a
season finale.
The fallout: Part of the point of writing Joyce
off the series was to force Buffy to face adult responsibilities,
from which she never got a break despite being savior of the world
many times over. The strategy worked. | |
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'The
Sopranos'
Character: Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore)
The story: In the Season 2 finale ("Funhouse," aired
April 9, 2000), Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) found
hard evidence that his disenchanted friend and ally, Pussy, had
become a rat for the FBI. Tony invited Pussy, along with Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) and Paulie (Tony Sirico), for a test
ride on a boat. Once the group was well out on the water, and
following a few shots of tequila, Pussy got whacked and dropped into
the ocean.
Behind the scenes: So it goes.
The fallout: Typically, any action Tony takes to
alleviate one problem results in greater complications, and more of
the repressed sorrow and guilt his psychiatrist (Lorraine Bracco) says
simmers within him.
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'Three's
Company'
Character: Chrissy Snow (Suzanne Somers)
The story: A little more than three years
following the prime-time debut of ABC's sex farce "Three's Company,"
the bubbleheaded Chrissy, roommate of Jack Tripper (John Ritter) and Janet
Wood (Joyce DeWitt), got the
boot in a big way. No longer a major character, Chrissy spent Season 4 (1980-81) speaking to her
ex-roomies on the phone, from Fresno, Calif., in one-minute inserts.
Chrissy's cousin, Cindy Snow (Jenilee Harrison), moved in with Jack
and Janet in the fall of 1980. By the end of Season 4, Chrissy was
gone for good.
Behind the scenes: In the summer before Season
4, actress Somers asked for a fivefold salary increase (from $30,000
to $150,000) per episode, plus a share of profits. Producers refused
and held her to her existing contract for a final year, cutting her
screen time and shooting her scenes on a separate, closed set.
The fallout: There's no question "Three's
Company" lost some of its collective personality with Somers'
departure, and her successor didn't stick around long, either.
(Harrison left after a year, replaced by Priscilla Barnes, who
played nurse Terri Alden.) | |
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