When Nobody’s Watching

The strange case of the sitcom “’Til Death”

I’ve never seen a single episode of the awful-looking sitcom ‘Til Death that ran for four seasons on Fox. You probably didn’t, either. But I think about it often.

The show starred Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher as an unhappily married couple with grown children.

As the show aired its final episodes in 2010, I came across an article about it in AV Club called The Strange Genius of the Fourth Season of ‘Til Death. The article begins:

Imagine for a second that you've been handed a TV show. It's a long-running show, coming up on 100 episodes, yet it's been off the air for almost a year. You have almost complete assurance that when this show gets on the air, no one will be watching it. The show has been retooled over and over and over again until it barely resembles itself, and the whole thing is here only because the production company cut a crazy deal with the network so the show would be on the air long enough to get to syndication. You are, for all intents and purposes, producing a show in a vacuum. You see, this show has a reputation of being absolutely godawful, one of the worst examples of a kind of TV comedy that went out of favor long, long ago. So most everyone has made up their mind on this show anyway, and it's unlikely you're going to win critical favor, no matter what you do.

The task of retooling the show for season four was given to Don Reo, who created Blossom, The John Larroquette Show, and produced and wrote TV comedy for decades on M*A*S*H, Laugh-In, Empty Nest, Golden Girls, Two and a Half Men, and more. So they weren’t just handing the show to anyone. He knew what he was doing, and he used the show as a bit of a creative playground to comment on the sitcom formulas he helped to create. Under his leadership, the plot of ‘Til Death took quite a turn.

Here’s an example: Over the course of the show’s first three seasons, it had been retooled so much that the daughter Ally was recast several times and played by four different actresses. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Doug was always played by the same actor. In season four, Doug has a breakthrough. He realizes that he’s a character in a sitcom whose girlfriend keeps getting recast. And this sends him to therapy.

His therapist is Mayim Bialik. His therapist isn’t just played by Mayim Bialik. She’s playing herself, real-life Mayim Bialik, filming a reality show that takes place in a therapy practice, where one patient named Gary believes himself to be her Blossom co-star Joey Lawrence.

You really need to see this for yourself:

Doug’s fourth-wall revelations don’t end there. He also realizes that he’s bound by the constraints of sitcom conventions. So he can’t swear, and he can’t have sex, which becomes a plot point when Ally is recast yet again, but as a much friskier character.

To make matters worse, Fox aired episodes of the show out of order, mixing in leftover shows that never aired from earlier seasons, so whatever story there was didn’t exactly hold together. A surreal episode of Season 4 would suddenly be followed up by a more conventional story from Season 3 with different actors in some of the roles.

Here’s how AV Club summarized some of the additional oddities:

Doug and Ally's wedding aired before their engagement, and the birth of their first child—intended to be the series finale—was followed by three more rejected third season episodes. The show itself seemed to give up as well, tossing weird, random sound effects and obnoxiously loud music over the top of establishing shots or having a recurring plot where guest star Martin Mull is in a dom-sub relationship with a woman who may or may not be a psychopath.

I can’t believe I missed all this. When the show was finally cancelled, Brad Garrett seemed relieved, telling a reporter:

The other night, we got an 0.8 [rating] … Once your mom stops watching, you're an 0.4. The network said, “What do you suggest?” I said, “If you give me one more month, I can take you to a zero.” And there was dead silence.

After year two, when you're getting beat by Telemundo, it's time to go home. I mean, even the show my housekeeper watches was beating the show that was paying her salary.

All four seasons of ‘Til Death are available to purchase through Amazon.

My Attempt At This

A few years later, I was asked to retool a YouTube series that was badly in need of a refresh. It was a money-saving-tips show that had run for a couple of years and had a small following. The problem was that the host’s whole schtick was corny. He told corny jokes. He had a corny demeanor. I’m sure there were some people who liked it, but the people who were paying for this show to exist did not.

I was asked to turn the show into something a little more watchable. I wondered if I could keep the essence of the show as it was, but bring in some absurd element that would make it something people would talk about, and draw more viewers.

So here was my pitch: What if this money-saving-tips YouTube show was also, subtly, a Fugitive-style murder mystery?

First, let’s give the guy a co-host, someone affable and friendly like Al on Tool Time. We would introduce the new co-hosted format and a brand new set in the first episode of the new season.

That first episode would be a normal, if less corny, version of the money-saving-tips show until the last few seconds when a (stunt) studio light falls on the co-host’s head, knocking him to the floor, and the show abruptly ends. Just leave people with a “What the fuck? Was that on purpose? What just happened?” moment.

The second episode would again be a normal episode, but without the co-host. And the host would have an unexplained band-aid on his forehead. At the very end of the show, we hear the director call “cut” and a Production Assistant enters frame and says quietly but picked-up-on-mic, “Mr. [So-and-so] there are some police officers here who want to talk to you.” And the episode ends.

Of course most people don’t actually watch a YouTube video to the end, so just in case not enough people saw it these endings, I had a plan: the third episode would introduce a new “Previously on [show name]” opening where we get a quick recap of the light falling on the co-host from episode one, and the PA talking to the host from episode two.

Then we go into the usual show, and learn some useful money-saving tips. But at the end of the third episode, the host begins looking nervously off camera during his closing remarks, then runs off frame. Police officers run through the shot chasing after him. Episode ends.

Now our host is on the run, but still doing a YouTube show giving useful tips. The next episode would be self-recorded in his car — naturally his money-saving advice in this one is related to your automobile. The episode ends with red and blue flashing lights behind him.

And so on. Each episode begins with “previously on,” then contains actual, useful tips for 99% of the show, and ends with a very quick little element that furthers his story and gives some never-fully-explained hint at what happens between episodes.

For an episode on money-saving tips for getting stains out of fabric, he happens to have some bloody clothes he’s using as an example. For money-saving tips when you travel, he’s staying at a motel — but he’s acting very nervous and keeps checking the curtains. That episode ends with banging on the door. And so on.

I never got 100% buy-in on this tactic, but I did get the go-ahead to at least build the new set, which we would use even if we just went with a more conventional show.

And then, pretty much the same day the set was finished, the folks paying for the show decided to just pull the plug on it altogether.

I guess they were following someone else’s money-saving tips.

And that’s a wrap on another newsletter. Thanks for reading, check the archives, share your favorite issues, tell your friends, get vaccinated, and I’ll see you next time!

David