With the Chief or without the Chief…?
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stevenackerman69 — 10 years ago(July 08, 2015 08:15 PM)
Funny thing about that attempted spinoff episode. One of the people in it is a young Harry Basil, who I caught for the first time on Rodney Dangerfield's 1991 HBO special. He had a long relationship working with Rodney and it was interesting to see him in the early days.
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stevenackerman69 — 11 years ago(May 13, 2014 07:09 PM)
I think after Dolph Sweet (the Chief) died it was a little different. You also didn't see as much of the daughters either. There were some episodes that just basically centered on Nell and Addy. The thing with the Chief was that he wasn't a terrible dictatorial father, but he could be gruff with his kids and cared about them.
Yeah, with some of the season 5 episodes, I have wondered how the Chief would've reacted, like to Katie being a mistress or all those kids in the house at one point. And his reaction to Julie eloping and then being pregnant, making him a grandfather. I feel that the baby should've been named after Carl and not Nell. -
jarrodmcdonald-1 — 11 years ago(May 18, 2014 11:33 AM)
Good points, steve. The one where Katie was a mistress would certainly have worked better if the Chief was still around. And yes, Julie and Jonathan probably should have named their kid after Carl if it was a boy, but it was a girl and I like them naming it after Nell. It shows how racially integrated the family (and the entire series) was. It was natural on this show for a white couple to name a baby after a black woman, and viewers to not think twice about it.
I liked how they kept the Chief's memory alive in season 5. One thing where I think the show did lose some continuity was that the girls' mother was not ever mentioned in the later seasons. Like in the one where Nell thinks Katie is suicidal and at the end when she finds out that Katie is okay, she looks up and talks to the Chief but maybe she could also have talked to Katie's mother, because after all the woman was her best friend.
The Nell-Addy episodes in seasons 5 and 6 do provide some of the show's greatest moments. The elevator episode is brilliantly played, and I also like the one where they both apply for a job and think they are victims of racism (it turned out they were actually victims of discrimination due to their gender). And any time Carter and Hopkins sing together is a highlight. -
stevenackerman69 — 11 years ago(September 10, 2014 09:18 PM)
They didn't have to name their daughter Carl. How about Carol? Something that is the same as his name. I did think that the Chief should've been mentioned more, like when Nell would look up to heaven to say something, as though she was talking to him. As for the mother, Margaret, she had died before the show began, which started the template for the show. You cannot keep referring to her all the time. However, at least for the season after Carl died, there should've been more mentions of him.
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jarrodmcdonald-1 — 11 years ago(September 15, 2014 04:16 PM)
Though the mother's death gave us the template for the show, it is ironic that because of Dolph Sweet's real-life passing, Carl had to be killed off and the show reaches a point where Nell is the sole parent of these children. Of course, they could have recast Carl but that truly would have been a jump-the-shark situation and the producers were wise to write the Chief's death into the series.
At any rate, because Nell becomes the main caregiver in a white home, and we have other black adults dispensing advice (Addie and also Nell's mother), the show truly by accident or by design? becomes one of the most racially integrated television series of the 1980s, if not all time. Other shows make token attempts to show racial harmony, but Gimme a Break! really does achieve it. And in the sixth season, where Nell is raising two young white boys, or when she visits Sam's college and plays mother hen to a campus that consists of mostly white students we see the concept of racial harmony revisited time and again.
So while I think the show is very good with the Chief presiding over the action I think it goes beyond in seasons 5 and 6 to rightfully earn its valued place in American television history. -
stevenackerman69 — 11 years ago(September 20, 2014 07:29 PM)
Yes, it was wise not to recast the role after Dolph Sweet died. I have been watching some of the episodes on youtube (early and later ones) and I think they should not have moved the show to NYC, since that changed the whole show. Also, we have enough sitcoms that take place there so why add another one? I think the episode where Sam Goes to College and Julie and Jonathan leave should've been the series finale.
By the way, did catch the episode where Nell visits Sam's college and maybe it might've worked to have Nell work there since it was great to see Sam again, but maybe it was time to put the show to rest. -
jarrodmcdonald-1 — 11 years ago(September 22, 2014 03:04 PM)
Sam did make a few appearances after Nell moved to New York. She is in the Christmas episode she is on her way back to California to see her sisters and Nell gives her a gift for the baby. Nell says she will be joining them for New Year's at Katie's place in San Francisco (which happened off screen).
The two-parter where Nell plays hen mother at Sam's college was supposed to set them up for the next season, where Nell becomes a more permanent fixture on the campus. But the show was cancelled and NBC instead picked up the Cosby spinoff A Different World (set at a small college).
Personally, I think the show should have ended with Nell and Addy finding husbands and getting married. Addy could have stayed in New York with her new husband, and Nell could have returned to Alabama (like if she had married some old high school boyfriend who still lived there). All the Kinisky girls could have shown up for the wedding and bid farewell to Nell, before she went back to her hometown. -
stevenackerman69 — 11 years ago(October 26, 2014 08:31 PM)
Yes, I knew she appeared in several episodes in the final season after Nell had moved to NYC. Nell, by the way, was previously married, remember? But the show should've ended once Jonathan and Julie left.
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jarrodmcdonald-1 — 11 years ago(October 31, 2014 06:01 PM)
Yes. Nell's ex-husband was a bit of a cad and would pop up in her life when he needed a favor. So we wouldn't want her getting back together with him.
She had a job at a publishing firm during the New York episodes. She could have met a guy there. An episode I really like from the last season is when she dated the prince of some foreign nation. She could have married him and moved to his country with him, and that could have been the last episode. I guess I just wanted Nell to have the sweet fairy tale ending. -
jarrodmcdonald-1 — 10 years ago(July 16, 2015 08:36 PM)
Yes, I often wonder why they hold certain episodes till later in the season. Since their idea was to reformat the series yet again and move it to Sam's college, had it been renewed for a seventh season, it seems logical that the one where Nell plays mother hen on campus would (or should) have been the last one aired. That way, if they had returned in September, they could have picked right back up with Nell taking a full-time job there and meddling in the lives of Sam and her friends. Addy could have stayed on the show if they said she took a job teaching on campus while Nell oversaw the dorm. The other characters, like Nell's mother and Grandpa Kiniski, might have been dropped or used on a recurring basis. I don't think the Lawrence brothers would have fit in the new format, and that might have been one of the reasons NBC did not bring the show back because NBC had plans for them, eventually giving them their own series (which Nell guest-starred on).
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stevenackerman69 — 10 years ago(July 21, 2015 08:14 PM)
Sometimes it just depends on the order the network wants to air them. Since these sitcoms were not written as a continuing soap opera, you could show them out of order and there would be no problem.
I have the feeling that if there had been a 7th season with Nell as the house mother at Sam's college (yes, that was what was planned), they could've still had Grandpa and Nell's mother making some appearances. Actually, Nell's mother was never really a regular, just a recurring character. I'm sure we would not see Marty and Rosie O'Donnell's character and I'm not sure about the Lawrence brothers. They eventually did their own series, but it wasn't right away. Remember, Joey went on to do Blossom first.
As to why NBC decided not to bring the show back, it could've been that the ratings weren't there anymore and since the network was doing much better than when the show first started, they could get rid of shows that were too old a lot easily now. -
jarrodmcdonald-1 — 10 years ago(July 22, 2015 06:06 PM)
That's right Joey did Blossom first, then the show with his brothers came afterward. But he probably had a long-term deal with the network. And if they had moved this show to the college, I doubt they could have kept the young boys as part of the stories in that setting.
A six year old sitcom is not ancient. Cheers ran for 11 seasons on NBC, and so did Frasier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1981_American_television_series_debuts
By the way, I looked at the wiki page for American TV series that debuted in 1981, the year Gimme A Break! first aired. When GAB ended, only a small handful of shows that debuted in '81 were renewed. They were Dynasty (ABC); Falcon Crest (CBS); Simon & Simon (CBS); and Hill Street Blues (NBC). Most shows that started in '81 died early deaths. GAB was the only sitcom from '81 that produced enough episodes for syndication. -
TMC-4 — 10 years ago(September 05, 2015 02:30 AM)
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stevenackerman69 — 10 years ago(January 20, 2016 11:14 PM)
I don't know how much longer the show would've gone on if Dolph hadn't died. It might've just been 5 seasons and that's that. It wasn't a big ratings winner to begin with, just a mild success at the time when NBC wasn't doing well to begin with.
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stevenackerman69 — 10 years ago(January 23, 2016 04:26 PM)
Been watching some of the episodes from the first two seasons and they are very good. Dolph Sweet did a great job as Carl and there were some real funny episodes. Too bad Nell didn't get along with the writers and producers so new ones came in and the format changed a bit. For example, Carl's brother Ed was written out of the series and he was pretty interesting.
By the way, today marks 13 years since Nell Carter left us. -
jarrodmcdonald-1 — 10 years ago(February 18, 2016 05:27 PM)
I think she was right to get rid of the original batch of writers and producers. Some of the humor was a little low-brow, for my taste, in those early episodes. Way too many fat jokes in the first two seasons. And the kids were not fully fleshed out..it was all rather stereotypical in the beginning.
I feel it became a much stronger, more diverse program when Arthur Julian took over. And while she was still sharp-tongued and made plenty of wisecracks when a situation called for it, she was also allowed by Julian and his staff to be more mature and tender. She grows from being a mammy-type character in the early years to becoming the emotional anchor who kept the family together and made something of her own life.