Two seasons left to go before we can put this on the completed list. Diff'rent Strokes S7 out2/27/18 (1 Viewer)

[rmw650]

Just spotted this news on Diff'rent Strokes Season 7 coming out on 2/27/2018 and here is that link and cover art with only one more season left before this show is completed...http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Diffrent-Strokes-Season-7/23787

 

[The Obsolete Man]

One season after this one, actually.

DS only went 8 seasons. Facts of Life was the 9 season show.

Well, One Day at a Time and All in the Family were also both Lear or Lear related 9 season shows. But DS missed the usual mark by a season, which means one more release and we have another complete show.

 

[bmasters9]

One season after this one, actually.

Indeed-- the one and only ABC season (1985-86), and IINM, the one and only season with Mary Ann Mobley as Maggie.

 

[MatthewA]

And then it will have been 40 years since it first aired. The world has moved a lot since then.

 

[Tony Bensley]

And then it will have been 40 years since it first aired. The world has moved a lot since then.

Indeed, it has! Times like this, I feel so old!

CHEERS!

 

[rmw650]

One season after this one, actually.

DS only went 8 seasons. Facts of Life was the 9 season show.

Well, One Day at a Time and All in the Family were also both Lear or Lear related 9 season shows. But DS missed the usual mark by a season, which means one more release and we have another complete show.

Robert, i corrected the post. My fault on that.

 

[Frank Soyke]

I remember watching the final two seasons first run. They were really poor as I recall, especially the final season.

 

[Tony Bensley]

You might also want to change the Topic title to "One season left to go...", Richard. Just a thought.

CHEERS!

 

[MatthewA]

I remember watching the final two seasons first run. They were really poor as I recall, especially the final season.

As for one of Kimberly's last appearances, the bulimia episode, if only it could be resolved in 30 minutes. My own experience, as well as that of one of my sister's friends who had anorexia, proves otherwise.

Moving to Universal gave them a new lease on life; it enabled them to use more sophisticated video equipment and effects that weren't possible when they were at Metromedia Square. But with Willis and Kimberly's roles reduced, the magic was gone. Embassy was the biggest offender of the "let's add a kid when our show is dying" trope. It never worked, even when Coke and Sony continued it*. But in all fairness to the writers and producers** in this case they were responding to Todd Bridges getting pulled over by the cops regularly and Dana Plato "in trouble." And Gary Coleman had to have another kidney operation and was tired of his catchphrase.*** And you're past the point where you can just call on Kim Fields to have Tootie fill in for Arnold in an emergency rewrite. So what do you do when faced with such a conundrum? Rely on the characters played by actors who aren't suddenly unavailable.

At least none of the cast died while the show was still on the air, which you can't say about Gimme A Break!, Cheers, Dallas,**** Night Court and The Gummi Bears.

*A certain mouse-based studio followed their lead in 1992 when The Golden Girls traded Bea Arthur for Cheech Marin, Don Cheadle, and a 12-year-old boy and became Golden Palace the same year Married with Children added Seven, and both were gone in the same amount of time.
**Howard Leeds was gone as showrunner and Small Wonder was in the planning stages. The Strokes writers from the post-Leeds seasons ended up on Webster while the ones who wrote for it under his watch ended up with the robot who isn't the only one in that family who sleeps in a closet and that's all I'm saying about that I promise.
***He already had said "what are you talking about" in a TV movie with the late Robert Guillaume.
****Its competition in its last season.

 

[bmasters9]

Diff'rent Strokes is not the only show to have one final season on another network after the majority of its run on one network. It was the reverse of Taxi (balance of that on ABC from 1978-82, fifth and final season on NBC for 1982-83), and Get Smart w/the great, late Don Adams was also in that category (first four seasons' worth on NBC [1965-69], fifth and final on CBS [1969-70]).

 

[MatthewA]

Taxi and Soap were up against this and the Facts of Life in the 1980-1981 season, and then Facts ended up using a bunch of the latter show's cast members as guest stars (Sal Viscuso, Robert Mandan*, Donnelly Rhodes**, and Jimmy Baio) once it was cancelled. ABC was probably not anticipating a season 2 retooling for Facts and assumed Strokes wouldn't survive without Mrs. Garrett, even if their own Three's Company, the former lead-in to Taxi whose ratings thrived on Tuesdays before being pushed out for another Don Taffner UK-to-US remake Too Close for Comfort, survived a new landlord and outlived its spinoff just as CBS's Alice did with Flo. But it was Soap that managed to fall apart the quickest. It already was at a disadvantage because of certain stations boycotting it even though they were just talking about sex and not actually showing it. But without Diana Canova, whom ABC and Witt/Thomas/Harris put in the unrelated I'm A Big Girl Now with Danny Thomas while launching It's A Living without Susan Harris, it just wasn't the same. This proved to be an advantage for Facts because they finally started to come together with Nancy McKeon in the mix.

Taxi ended up competing with Gimme A Break! on Thursdays at 9:30****; while Nell lost the Emmy for her show to Carol Kane as Simka Gravas***** (though winning one for the TV version of Ain't Misbehavin'), she won the ratings race. In spite of winning an Emmy, ABC still didn't want Taxi anymore so they let NBC have it, but they, too, moved it around three times in the only season they had it. Funny how when recalling those post-Sanford and Son, pre-Golden Girls years of NBC, TV historians remember the large number of flops more than the few hits. But the flops put the hits in context because it's what they were competing with then. Along with integration in the real world and the aspirations of child performers (I was one but never made it pro), this was the TV environment that helped create Diff'rent Strokes.

And Ben, you forgot the champion of cross-network shows: The Wonderful World of Disney. Its original 1954-1983 run was on all the historical Big Three networks, and both Diff'rent Strokes and the not-a-spinoff-but-related-by-Tommy-Westphall-Universe-rules-only Silver Spoons played a part in its getting cancelled in its CBS years****** when NBC put them on Saturday against it. Then the same year ABC took over Strokes, they also launched The Disney Sunday Movie on Sundays where Spoons had moved to by that time. That show got a reprieve in first-run syndication since it hadn't made it to 100 episodes yet (ending shortly before Embassy was folded into Columbia who then gave its sister show Punky Brewster, with only 44 shows before NBC decided not to put it at the mercy of the mouse, a reprieve*******), while Gary Coleman had already expressed interest in leaving his own show.

*Before he played Mrs. Garrett's second husband, he was also in Zapped with Felice Schachter and Greg Bradford, making it where the leftovers of season one went to die professionally while foreshadowing the show's final years. Got to believe in magic, indeed!
**He was the father of Jo's cousin played by Megan Follows. Some of us who got The Disney Channel in the 1980s remember Danger Bay airing around the same time Megan was playing Anne of Green Gables. Coincidentally, before that, Megan was on the final iteration of The Baxters, an attempt at combining a sitcom and an audience participation show (!) which went through WCVB and T.A.T before ending up with a Canadian company who cast her in it.
***Benson tried to solve Jessica Tate's fate but left everyone else's fates unresolved.
****Both were up against Knots Landing.
*****Bonnie Franklin, Charlotte Rae, and Isabel Sanford were also nominated for their respective shows, so the Lear supporters were split three American Ways. Swoosie Kurtz was the last nominee for Love, Sidney. That's what Emmy races looked like before anyone had ever heard of Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
******They had literally nothing new that year but the opening of EPCOT. By their logic, it's been the 21st century for 35 years now.
*******I'll save my theory about this for when the rest of Silver Spoons gets released on DVD.

 

[bmasters9]

But it was Soap that managed to fall apart the quickest. It already was at a disadvantage because of certain stations boycotting it even though they were just talking about sex and not actually showing it.

That is true-- Donald Wildmon, among others, led the charge against Soap early on, IINM. I could understand religious people having a beef if there was actual explicit sexual content being shown on screen, but these jokers acted like talking was the same as doing, and that, I never understood.

 

[MatthewA]

Most of those shows were on before 9 PM. Strokes was at that time slot for most of the first half of its life, then spent its last three years on NBC at 8 PM before ABC moved it back to 9 PM but on Friday night where it had initially premiered at 8 PM. But even here they got away with slightly more risqué subject matter than they would have 10 years earlier. Kimberly spelling out the word "bra" to her grandma would probably not have flown in 1968 as it did in 1978; that was among the syndication cuts if I recall correctly.

They also followed the lead of One Day at a Time by having Mr. Drummond remarry and spend two years showing what married life was like. But even if Bonnie Franklin* felt Ann Romano remarrying missed the point of that show, at least that show had a sense of closure to it, since they tried to create something new out of it with Schneider's Brother's Kids (or whatever they intended to call it) a la Archie Bunker's Place and Mayberry RFD. Diff'rent Strokes just stopped. That first making-of movie on Fox was embarrassingly bad and cheap. They had a scene with the principal cast giving a farewell press conference. In real life, there was no such fanfare. Just indifference. And no Mr. Drummond to bail you out.**

*How sad that her hatred of exercise and love of tap bought her a mere 69 years on the planet. Dixie Carter got in on this in real life, too, just as Maggie McKinney Drummond did on the show.
**Unless you count Wayne Newton.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

The series will finally be completed on DVD? Whatchu talkin'bout?

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Diffrent-Strokes-Season-8/23980

May 29.

 

[rmw650]

And we can now chalk up another series towards completion onto the growing list of completed TV shows onto DVD...here is the cover art for the final season of this show, coming out on May 29, 2018...http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Diffrent-Strokes-Season-8/23980

 

[MatthewA]

What a pleasant surprise that they put Mary Jo Catlett on the cover for the last season. Whenever I watch SpongeBob SquarePants and she's in an episode as Mrs. Puff, it's always funny to think there's also a Pearl on that show but played by another actress.

Now can we finally have the rest of Silver Spoons?*

*And throw in the last two seasons of Webster while you're at it. And to everyone here who said Punky Brewster was going to kill TV on DVD, your apologies are accepted. It's 2018. Season 1 of that show first came out 14 years ago. We're still here talking about other shows coming out we'd never see get finished. And Shout! even licensed as much of the WKRP music as they could get.

 

[Sa5150]

Couple questions , Just put on Diff'rent Strokes season 1 dvd Sony disc in my bluray player and no black bars appeared . I know this is 1.33 AR . I have never had to switch my tv AR before , Why is this happening ? Second picture is awful even in with the tv at 4.3 and the black bars . I know this is video taped but this is the worst looking dvd I have ever seen for a tv show . And it's the Sony set not the even junkier millcreek . Is it that bad or something way off on my settings ? I think it may look a tad better on Amazon prime ?

 

[Sa5150]

Couple questions , Just put on Diff'rent Strokes season 1 dvd Sony disc in my bluray player and no black bars appeared . I know this is 1.33 AR . I have never had to switch my tv AR before , Why is this happening ? Second picture is awful even in with the tv at 4.3 and the black bars . I know this is video taped but this is the worst looking dvd I have ever seen for a tv show . And it's the Sony set not the even junkier millcreek . Is it that bad or something way off on my settings ? I think it may look a tad better on Amazon prime ?

Figured this out on my own . I also noticed that on Amazon prime almost all the episodes have chopped off 3 minuets . That's too because the picture and sound is better then the sony dvds (which is very surprising ) . Does the PQ get any better with the shout factory dvd seasons 3-5 ? Not interested in anything after season 5 .

 

[tsodcollector]

The head of the class season 5 would come out in the fall,the final season was amazing,it was on three diffirent era time slots over the last five years,perfect strangers and later on growing pains and who's the boss,respectivly.looking forward to buy it online,there only two sitcoms have been though changes in sitcom history,ozzie and harriet was the other.and now ozzie and harriet is on tsod,first they were youngsters and then became teens,where ricky nelson became the very first teen hearthrob,and then the maturity years,when they became men,it was amazing.