This was partially inspired by KAM's latest posts to the Garfield thread in Comic Books - and partly because it's something that worries me off and on:

What did happen to Lyman, anyhow? Or Chuck Cunningham? Or the third daughter from Family Matters, or the two younger kids from The Torkelsons that disappeared between seasons? Did the producers figure we just wouldn't notice, or is there an alternate explanation?

Anyone else have any bizarre 'disappearing acts' to relate - of real or fictional characters?

My explanation for Chuck Cunningham is that he never really existed, as such. If you remember, Marion was always feeling "frisky." My theory is that she was too much for poor Howard (or maybe he was kinky and liked to watch.) In either event, "our eldest boy Chuck, who's home from college," was a cover for an occassional boy-toy for Marion. This is bourne out by the number of actors who played "Chuck."

Once Fonzie moved in over the garage, she no longer needed to find a "Chuck," until Fonzie himself was ready to settle down. When that happened, Richie had already graduated college himself, so an older brother would not still be in school, so they devised a new cover: Marion's nephew Roger.

At least in the fifties and early sixties, they did acknowlege the abscence of a suddenly disappearing family member. When they replaced Tim with Ernie on My Three Sons, at least they married Tim off (and then the family moved across the country!) to explain why he would not be seen any more.

I've always felt that That 70s Show was Happy Days set in the Seventies. Not only did Marion Ross (Mrs. Cunningham) make a few appearances as Eric's paternal grandmother, but the show had its own Chuck. In a couple of episodes of That 70s Show, Donna had a younger sister named Tina. Fez had a little bit of a crush on her. This was during the series' first season. Tina has not been mentiioned since.

Paging Dr. Piper? Dr. Piper?

Piper was on "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot for Star Trek. McCoy was introduced later. Of course, it's more common for there to be cast changes from a pilot to the regular episodes, depending on how long it took the series to get into production.

Tiger from the Brady Bunch first season. Cousin Oliver from the last season. Wonderfully addressed in the Brady Bunch movie.

Bobby: "Tiger! Cousin Oliver! Watch out for that car!" CRASH! (Bobby shrugs and goes back to playing).

Seven from Married with Children (later reincarnated as an older, female, Borg)

How about the classic - soap operas? Soaps are famous for sending kids upstairs to do their homework, and never seeing the kids again. Or, better still, they send the kid upstairs when he's 7, and he comes down 2 years later - as a 17 year old! Of course, soaps are also famous for having pregnancies that last a year - more dramatic, y'know.

My theory is Chuck died in a drunk driving accident which didn't fit the theme of the title of the series, so in the last episode when Howard says he's raised two great kids, he just means the surviving kids. People might have sadly remembered Chuck but only when we weren't looking or during a commercial break.
Tina on That 70s Show either was kidnapped by aliens or her dad became director of some academic/business branch office building in London or Paris or someplace, so she moved away.
Dr. Piper retired to run a small family clinic in Riverside, Iowa.
How's that?

A really humungous nit--in one show, Family Matters, I think, they had too many kids so some of them just disappeared without explanation. Maybe they joined a Junior Peace Corps thing and went to live in Canada.
How's that?

"Tina on That 70s Show either was kidnapped by aliens or her dad became director of some academic/business branch office building in London or Paris or someplace, so she moved away." - roger

Except... wasn't Tina's dad, Bob? I don't recall her being called Donna's stepsister.

Judy Winslow, the youngest Winslow daughter, was the one who disappeared on Family Matters. My theory is that she was somehow erased from the timestream by one of Steve Urquel's time travel experiments.

Actually, Facts of Life also lost a bunch of kids. The first season, there were a whole bunch of kids. After that (until, I think, the last season or two), they focused only on the four girls. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that you never really saw any other kids. It's a school with only four students. And only one of them was really rich.

Spearchucker Jones and several first season M*A*S*H doctors. I always asuumed snipers were very active.

One of the original Facts of Life girls was a young Molly Ringwald. Taking a look at the IMDB entry I see that, as I unfortunately remembered, Jami Gertz was in a number of episodes, playing the character she seemed to play thru much of the early '80s, namely the stuck up, snooty girl. The name would be different, but the character always seemed to be basically the same.

Disappearences on M*A*S*H are easily explained, because of the nature of the show. It's normal that characters would be transfered to other units or finish their tour of duty.

There's a couple of these disappearing characters in comic strips we've discussed on the comic strip board. There's Rerun Van Pelt of Peanuts, (Lucy and Linus's baby brother) who inexplicably disappeared for two decades and then resurfaced in the nineties. And then there's Mike Doonesbury's unnamed sister, who appeared in exactly one early comic strip and then was never so much as mentioned again.

Moving back to television, there's another related category I can think of: characters whose names inexplicably change. There's a couple of examples I can think of off the top of my head.

Circa 1980, there was a show called The Greatest American Hero, about a bungling superhero who is bequeathed a costume with special powers by aliens but doesn't know how to use it properly. At the beginning of the show, the character's name was Ralph Hinkley. After John Hinkley's assasination attempt on President Reagan, the character's name suddenly changed to Ralph Handley, with apparently no explanation given on screen to the name change. But by the time the show went off the air, the character had reverted back to being called Hinkley again.

On "The Six Million Dollar Man", the episode "The Seven Million Dollar Man" starred Monte Markham as Steve Austin's slightly more expensive successor. The name of the character in the episode in which he was introduced was given as "Barney Miller". When Markham reprised his character in a later episode of that series, he was called "Barney Hiller".

The Parents in Buffy the Vampire slayer.

I did some research, Donna actually had two sisters, Tina and Valerie. Maybe they got up early that day and left with the Mom for California?

The Parents in Buffy the Vampire slayer.

Those were accounted for. Joyce died, and resulted in one of the few very special episodes of a show to actually be special, the very somber "the Body".

Hank was just a jerk and went off to Europe or something. But he was never around much in the first place.

Anyway, there's a new missing character on a sitcom this very year! On the show Grounded For Life, the younger son is just inexplicably gone. Apparently the young actor moved back east and they didn't want to recast. So he's just not there.

Well, how young can kids be to be sent to military school?

Actually, my favorite was from the show Fresh Prince of Bel Aire (yes, I've watched it, but only in reruns ;). Right after the mother had a baby, the actress changed. The family is sitting at the table having breakfast when another character comes in, does a double-take, and asks what happened to the mother. Will replies that she's the same person she's always been. The next year, they decided to age the baby (little babies are boring on TV, I guess). Same scene, family having breakfast, the same character comes in and asks, So, who's the mother this time? Then the 'baby' walks in, and the other character demands to know who it is. And Will (again) replies, Oh, come on, you know Little Nicky.
I like these because the PTB basically acknowledged that they'd made changes, and the viewers aren't so foolish that we wouldn't notice.

Mad About You changed the actor who played the British neighbour across the hall with no explanation. But later in the run, they switched back to the original actor and quite humourously acknowledged it, with Paul Riser making a 'Hey aren't you..?' comment.

I believe they made it so that the actors were in actuality playing two different "characters" that had the same name. One episode was in fact about how one resented the (offscreen) other.

Right, although they didn't do that until after the first one came back. At first, they just hoped no one would notice or care.

Well, the first one (Paxton Whitehead) was in only one episode (before he got replaced) as far as I can remember, while Jim Piddock played the part most of the show's run.

In response to the first topic, Jim Davis offered some reasons why he had to do away with Lyman. The reasons are listed in Twenty Years and Still Kicking, the Garfield anthology.
One of my favorites:
Don't look in Jon's basement.
P.S.- Lyman was featured in Garfield's tenth anniversary strip, looking as healthy as ever.

TomM: My explanation for Chuck Cunningham is that he never really existed, as such.

Alas, Tom, your theory is debunked. On the 30th Anniversary special, they brought out *BOTH* Chucks.

Also the youngest son in Step by Step disappeared during the last season of the show with no explanation.

Actually, TomM's boy-toy theory is reinforced by the fact that there were two Chucks. Marion had two different guys on the side and called them both by the code-word "Chuck." (wink wink). A son wouldn't change appearance that drastically, now would he?

Oh, I forgot to mention: When TomM said that Chuck didn't exist, he apparently meant that the character existed, but wasn't really their son. Chuck the Gigolo existed, under the pseudonym Chuck Cunningham.

I dunno. What about Becky Connors? (Rosanne)

"Sit on it!"

Are you comparing Becky with TomM's theory on Chuck? That adds some subtext to Roseanne, all right.

It was in reference to your comment, "A son wouldn't change appearance that drastically, now would he?", Nove. I was making a comparison in which I just switched the genders. In other words, it's kind of like just as the Cunninghams's son, Chuck, changed appearances, so did the Connors' daughter, Becky. That's all. (I hope that's clear.)

Oh, now I get it. But maybe Becky was just...nah, I don't think I want to explore TomM's theory any further.

Actually one of the greatest tv mysteries is how on Bewitched they got away with replacing Dick
York with Dick Sargent and no explanation has to
why Darren all of a sudden looked different.
Probably one of Esmeralda's spells that backfired?
Another mystery is why in the first few episodes
of Laverne & Shirley Shirley as the exact same
accent as Laverne but in later episodes she has a normal sounding accent.

Scott, you mean Endora, not Esmerelda.

So what happened to KerrieM? It's sad when regulars disappear and we never find out why.

(Hopefully they go off elsewhere and get a life! ;-)

I'd wondered that, too, Callie. Hadn't received any responses to e-mails for some time, so I basically wished her well and left it at that. (That was some time ago, and I've more or less disappeared from NitC as well, but I occasionally pop up now and then.)
Speaking of Kerriem, what happened to the Drunken English Major Game several of us were participating in on the non-sci-fi literature boards? I mean, it's still there, but interest seemed not just to wane, but to drop off like an abyssal trench. ("An abyssal trench"? Sorry, that's the best metaphor I could come up with at this hour!)

Whatever happened to Blue berry and John -Boy
and Ominus Cow Herd?


Phil Ferrand seems to be busy too

John Boy was banned, third person ever to be so. While I was away from Nitcentral for a time.

Phil works full time, does church full time, and has a family full time, in reverse order of importance. By my math that makes 40 hours of things to do a day.

Well, an update once in less than six months might be nice...

This seemed like the best place for this question.

I'm trying to remember the name of a standup comedian from the late 60s or early 70s. White male in his 20s or 30s, American or Canadian. He may have been a supporting cast member on a TV variety show at the time. I want to think he was on either Dean Martin's or Joey Bishop's show. I think he smoked during his routines and he had a sort of nervous, edgy quality. Physically he resembled Richard Belzer. His career as a nationally known comic was short, probably only a few years.
The routine of his I remember was a parody of the song with the line 'Put it all together and it spells mother', only his went 'Put it all together and it spells money, which means more to me than mother ever did.'
Anyone remember him?

Guesses that I have eliminated:
Pat Paulsen
Dick Shawn
George Byner
George Carlin
Allan Sherman

Wasn't this the guy who played Binzer on Vega$?

Was it Lou Jacobi?

(SEE IMDB under "Dean Martin Show")

Scott, no it wasn't that guy. (That's Bart Braverman BTW.)

John, no, I remember Lou Jacobi. He was too fat and too old.

Thanks for trying, guys.

Talking about switcheroos, I never really cared much for Roseanne but I did catch the episode where they introduced the "new" Becky, and at the end of the ep the entire family is sitting the living room watching an old rerun of Bewitched and Becky makes the comment about how they switched Darrins and never explained it and how the viewers would never be fooled. It was a great wink-and-a-nudge to the audience.

Gah, forgot to post this.
I finally got an answer to my question. It was a comic named London Lee.

"Seven" on Married With Children. The kid was dumped onto the Bundy household by his waste-of-life parents (Bob Goldthwait and Linda Blair), and just disappeared, without any explanation.

I thought he was later dismissed as a dream Peg had that past season. Sort of a Dallas thing.

I think his picture appeared on the side of a milk carton a season or two later. The dream sequence was Peggy's pregnancy at the start of season 6.

What you guys are talking about is Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, named after the older brother of Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, who only appeared in the first two seasons before being abruptly written out, with later references to the family implying that the Cunninghams only had two children. There was an Wikipedia article on it, with loads of other excamples, such as the ones you mentioned, but I couldn't find it just now, so maybe someone deleted it. There's some info on Chuck in the Happy Days article.

I thought he was later dismissed as a dream Peg had that past season. Sort of a "Dallas" thing.
No, that's how they wrote out Katey Sagal's real life pregnancy, which they had written in to the series. Ms. Sagal suffered a miscarriage, but she was a trooper, and wanted to keep the pregnancy storyline going. For whatever reason, it was written out. Amanda Bearse's character, Marcy, also had a concurrent pregnancy written in, but Ms. Bearse was not pregnant.

The feline catperson from Trek's animated,Meow! or the 3 handed guy? its been a long time..

They are in the Star Trek New Frontier books by Peter David.

Lt. M'Ress & Lt. Arex

Chekov(Walter Keonig) and Janice Rand(Grace lee Whitney) wern't in the Animated Trek?

The animated series did not have the budget to retain all the original regular actors, so one had to go. Koenig, being the most recent addition to the cast, got the ax, although the producers attempted to make it up to him by letting him write a script.

Grace Lee Whitney had been out of the Trek picture since early in the first season, and was still working through the personal problems that had led to her departure from the show.

One other character that disappeared fairly early in the series run and would not return - Judy Winslow from "Family Matters". Another victim of the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.

That show also suffered from the Fonzie Syndrome, where a supporting character becomes so popular that they become the main focus of the majority of the show's plotlines (Urkel) and near the end of the series, they experienced the Cousin Oliver Syndrome, where a show introduces a little kid character to offset the fact that the other child actors have entered puberty and therefore are no longer cute (3J, the underpriveledged youth that came to live with the Winslows).

Wow! Three "Jump The Shark"-referenced syndromes in one series! How about that!

I just remembered another example of the Fonzie Syndrome. Cody Lambert from "Step By Step". After he was introduced, he practically took over the show, he was so popular. But in the show's final seasons, the Cody character was written out due to the actor's real life personal and legal troubles.

Also, the Susanne Somers' character's mother and sister, who helped her run her hair salon connected to the house, were both dropped from the series after the first season without explanation.

And "SBS" suffered from the Cousin Oliver Syndrome as well. Somers and Patrick Duffy's characters had a baby at the end of one season, and at the beginning of the next season, the child had aged about five years! Plus, Jean-Luc, played by Bronson Pinchot, was added to the cast as Somers' assistant in the salon.

Anyway, both "SBS" and "FM" were moved from ABC to CBS for their final seasons, and as a result, many people stopped watching, including me. Also, the actress playing Harriet Winslow left in the left season and was replaced by someone I don't remember. Both shows went off the air in 1998.

But they still play in syndication on cable. I suppose that's a good thing!

Ah, Chuck Cunningham. In the Happy Days finale, when Joanie and Chachi got married, Howard and Marion were happy that "both" of their children were now married (Richie had gotten married a few seasons before). Even they had forgotten about Chuck!

I have a theory. There was a Saturday morning cartoon spin-off called Fonz And The Happy Days Gang. In that show, the Fonz, Richie, and Ralph Malph meet a girl from the future and end up travelling through time with her in her time machine. This time machine had a faulty guidance system (which is why the Happy Days gang kept ending up in different times while trying to get back to their own time, 1957) and was bigger on the inside than the outside (sound familiar). Yeah, it was Happy Days meets Doctor Who (except, unlike the TARDIS, this time machine was confined to Earth).

Anyway, what I think happened is that they finally made it back to 1957. However, somehow in their travels, they had changed time and Chuck Cunningham no longer existed. That is why no one remembered him (including Howard and Marion), he was de-existed.