The fine comic illustrator Paul Chadwick writes to say…
Ritter picked one good script, though. The guy never had better chemistry than with Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade. Funny stuff. It was great seeing such a sunny TV personality do dark Southern Gothic. It would be interesting to hear your insider view on what a sitcom might do when the star dies. Shut down immediately? Write it in? Plastic surgery plot? Carry on with an unacknowledged replacement, like Bewitched?
It hasn't been a good week for Billy Bob, who was quoted as a good friend of Warren Zevon's in those obits, and I believe I saw somewhere that he was close to Johnny Cash.
As for what the series should do…well, I have to admit that I've never seen 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, so I don't know how it might fit to do a storyline where the character died. You can do that easily with a supporting character, like they did when Jack Soo passed away during the run of Barney Miller, or Nick Colasanto died while still a regular on Cheers.
The three big precedents here would probably be Chico and the Man, News Radio, and The Royal Family. In the latter, Redd Foxx died from a heart attack on the set, which was kind of a festival of irony. Not only was it one of Redd's signature bits to feign a coronary but the series had originally been entitled Chest Pains. At the time, The Royal Family had just debuted to good ratings, and I believe there was a feeling that they couldn't give up on a potential hit without trying to keep it alive. The death was written into the storyline and some new cast members were added but it didn't work. Then again, the show might not have held up with Redd.
In the case of News Radio, when Phil Hartman was murdered, his character was written out and replaced by a new, not dissimilar character. The show lasted another season but I think there's a consensus that that's about how much longer it would have lasted even with Phil. Of course, it's easier to replace a guy who works at the office than a character who's the head of a family.
Regarding Chico: At the time Freddie Prinze killed himself, I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, which was produced by the same company so I observed some of the concerns. There was an immediate determination that the show had to continue…
- NBC wanted that because at the time, they had only two successful situation comedies on the whole network — Chico and the Man, and Sanford and Son. There was no other strong sitcom waiting in the wings and so there was the fear that the network's whole Friday night schedule, including Sanford, would collapse. (Later, when Mr. Foxx walked off Sanford and Son, they went to ridiculous lengths to try to do the show without him…episodes with Son but no Sanford, followed by a series called The Sanford Arms which had neither. And later, Foxx tried a show called just Sanford (no Son) and that didn't work, either.)
- Jimmie Komack's production company wanted desperately to keep it going. Apart from Kotter, every one of their other shows (like Mr. T and Tina) and pilots had either flopped or was about to. So the order came down to keep Chico and the Man alive at all costs.
- And the folks who did Chico wanted to keep their jobs. There was a sense of Why should we be penalized because of what Freddie did? I don't think that's a terrible motive.
There was brief talk of just casting another actor as Chico. One thing which I think scuttled that was that at Freddie's funeral, a woman ran up to a grieving Jack Albertson (Prinze's co-star) and handed him what Albertson thought was a photo of Freddie. Albertson said, "No autographs now," and the woman said, "No, this is a picture of my son. He looks just like Freddie Prinze. Give him the job!" That struck everyone as so grotesque that they decided to look for another way to bring in a kid who could be called Chico (to keep the title and theme song intact) and they wound up bringing in a younger actor who The Man kept calling "Chico." Those episodes are largely forgotten today but the change kept the show alive for more than a year, sans Prinze, and I would guess it was considered a successful recovery by NBC and the producers.
I assume they won't try just having another actor come in and take over the role on Ritter's series. It sorta worked on Bewitched, replacing Dick York with Dick Sargent but York hadn't died so the replacement wasn't a reminder of a real death. Same thing when Richard Deacon replaced Roger C. Carmel on The Mothers-in-Law or several other examples. Bewitched was also such an unrealistic show, filled with special effects and unreal characters, that going from York to Sargent may not have been all that jarring for most viewers. (No one seems to have noticed when, mid-run, they changed the actress who played Gladys Kravitz but again, that was a supporting role.)
With a more realistic show and an actor as important to the series as I assume Ritter is to his, they probably won't just recast. Eight Simple Rules seems to be important to ABC's Tuesday night lineup so they'll probably try and keep it going with a storyline change and a new character or two…but they may not. Someplace in some filing cabinet at ABC, there are detailed breakdowns of the show's ratings that yield a view, perhaps an accurate one, of how strong its audience is. There may even be testing to determine how many viewers are tuning in to watch John Ritter and if they don't have such numbers, they may have a fast survey done. Assuming the show looks like it still has legs and that it might doom Tuesday to lose it, they'll regroup. Standard Operating Procedure would probably be to try and bring in some strong, experienced star (possibly a woman) to play a relative or other guardian who assumes the parental function and explain that Ritter's character is away or deceased. After a decent interval has passed, we'll hear what they're going to do.