Christopher Rush

I understand how usually we want our Christmas-themed issues to be light and fluffy like meringue cookies, but in addition to celebrating good times and Jesus’ birthday, at the end of a year we customarily look back on the lows as well as the highs of the year, taking inventory of what we gained and what we lost.  Before we proceed further, I should pause and admit this article has nothing to do with actual people and nothing to do with the year 2017 and thus nothing to do with genuine loss or sorrow, so you can relax.  This article is about characters that left television shows sooner than I wanted them to, either for real-life reasons such as contract disputes or new producers’ fancies, fake-life reasons such as ratings or storylines, or who knows what — and for the most part I don’t know the reasons involved here, so I won’t speculate or spend time arguing (much).  I understand kairotically this issue is a bit touchy, so to speak, but if it helps, without contradicting the previous sentence, I’m pretty sure none of the characters left these shows because the actors/actresses were fired for treating other real human being inappropriately, so you can relax about that as well.  Now that we are all relaxed, let’s begin.

Mark Brendanawicz, Parks and Recreation

You know those people who tell you, “Parks and Recreation is really good, you just have to get through the first season — it gets much better in season two”?  Turns out, they are correct.  Parks and Recreation has about as abysmal a first season as a show can have, but almost immediately it gets much better in season two.  I’m not saying it’s one of the best of all-time: it’s not terribly “safe” all the time, it does like to flaunt quite a bit of censored moments in a few episodes, and a fair number of its characters behave in ways shall we say contrary to Judeo-Christian values.  Despite that, and perhaps much of that was “necessary” to get the show made in the early 21^st century, it has a fair amount of what we can blandly and vaguely call “heart,” and usually by the end of each episode we are smiling and happy these group of characters are smiling and happy themselves, often because fairly decent morals have won out after all (despite what was intimated moments ago).

Many of you will then likely disagree with this entry, since this character exists only during the easily forgettable era of the show.  However, the character had good potential especially as the show started to stretch and realize its own potential away from filling in the hole.  Just like in Futurama, as the expanded universe started to grow and the occasional repeating guest characters brought the town of Pawnee to life, Mark Brendanawicz could have grown and performed different functions as well, given the chance.  I understand how his character was basically written into a corner having effectively burned all his bridges with Leslie and Ann, the two main female characters, but it could have been interesting to see how they all rebounded from rebounding off each other.  His last few scenes at the end of the second season are just painful, and his character deserved better.  He began as the solid, intelligent character upon which our main character, Leslie Knope, could safely reach her enthusiastic dreams for a better life for her town.  He should not have ended up as he did, never mentioned again during the final five seasons of the show, even if the actor, Paul Schneider, was happy to move on to better things in his own life.

Chano Amanguale, Barney Miller

Almost identically to Mark Brendanawicz, Chano Amanguale, played by Gregory Sierra, disappeared from the ol’ 1-2 (New York City Police Department Squad Room #12) at the end of the second season of Barney Miller with no warning or explanation.  At least he is mentioned a couple of times in the next few seasons and gets paid a brief tribute in the show’s finale (along with other former cast members).  Chano was a very interesting character in a show wholly driven by interesting characters.  While some may find the show’s intentional panoply of ethnic diversity (and the concomitant ethnic humor of the 1970s) somewhat dated, I find it hard to believe people even today would be offended by what the show does and how it does it.  And Chano Amanguale, as an intelligent Puerto Rican officer with skill, humor, and verve, brought some of the best moments to the show in its first two seasons.  Like the other roles in the show, Chano had more going for him than “he’s the Puerto Rican character.”  His bilinguality, for example, brought scenes and an authenticity to the interactions with New York City life in the early 1970s that was lacking after his character left (as great as the show was).

Chano also gave us some weight to the show that was, admittedly, picked up in smaller amounts by other characters and episodes here and there, especially by Ron Glass’s character Ron Harris, but he did it first, especially showing us the human emotional cost of being a police officer.  If you are familiar with the series, you are likely aware of the specific show to which I am referring, the final episode of season 1, “The Hero,” in which Chano has to shoot a bank robber and, though he saves lives, feels guilt and sorrow for taking another life.  Aside from this depth, he also provided an enthusiastic personality not really replaced after his departure.  Don’t get me wrong, the show was great without him but not because of the loss of his character.  It may have been another case of the actor wanting to branch out and avoid becoming stuck in an admittedly intentional ethnic rut, but the show was not the same without him, and considering how impressively fresh the entire show is despite having virtually one set location for its entire run, Chano’s character could have brought something engaging for at least a few more seasons.

Dr. Zack Addy, Bones

For a show that impressively managed to mismanage virtually everything about itself, one of its most impressive mismanagements was the character Zack Addy, portrayed by Eric Millegan.  Depending on much you like that show, you could have chosen from several characters that just disappeared or were fired or got killed.  For no particular reason other than my whims and fancies at the time of this list compilation, I tried to avoid characters that got killed off by a show, which thus excluded pretty much everyone from Lost or NCIS or Battlestar Galactica.  I will admit here I have not finished off Bones — we stopped subscribing to cable somewhere around season eight or nine, so I haven’t seen the last few seasons.  I use the “stopped getting cable” excuse instead of the more accurate “they had run out of ideas for their characters and were just doing stupid things” (such as the totally original “Bones is on the run from a murder charge she didn’t commit” plotline) to try to be nice if you really like the show.  As I said, the show could go down for me as one of the great disappointments because it started off with so much and did so little with it.  Perhaps the last few seasons got back on track, and some day I’d like to find out for myself, but for the sake of this segment, I thought I’d be honest.

Zack was a young, brilliant doctor person with very limited social skills.  In a show populated mostly by nonstop talkers, his taciturnity was often quite welcome.  Many of the characters early on represented different abstract values: Booth was Justice (with a disappointingly insincere patina of Catholicism), Bones was Scientific Fact/Rationality, Angela was Heart/Compassion (right?), Hodgins was … I dunno, Proletariat Morality or something, except for the fact he was secretly wealthy, and Zack was Logic — cold, calculating, unemotional logic, sort of like how young Spock must have been when his mother wasn’t around.  And this logic led him to very bizarre places, especially at the end of his character tenure.

Zack leaves when he has reached a new plateau of both self-understanding and adherence to ratiocination, which is a horrible place for his character to stop.  Finally he starts to feel and engage with human beings as human beings and not just bits of datum, and even worse he departs when most of the rest of the characters think he is guilty of some heinous act when he is, plot twist, innocent.  And while we can be somewhat grateful this is finally resolved in the series finale almost a decade later (so I hear), taking a character to a whole new place and just dumping him, especially while leaving the other characters erroneously hurt by/angry with him, is a rotten thing to do for the character and the audience that has journeyed with him.

Walt, Lost

(I did say “pretty much everyone” from Lost.)  We kid Lost for doing about a dozen or so times exactly what Bones did with Zack, though usually much more fatally: whenever a character comes to some important life-changing decision or realization, about four seconds later that character is killed off.  Fine.  If you’ll allow the expression, we can live with that.  I’ve gone on record before (and I’m not trying to be one of those “go read everything else I’ve written” authors here) as saying Lost is a good show and its ending is fully in-line with what the show was about from its beginning, even with the multitude of plot holes, character-arc abandonments, nonsensical explanations or lack thereof, and the total package that was the entertaining rollercoaster ride called Lost, driven much more by the creativity and skills of Cuse and Lindelof than Abrams.  I felt the show did a fine job drawing its main storylines to satisfactory conclusions, for the most part, and while we could all come up with a separate list of a dozen characters who left the show too soon because they were killed off (which would be most of the cast), I arbitrarily tried to stay away from such cases.

Walt, however, is another situation entirely.  I have no sympathy for show creators who put children into their programs, first of all.  Let’s face it: Opie was sweet and swell and Ron Howard is great, but the Opie-centric episodes of The Andy Griffith Show are among the worst of the series.  The early “Nog + Jake getting in trouble” episodes of DS9, likewise.  The shows that are mainly family shows because of the kids (Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, etc.) don’t really count here, since that is their whole schtick: the kids try and fail and try and succeed and we all laugh and cry and laugh again as they grow and learn to laugh at love … again, or whatever.  The Cosby Show avoided this for the most part, though there are a couple episodes here and there that suffer from this (like Rudy and Vanessa locked in the basement).  But by this point in the history of television, Lost and its creators should have known Malcolm David Kelley was going to reach puberty and grow quickly as a human being before his character had time to grow and develop.  They should have known that.  And if you are going to create a show that covers only a few months of “show time” though it takes years of “real time” to make, you should be prepared for that eventuality from the get-go.

Walt was special, they told us.  Mysterious and wondrous things happened around him, possibly because of him.  He had some keen preternatural connection to the island.  For all we know, he may have been the reason they crashed on the island in the first place.  But we will never really know, will we?  In a show that literally was about time travel, they couldn’t have found some excuse to say something to the effect of “Walt stepped into the quantum accelerator and suddenly older, taller Walt stepped out”?  We should have been told why Walt was special.  I don’t need an explicit explication of why the island breeds infertility (which, I suppose is a redundant and contradictory sentence).  I don’t need to know what was the deal with Libby and her boat and this and that.  Sure, it would be nice, but Walt was special!  He altered reality.  His story and character deserved much better treatment.

Murphy Michaels and Bernice Foxe, Remington Steele

I’m not implying I don’t like Doris Roberts or her character Mildred Krebs — she is great, of course — but Remington Steele lured us in with an intriguing conflict that had no meaningful resolution.  Remington Stele began with a fantastic ’80s-only premise: a plucky detective agency is making its mark in the misogynistic world thanks to the masculine manly man Remington Steele being in charge … except he doesn’t exist and the real brains behind the enterprise is Laura Holt, a feminine lady woman person, who actually has brains as well as beauty, a concept not everyone in the 1980s (or 2010s) understood.  Laura Holt has some assistants: Murphy Michaels played by James Read and Bernice Foxe played by Janet DeMay.  Murphy is another licensed private investigator and is a fairly smart cookie in his own right, not just the muscle for Laura.  Bernice is a disappointingly typical ’80s secretary, and, frankly, I’m sort of tossing her in for appearances, thus undercutting the enlightened-sounding nature of recent sentences.  Mainly, this entry is about Murphy Michaels.

The aforementioned “intriguing conflict” at the onset of the series comes from the appearance of the breathtaking Pierce Brosnan, who immediately announces to the world he is the real Remington Steele, surprising everyone who works at the Remington Steele Detective Agency, especially Laura and Murphy, who both know Laura made him up (Bernice does not know this, which adds some humorous moments during the first season, but the loss of her character is not much of a loss overall, sad to say).

Pierce’s character is mysterious and possibly felonious.  Murphy, of course, mistrusts him from the beginning.  So does Laura, but she also finds him difficult to resist (as we all do, frankly, and still to this day), a conflict that is allowed to expand and contract and expand again over the next few seasons.  Sadly, we only get the intriguing conflict of Murphy vs. “Remington” for the first season, after which Murphy and Bernice are replaced by Mildred Krebs.  True, this simplifies the show and allows it to grow in new directions, but I still would have liked to have seen an actual resolution to the Murphy vs. Remington arc, as well as more interesting things for James Read during his time as Murphy Michaels, especially since he is supposed to be good at his job — he should not always be topped by the amateur.  I’m not suggesting a prequel, although that notion now that I think of it is mildly intriguing.  Nor am I suggesting in this instance the show could have been better had Murphy stayed around longer.  One season, had it been handled better and more intentionally, could have sufficed for an engaging and complete story for Murphy Michaels both in relation to Remington Steele and in his own right.

Lt. Col. Henry Blake and Dr. Trapper John McIntyre, M*A*S*H

Moments ago I mentioned I tried not to pick characters that got killed off, which is why I didn’t pick Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation (which was as nonsensical a decision as an actor could make, leaving a show midway in its first season — at least Christopher Eccleston sticks out the whole season) or Jadzia Dax from Deep Space Nine (though, why she couldn’t have stayed for one more season is beyond me), or anyone from Farscape or NCIS or 24 or other shows that solve their problems by killing off characters (not that Farscape did that).  Similarly, it would have been wistfully childish or childishly wistful to include characters that leave a show because the actor who portrays that role dies in real life, such as Bill McNeal from Newsradio or Coach from Cheers or Nick Yemana from Barney Miller or even Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street.  Sure, it would have been nice if they had lived, but more so that their families could have them around than more episodes of fake television.  (I still feel bad my first reaction in late 2016 when hearing of the passing of Carrie Fisher was, “oh no, what about Episode 9?”)

Even so, you may think I am now cheating my own arbitrary selection standards by picking Henry Blake from M*A*S*H.  However, if you take the whole M*A*S*H experience together (by which I mean the book series, including those not by Richard Hooker or whatever his real name was), sprinkle in a possibly-canonical moment from The Carol Burnett Show, and you come to know Henry Blake was not killed after all.  This still does not lessen the impact of his final episode in the series for me, and I still will only watch it when we do whole-series run-throughs every few years.  Most of you will disagree with me, and that’s fine.

The point remains: Henry should have stuck around longer.  Again, that does not mean I don’t like Col. Potter or think Henry is “better” than Col. Potter.  Similarly, I’m not saying Trapper is “better” than B.J.  M*A*S*H did a fantastic job replacing characters with almost exact opposite personalities, which was brilliant for the life of the show and the wellbeing of the fans and their affections.  Admittedly, part of the reason I like Henry and Trapper is because I like the comedic nature of their era so much.  Most of my favorite M*A*S*H episodes come from their era because they are so funny, and still so after countless watchings.  That’s not a knock against the Potter/Hunnicutt/Winchester era — I am still impressed by what they did during the more dramatic tenor in the latter seasons, especially as the creative team intentionally did episodes similar in plotlines to early series episodes but instead of dealing with the ideas comically, they dealt with them seriously, focusing on more realistic implications and consequences.  That is great, and though I don’t dwell as much in seasons seven through eleven as I do one through six, I still enjoy those episodes.  Still and all, though, the early comedic era is what I prefer.

This is not to say my fondness for Henry and Trapper is solely dependent upon the tenor of their tenure: quite the contrary, in fact.  I think the best moments Henry has, for example, are those rare opportunities when McLean Stevenson gets to play him seriously and intelligently, such as when Henry tells Hawkeye the two rules he knows in “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet” or the strong leadership he exhibits briefly in scattered moments such as “Divided We Stand” and “O.R.” and “Aid Station.”  “Life with Father” is an almost-perfect Henry episode except for his brief outburst after his phone call to his wife.  Many of his best moments are in season three, indeed, and sadly, just as his character was finally getting some growth and development, he’s gone.

Similar is Trapper John McIntyre.  His best moments are in season three, and just when we are starting to see him get some much-deserved life and screen time, he’s gone.  Trapper shines in episodes such as “Kim,” “Check-up,” “Bulletin Board,” and “Radar’s Report.”  (Couple of season two episodes, come to think of it — why didn’t they build on that?)  I can understand why Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson would want to leave, especially Wayne Rogers: if you are promised you are going to co-star in a show about two main doctors and suddenly you are not just second fiddle but oftentimes more the page turner, and if you can make a lot more money as a financial investment expert without having to act in the difficult conditions on set during the making of the series, yeah, I would probably do what he did as well.  And I can empathize with McLean Stevenson also: if my character was not getting the chance to grow and behave intelligently enough, and I had the opportunity to move from third fiddle to star of my own show, I’d probably consider taking off for potentially greener pastures just as he did.

However, as a fan of the show, and a fan of those characters, I wish they had either stuck around longer to give us more episodes building upon their growth and development as rounded personalities, or at least gotten some better scenes.  At least Trapper could have had some more of the funny lines instead of Hawkeye all the time.   Though, if you ask me which episodes I’d change, I couldn’t really name them offhand.  I’d have to assess that on an episode-by-episode basis, which I will do for my forthcoming M*A*S*H book.

Speaking of which, as a bit of a related aside, I have often thought how different the show would have been had the main group of nurses featured throughout the first season stayed at the camp.  I understand there’s an element of realism in their departure, since M*A*S*H units tended to have much faster personnel turnover rates than the fictional 4077^th did, and from a similar “hungry for fame” reason I can understand why Marcia Strassman would want to branch out.  And as above, I do not mean to imply I don’t like Bigelow or Kellye or Gage or Sheila or Baker or Jo Ann or Wilson — certainly not.  I have already intimated I really enjoy series that keep their extended universe of characters around and let them grow and thrive along with the main cast.  And while Hawkeye and the producers basically cut all ties with the first season nursing staff in “Ceasefire,” imagine how different the show would have been had Ginger, Nancy, Margie Cutler, Barbara, Dish, and Leslie stuck around for a while, preferably adding in the other nurses as well, possibly alternating episodes as different shifts much like the doctors did.  Again, I understand how that would have fundamentally changed the show, and I can’t really point to a lot of episodes specifically and declare “this would have been better with this group of nurses instead” … except for one.  As great as “The Nurses” is, had it been nurses we already knew, perhaps building that tension up over the season, man, that could have been even better — and you wouldn’t have needed to change one of Margaret’s great lines.  But I digress.  I’ll put it in my book.  This was supposed to be about Henry and Trapper.

The real heartbreak for me about Trapper and Henry, beyond the eternal wistful desire for more/better episodes for them, is the fact the show actually did this kind of character development from the beginning for Col. Potter and B.J.  With the notable exception of the episode “Hawkeye” (and discrete others, to be sure), season four to the end significantly backed away from Hawkeye’s character as the main character and allowed others to dominate episodes.  Sure, a good deal of this was Alan Alda doing more behind-the-scenes work, but if he was going to do that anyway, why couldn’t it have happened while enabling Henry and Trapper to grow?  Ah, well.  Again, I’m glad it happened so Col. Potter and B.J. could grow and thrive, truly I am.  I just think Henry and Trapper left the show too soon.

C’est la tee-vee.

I’m sure you have a drastically different list of characters and shows from which their departures were too soon.  I would have also appreciated Farrah Forke sticking around Wings longer, for example, or Thomas Hayden Church for that matter.  Or Monk’s first-season theme song.  I’d be glad to hear from you about other characters in other shows that may have benefitted from more episodes or at least better utilization of them while they were around.  That was basically Khandi Alexander’s reason for leaving Newsradio (as well as her character’s reason for leaving), and it’s difficult to disagree with her.  I did not include her here because I thought we had a good run with her character anyway, though I would not have minded more Catherine Duke around station WNYX.  Tell me some others, preferably from shows I’ve never seen — as difficult as it is to believe, I haven’t seen them all.

At this point, my idea for the next entry in this series is a bit of a twist, something like “not a moment too soon: characters that should have left earlier,” if I can find some way of doing it without sounding mean-spirited.  While that sounds like a total break from what the series is about, it’s my series and I can do what I want with it.  Not to sound mean-spirited.  Just let me grow and develop, unlike the characters discussed above.