R.I.P., Roseanne: A History of Sitcoms Whose Lead Character Died

After Roseanne Barr, the star of ABC's hit sitcom revival, Roseanne, was fired over controversial racist comments that the actor and comedian made on Twitter, ABC decided to move forward with the series without Roseanne's character. Titled The Conners, the rest of the series' cast returned to the show, which will air in the same Tuesday time slot vacated by Roseanne. The only thing that was up for grabs was how Roseanne Conner would be written off of the show. Well, John Goodman, who played Roseanne's husband, Dan Conner, revealed that Roseanne Conner will be killed off ahead of the revival. Amusingly enough, Goodman's Dan Conner was himself killed off in the original series finale of Roseanne, only for that to be retconned away in the revival.

Obviously, when you lose a main character, there are two ways that you can do it. You either send them away in some way or you kill them off. Generally speaking, when it is an office-based sitcom, you can afford to send them away. When it is a family sitcom, it is hard to explain away a major character's absence. Therefore, this is far from the first time that a sitcom has had to deal with this dilemma and a number of them dealt with it via killing off the show's main character. Here are a few examples of shows that have taken this approach and how successful they were with the big change.

THE HOGAN FAMILY

Likely the most famous example of them all and the one that bears the most similarities to the Roseanne/The Conners situation is the mid-1980s sitcom, Valerie, which starred Valerie Harper. The series, starring Harper as a mother of three boys, was a moderate success whose ratings were increasing following its second season. Back when Harper starred on the Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoff, Rhoda, she held out following the first season to get a pay raise. She tried the same tactic after Season 2 of Valerie. Besides getting a raise, Harper also seemed to be irritated that her co-star, Jason Bateman, who played her oldest son, David, was, in effect, "stealing" the show out from under her and wanted reassurances that that would not happen going forward.

She actually worked out a deal to return for Season 3, but then after the pilot was filmed, she did not show up for the next few episodes and the show fired her. Sandy Duncan had recently signed a contract with NBC to develop a starring vehicle for her, so she was moved on to this series as the sister of Valerie's airplane pilot husband, Michael, who moved in with the family after the death of Valerie. Harper sued the producers and the network for wrongful termination. In Season 3, the show was called Valerie's Family, but with the court case in the news (and fears that Harper would sue over her name being used in the series' name), the show was changed to The Hogan Family for Season 4. It ran for four seasons after Harper's departure.

TWO AND A HALF MEN

Two and a Half Men was a hit sitcom starring Charlie Sheen as Charlie Harper, a hugely successful jingle writer who lived in a beach house in Malibu. His life was turned upside down when his loser brother, Alan (Jon Cryer), and Alan's young son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), moved in with him following Alan's divorce from Jake's mother. Star Sheen had had problems with alcoholism and drug addiction for a number of years and finally, things got really bad in the middle of Season 8. Sheen stopped showing up for work and began openly bad-mouthing producer Chuck Lorre and making erratic statements to the press about his "tiger blood" and how he was constantly "winning." Eventually, Lorre and CBS made the shocking decision to finish Season 8 early and fire Sheen from the show.

Season 9 saw Ashton Kutcher join the cast as Walden Schmidt, a tech billionaire whose wife left him. Walden attempted to kill himself by drowning himself in the Pacific Ocean and Alan, who was mourning the tragic death of his brother, Charlie, in Paris, saved Walden's life. Walden repaid the favor by purchasing the beach house and allowing Alan to continue to live there with him. The Season 9 premiere drew gigantic ratings, as Lorre used the episode to continually insult Sheen via characters insulting Charlie Harper at Charlie's funeral. Lorre later had Kathy Bates play the ghost of Charlier Harper. The show ran for four more seasons and in the series finale, Lorre had Charlie turn out to be alive. He returns to the beach house, only to be then crushed by a falling piano. The camera then panned to Lorre himself, saying Sheen's catch phrase, "Winning." Then a piano falls and seemingly kills Lorre, as well.

That is it for sitcoms that killed off their lead character because the lead actor was fired. However, there were a few sitcoms that had to get rid of the lead because the actor died in real life.

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CHICO AND THE MAN

Chico and the Man was a surprise hit TV sitcom about an old white garage owner named Ed, played by Jack Albertson, who is convinced to hire a young Hispanic worker named Chicago Rodriguez (played by the popular young stand-up comedian, Freddie Prinze). Ed is a cranky old sort, but he can't help but grow close to the upbeat Chico. The two becomes actual friends and Chico even becomes a bit of a surrogate son to Ed.

Sadly, Prinze could not handle his sudden stardom and towards the end of Season 3 of the show, after Prinze's wife of barely a year left him and took their child (Freddie Prinze Jr.) with her, a despondent Prinze took his own life. He was only 22 years old. Season 3 was finished by writing around Chico, with him simply being described as visiting his father. The next season introduced a young runaway named Raul, who Ed discovered and adopted (he then referred to the kid as "Chico"). Mid-way through the season, Raul discovered Chico's belongings and learned that Chico had died at some point. The series only lasted the one final season.

8 SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER

8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter was a sitcom based on the book of the same title by W. Bruce Cameron, a humorous look at life raising teen daughters. Sitcom legend John Ritter (of Three's Company fame) starred as the father of the two daughters, played by Kaley Cuoco and Amy Davidson (he also had a son played by Martin Spanjers). Married...With Children alum Katey Sagal played Ritter's wife on the series.

When Ritter passed away from an undiagnosed heart ailment in 2003, soon after filming the third episode of the second season, the show (now titled simply 8 Simple Rules) added James Garner as Sagal's father and David Spade as Sagal's nephew, who both move in with the family to help raise the kids. The show lasted two more seasons before being canceled.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

The Royal Family was a comeback attempt for Redd Foxx, who had had a hit sitcom in the 1970s with Sanford and Son. Foxx and Della Reese had recently appeared in the Eddie Murphy film, Harlem Nights, and when Murphy signed a development deal with CBS, he cast both Foxx and Reese as a married couple named Al and Victoria Royal who think that they are about to enjoy their retirement until their daughter moves back into their home with her three children.

The show was a surprise hit after debuting in the fall of 1991. Tragically, during the filming of the show's eighth episode, Foxx (who was famous for his recurring gag on Sanford and Son of pretending to be having a heart attack) collapsed on set with a heart attack. He died later that night. CBS decided to keep the show going by bringing in Jackée Harry as Reese's younger sister, who moves in following Al's death. Then the show went on hiatus and when it returned, Harry was now the oldest Royal daughter instead. The show's ratings tumbled in Foxx's absence and the series did not even finish its initial first season before being canceled.

That is it for sitcoms that killed off their main character, but there have also been a number of TV sitcoms about families where one of the two parents were killed off during the run of the series. We will take a look at them, as well.

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MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY

Make Room For Daddy was a starring vehicle for comedian Danny Thomas. It starred Thomas as a fictionalized version of himself as Danny Williams, a nightclub comedian with a wife and two young children. His wife was played by actress Jean Hagen. The show was a moderate success, but Hagen and Thomas repeatedly clashed and when Hagen's initial three-year contract expired after Season 3, she left the show.

No sitcom had ever killed off a major character before, but Thomas and producer Sheldon Leonard decided to go for it with Season 4, which also changed the name of the show to The Danny Thomas Show (while still unofficially referred to as Make Room For Daddy). Danny Williams was now a widower trying to deal with raising two kids by himself. The ratings suffered and so the show introduced a pretty Irish nurse named Kathy O'Hara, played by Marjorie Lord, who was hired to take care of Danny's youngest son, who had the measles. Danny fell for the nurse and they were engaged by the end of the season. However, ABC was not satisfied with the show and actually canceled it after the fourth season. CBS had just lost I Love Lucy and quickly picked up The Danny Thomas Show, with Danny and Kathy now married. The show became a major hit and ran for seven more seasons. When it ended in 1964, it was still a top ten series, but Thomas had grown tired of the series.

GOOD TIMES

The worry that Valerie Harper had that her TV son would soon outshine her on her own series was something that came true for John Amos on Good Times, a series starring Esther Rolle as Florida Evans, who was Maude's housekeeper on the hit TV series, Maude (itself a spinoff of All in the Family). Amos played her husband, James Evans. They raised a small family in a Chicago housing project.

The problem was that while the show was initially intended as a serious look at a husband and wife trying to scrape by in life to provide for their family while still having "good times" along the way, it quickly evolved (or devolved) into something else entirely. The family's oldest son, James Junior (also known as J.J.), played by Jimmie Walker, was a breakout star with his own catchphrase, "DY-NO-MITE" and a tremendous gift for slapstick comedy. His antics soon became a centerpiece of the series. Rolle and Amos were upset at what their serious show was becoming and Amos was vocal in the press with his criticism of the program. The producers decided to let Amos go after the third season, with James Evans dying in a car accident. Esther Rolle left the show after Season 4, but Florida lived. The series lasted six seasons.

ARCHIE BUNKER'S PLACE

One of the biggest hit sitcoms in television history, the controversial All in the Family starred Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as Archie and Edith Bunker, a conservative couple in Astoria, Queens who have to deal with their daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers) and her liberal husband, Mike "Meathead" Stivic (Rob Reiner) moving in with them. It was the number one show on television for a remarkable five seasons in a row. Slowly but surely, though, both Struthers and Reiner left the series and in the ninth season of the show, the Bunkers took in the daughter of one of Edith's cousins, Stephanie (Danielle Brisebois), to give someone new for Archie and Edith to play off of on the show. Once the ninth season was finished, the show's creator, Norman Lear, wanted to end the show.

O'Connor, though, wanted to keep going. So CBS worked out a deal where the show would continue as a spinoff called Archie Bunker's Place, about a bar that Archie bought in Season 8 of All in the Family. The first seven seasons almost always took place in the Bunker's home, but the final two seasons began to transition much of the action to the bar. When the new series started, the bar expanded into a restaurant. Jean Stapleton was less and less necessary for the show and she left mid-way through the first season. Since the show was primarily set at the bar, her absence was essentially ignored. In the Season 2 premiere, though, Edith was killed off and Archie's grieving over her death (he breaks down when he comes across one of her slippers) was so powerful that O'Connor won a Peabody Award for the episode.

KEVIN CAN WAIT

After starring on the hit series, King of Queens, for nine seasons, Kevin James returning to television was a big deal in 2016. His new show, Kevin Can Wait, starred James as a retired cop who suddenly discovered that his retirement was not going to be all fun and games like he expected. Erinn Hayes played his wife and mother to their three kids. Towards the end of the first season, Leah Remini, who was James' TV wife on King of Queens, guest-starred as his former police partner who needed his help on a case. Their chemistry was as good as ever, so CBS decided to make a bold move for the second season of the series.

Hayes was fired and her character was killed off. Remini joined the cast full-time, as she was now retired as well and she opens up a security firm with James' character. The show, though, decided to actively not have them become romantically involved. That was probably a mistake, as the ratings plummeted and the show was canceled after its second season.