What prompted the producers of Happy Days to promote and spin-off Mork and Mindy?
Happy Days maintained a fairly realistic bent throughout it's run (I'm not here to debate shark jumping, I promise). Two notable detours from this were Mork and Mindy and Out of the Blue. Mork seemed like an random introduction to the show, and would end up in Colorado on his show, far away from Milwaukee, so he wouldn't have even been considered a "TV neighbor" to the Cunninghams anyway.
What was the decision-making behind conceiving the Mork character within the Happy Days universe? Why was it decided that it was worth risking the alienation of the existing audience for a show that might not take off at all?
Best Answer
At that time, Happy Days was the best vehicle to test Williams in a Prime Time environment. One has to remember that Happy Days is one of the biggest spin-off trees in TV history (Itself being a spin off)
In general, spin-offs are finding talent and testing them on a show with a similar demographic to see if they might be able to hold up the ratings and drive more viewership.
Williams was known for his spontaneous comedy. It's known that many of the M&M scripts consisted of Dawber's lines followed by "Robin does something funny"
When the episodes turned in very high ratings it was decided that it was worth doing the pilot run on M&M and see how it went. On a side note, it is evident that Williams' drug issues, tied to the lack of organized writing left that show (and cast) to get somewhat retooled almost every season.
I'm sorry I can't back this up with any references. It was sort of a pet 'trivia' hobby of mine and I've always loved to talk about the Happy Days spin-off tree.
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Why was Mork and Mindy a spin off from Happy Days?
A spin-off after a highly successful episode of Happy Days, it starred Robin Williams as Mork, an extraterrestrial who comes to Earth from the planet Ork, and Pam Dawber as Mindy McConnell, his human friend, roommate, and eventual love interest....Mork & MindyCreated byGarry Marshall Dale McRaven Joe Glauberg22 more rowsWhat show did Mork and Mindy spin off from?
Mork And Mindy was the second truly huge Happy Day's spin off. It started off white hot but quickly cooled, only having a four year run. Mork was an alien from the planet Ork played by comedian Robin Williams. He was introduced in an episode of Happy Days in which he had come to Earth to take back a human to Ork.Why did Mork and Mindy get Cancelled?
In a recent Quora conversation, one fan pointed out that the new time slot adopted in season four could have been one reason why Mork & Mindy ended so abruptly: \u201cABC moved the show to Sunday night against CBS's news program 60 Minutes.How many spin offs does Happy Days have?
2. \u201cHappy Days\u201d was a spinoff of \u201cLove, American Style,\u201d a television comedy that ran from 1969 to 1974. In turn, there were four spinoffs of \u201cHappy Days.\u201d They include: \u201cLaverne & Shirley,\u201d \u201cMork & Mindy,\u201d \u201cJoanie Loves Chachi,\u201d and the animated series: \u201cThe Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.\u201dThe Real Reason Ron Howard Joined (and Left) Happy Days
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From Wikipedia:
Actor-director Jerry Paris was inspired to create the character of Mork after directing an unusual and memorable episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in which van Dyke's Rob Petrie believed the Earth had been surreptitiously invaded by walnut-eating aliens who stole humans' thumbs and imaginations. When he moved on to direct Happy Days, he introduced Mork in a similarly atypical season-five episode entitled "My Favorite Orkan".
[Mork & Mindy] was a spin-off from the sitcom Happy Days. The character of Mork, played by a then-unknown Robin Williams, first appeared in the Happy Days Season 5 episode, "My Favorite Orkan," which was a take on the 1960s sitcom, My Favorite Martian. Williams' character Mork attempts to take Richie Cunningham back to his planet of Ork as a human specimen, but his plan is foiled by Fonzie (though all this turned out to be simply a dream Richie had). The Mork character proved to be popular enough with the audience to go forward with the planned series of his own.
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