TV Guidance

TV Guidance

Jaime Weinman writes about all kinds of television and other kinds of popular culture. He does not write Gossip Girl episode reviews. Follow Jaime on Twitter: @weinmanj

Death Leads to Sitcom Rediscovery

by Jaime Weinman on Friday, October 21, 2011 3:23pm - 3 Comments

After Gaddafi died, everyone started circulating this clip from the 1987 flop sitcom Second Chance, where Gaddafi dies in 2011 (though they got the date wrong). All I could really think about while watching it is that Fox sure had some weird ideas for TV shows in its early days, and this – about a guy sent back to Earth to help his teenage self become a better person – was actually one of their less crazy outings. The Wikipedia article goes into quite a lot of detail about how the show was completely re-tooled in mid-run to drop the supernatural stuff. Little did the creators (who then went on to take over Family Matters and retool that into a quasi-supernatural show) realize that the fantasy element would be their only claim to fame.

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  • Real Criticism

    Creepy…

  • Saif Allen

    That’s why the sitcom ‘Second Chance’ was cancelled. I saved history!
    No seriously, imagine if Second Chance had become a massive hit. History could have been changed for the worse, no smelly cat.

  • Anonymous

    There was this great spoof commercial about Kadhaffi done on Saturday Night Live a number of years ago (I’m talking 70s or 80s).  It was done on film rather than video and was hilarious.  I remember the line “Friend to the Third World” with a Kadhaffi sweeping into a conference room and clapping his hands on the shoulders of a couple of leaders from “third world” countries.

    I can’t find a clip of it anywhere and of course SNL doesn’t allow anything on YouTube.

    Anybody know the spoof I’m talking about and how to find a copy on line?

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