Let's take a trip to 2200 to visit the rebooted Partridge Family.
The Partridges greet their cousin Sunspot (guest star Allan Melvin, recycling his Punkin' Puss/Drooper voice from the 60's), who wants to join their act. Of course, chaos erupts.....
I think this, along with guest appearances on Hong Kong Phooey that same season, marked Melvin's return to H-B. He had an opening on his schedule with the Brady Bunch having ended, even though he had a recurring gig on All in The Family by this point.
Seems Partridge Family 2200 AD was a troubled production from the get-go. Susan Dey lasted just 2 episodes before Sherry Alberoni (Super Friends, ex-Josie & The Pussycats, Mickey Mouse Club) was called in to take her place as Laurie. Reportedly, Shirley Jones was never told by her agent about this series, but would she have taken the project? Then-husband Marty Ingels had done some work for H-B a few years earlier. Chuck McLendon had the thankless task of filling in for David Cassidy as Keith, and was never heard from again. As for the rest of the kids, at least they kept the character designs from the previous season's Goober & the Ghost Chasers. For what it's worth (not much), Danny Bonaduce landed one of his first more grown-up roles, showing a growth spurt, about a year or so later, guesting on Shazam!, also for CBS.
Rating: C.
3 comments:
The Partridge Family 2200 AD was originally planned as a flash forward series for The Jetsons with Elroy as a teenager and Judy as a young adult reporter, but (then) president of CBS Fred Silverman decided that he wanted to a vehicle for The Partridge Family instead. I have to wonder how things would have turned out if H-B had stuck with their original idea.
David Cassidy, at this point in his career, aspired to be a bona fide rock star and wanted nothing to do with The Partridge Family after the original series ended, hence his non-involvement with this series as well as not appearing with the other Partridge Kids on H-B's Goober and the Ghost Chasers.
While we've discussed the what-might've-been's with the Jetsons reboot previously, I'd think Silverman was a fan of the Partridges (he'd go to ABC a short time later, then to NBC, before forming his own production company), and that's why he wanted to do a Partridge cartoon.
Had H-B gone with a Elroy-&-Judy centric Jetsons relaunch, a la Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm, they'd have been better off not trying CBS, since P & BB ended up being rebooted after its first season as the Flintstone Comedy Hour.
Of course, Cassidy would give acting another shot, but Man Undercover, for NBC, was another dud.
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