16 TV Shows With Totally Different Unaired Pilots

Did you know that some of the top shows of all time actually had unaired pilots that had either never, or only just recently been released. Some of the unaired pilots have been officially released — or parts of them have, anyway — while others remain mysteries of the universe…

All in the Family

All in the Family is an oldie that had multiple pilots prior to the one that finally got released. In fact, execs were given the rights to adapt the British show Till Death Us Do Part for American audiences. It must have been a lot of work preparing this show, because it went through multiple names and actors with ABC rejecting it twice before finally being approved for syndication.
When it was called Those Were the Days, it went to CBS, where it was ordered. It became All in the Family with Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner getting cast to play Gloria and Michael, respectively.

30 Rock

30 Rock didn’t come out perfectly formed either. In the unaired pilot, the actress Rachel Dratch was actually cast in what eventually became Jane Krakowski‘s role. The character’s original name was going to Jenna DeCarlo but we all know it ended up being Jenna Maroney. Fortunately Rachel ended up playing other characters in 30 Rock, so the switches weren’t quite as awkward.

Big Bang Theory

The unaired pilot of The Big Bang Theory had some big changes before they settled on their now beloved cast of characters.

One of the most shocking is with Sheldon Cooper. The character is still played by Jim Parsons, but he is a lot more sexual. He’s referred to as an “ass man” and pictured at a sperm bank in the episode. The first pilot also has two female leads, Amanda Walsh as Katie and Iris Bahr as Gilda. So there were many changes to the character and the eventual plot.

Game of Thrones

Considering Game of Thrones is so popular, the original pilot just might be the most famous of them all. There were some very notable changes to the cast, for example Tamzin Merchant and Jennifer Ehle appearing as Daenerys Targaryen and Catelyn Stark, respectively. While Game of Thrones is based on the hugely successful books of the same name by George R. R. Martin, apparently a lot of poetic license was applied to the story and characters. In the end, about 90 percent of the pilot was reshot with Emilia Clarke becoming Khaleesi and Michelle Fairley getting cast as Catelyn. It’s too bad we’ll probably never see the original. GoT TV showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, even admitted that original pilot for the show was pretty bad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is another highly popular show that has a famous original pilot. Creator Joss Whedon had actually written a Buffy movie and partly self-financed a Buffy the Vampire Slayer pilot to sell to FOX. There were some notable changes including Riff Regan originally playing Willow Rosenberg and the school name being “Berryman”. There visual chracter changes too, Buffy has brown hair in it. In the official version we watched, Alyson Hannigan was Willow and the school was known as Sunnydale High. The quality is also much, much better. While it has never been officially release, there are grainy versions of the first pilot you can watch.

The Munsters

The original The Munsters was a 14-minute pitch to CBS. The network reportedly wanted different actors for the parts if they were going to give it a shot. Initially it was Nate Derman as Eddie Munster, but the role ultimately went to Butch Patrick. Joan Marshall was the Munster matriarch who was originally called Phoebe. That role eventually went to Yvonne De Carlo and the character was then later on named Lily.

Gilmore Girls

The Gilmore Girls pilot was actually completely reshot from scratch essentially. There are huge character changes, including Alex Borstein playing Sookie St. James rather than Melissa McCarthy and Nathan Wetherington playing Dean Forester instead of Jared Padalecki. Most shocking of all was that Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) was a suit-wearing, serious mama; not the cool mom we know…

Family Guy

Everyone is being nice to Meg Griffin? Something is definitely amiss. The truth is there are lots of changes from the original plot, story line and characters in Family Guy. Even if you watch some of the older episodes now, you will probably have a hard time with the characters’ voices and the quality. Well, if you watch the original pilot, you will see that things are grainier and there are more voice changes.

Gilligan’s Island

The 1960’s hit Gilligan’s Island originally had a different theme song compared to the catchy one we all know. You might have a hard time recognizing some of the characters in the unaired version as well. If you’re curious about the show, you can actually view a lot of this one. It was shown in the 1990s and eventually made its way to DVD even.

Seinfeld

Everybody loves Seinfeld. But did you know that their pilot was, well, not so great. In fact the original pilot was rejected by NBC because execs reportedly didn’t think it was strong enough. The unaired version written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld was called The Seinfeld Chronicles. There were different locations and names, but the most shocking thing of all was that it didn’t feature one of our favorite characters, Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

Saved by the Bell

If you can remember the short-lived Good Morning, Miss Bliss, you may already know that it’s the seed where Saved by the Bell started. The original was way different though. After one name change, one school swap, one location switch, and pretty much an entire cast change we got the Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Theissen), Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) and the rest of the gang from Bayside High School.

Star Trek

One of the greatest shows but with so many different versions of Star Trek it’s hard to keep track of them all. That’s not even counting the unaired versions. The cult favorite show was originally created in 1965, but network execs weren’t buying it because they found it boring. One huge change was with the lead character in the OG named Captain Christopher Pike who was played by Jeffrey Hunter. In the end, we got Captain James T. Kirk played by William Shatner. And the show worked!

Girl Meets World

After Boy Meets World suddenly we were given the sequel Girl Meets World. Considering they were working on an already successful concept you may think that they would get it right first time. But not so. In the unaired version, Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) and Topanga Lawrence (Danielle Fishel) had a son named Elliot played by Teo Halm. Things didn’t work out and Riley Matthews (Rowan Blanchard) lost her older brother.

Three’s Company

Three’s Company had to go through many chops and changes before they finally arrived on a show that was accepted. So many changes in fact that only two things stayed the same! John Ritter being cast in the show and there being three roomies. Besides that, the show had different names, John’s character had a name change and the two leading ladies went from being Suzanne Zenor and Valerie Curtin to Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers. Before Suzanne Somers was cast, Suze Lanier-Bramlett also had a part in one of the later unaired pilots.

Desperate Housewives

One of the biggest shows of the decade Desperate Housewives was released to much fanfare. But there were lots of changes from the original pilot. While the ABC show appears to have the same sort of story line, Sheryl Lee was originally cast as Mary Alice Young, aka the deceased housewife narrator. Michael Reilly Burke originally played Rex Van De Camp while Kyle Searles played John Rowland. In the version we saw, Brenda Strong was Mary Alice, Steven Culp was Rex and Jesse Metcalfe was sexy John. There were lots of switches and changes but it ended in probably a far better show. That’s show business!

Full House

As a bonus feature we finally got to see the original Full House episode that didn’t air. What’s more, you can now see a bit of it online as well. There’s not that many changes though because almost everything in the original pilot made it through to the final one. The changes? John Posey played Danny Tanner. And can you imagine the show without Bob Saget? We don’t even want to think about that one!

Summing-Up

A television show’s pilot is what sets the tone for the series so it’s critical that the show gets it right. Sometimes, there are successful TV shows that survive terrible pilots. There are also some popular TV shows that have unaired pilots that you may not know about. What’s even more surprising is that the original pilots are totally different than the one that aired.

It’s a bit hard to imagine that some of our favorite programs could have potentially gone in completely different directions. We’ll never know how successful they would have been, but execs clearly knew that there was something up with the OG pilots so they switched them around. The result was the shows we know today.

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