Ten Television Series Spin-Offs that Should Never Be Made

Some of the best shows on television have been spin-offs. Many spin-offs, such as the numerous current series of Law & Order, examine different aspects of the same groups of people, and still manage to captivate audiences. But let's face it: some shows don't need to have spin-offs. Imagine if Without a Trace had a spin-off called With Every Trace, where people disappeared but nobody really cared enough to look for them, even though all the clues are so obvious you could probably find said missing persons in about five minutes. Or imagine if they'd taken the spin-offs of Star Trek one step further than Deep Space Nine, which took place on a space station, and set the series on a satellite manned by let's say five people. Obviously, there's such a thing as taking T.V. shows and their spin-offs too far. But that's not to say it's not fun to think of what would happen if some of the most popular shows on television were, in fact, taken to that next, horrible level. Here are ten spin-off ideas that take things to that very level; let's hope they never, ever, get made!

24:7

A spin-off of 24, this series is all about following CTU agents through a week . . . in real time. That means literally following said CTU agents for 24/7. This show, of course, could only be run online, on a 24/7 Broadband network video service provided by Fox, and probably sponsored by Windows Vista. And the major things we always miss out on when watching 24 will be covered, to a sickening degree, on 24:7: lunch and bathroom breaks. We will no longer wonder what happens when someone like Jack Bauer has to go to the bathroom in the midst of his twenty-four hour day. Unfortunately, we will also come to wish we had never, ever wondered.

Enemies

This spin-off of Friends follows the lives of six enemies who live in the same apartment building in New Jersey. There would naturally be several cameos by Ross, Phoebe, Chandler, Rachel, Monica, and Joey, who the six enemies naturally despise as well. This series would likely not last long because at least three of the said enemies would move out of the building by the end of the pilot, and someone would undeniably kill another of the enemies who remained.

Found

In this spin-off of Lost, we witness the history of those known as the Others. Still characterized by Lost's traditional use of flashbacks, we witness the lives of characters like Benjamin Linus and the French Woman before they began waging war on Lost's more popular cast, the marooned victims of Oceanic Flight 815. Of course, seeing as we've already had several flashbacks concerning the Others, the episodes will mostly be the exact same plotlines as coinciding episodes of Lost, but taken from the Others' perspectives. The series' highlighted factor would be episodes in which the main characters of Lost and the Other's interacted, which would actually only be re-airings of those same episodes from Lost, because honestly, how different would they be?

815

Another spin-off of Lost would focus on the flight staff of Oceanic Flight 815. We would witness the lives of every single member of the flight staff, from the pilot who forgot to kiss his wife goodbye to the guy who stands on the runway to guide the plane to take-off, who had been planning to ask one of the stewardesses to marry him. This series would probably be short lived, as the staff for the flight has only been notified of their run on Flight 815 a week in advance, thus giving the series a run period of seven days before the plane takes off, and subsequently crashes. The ratings garnered by the bloody demise of a cast of characters nobody really cared about in the first place would be enough to bankrupt ABC.

Chastity in the City

During the sure-to-be-cancelled-course of this destined-to-die spin-off of Sex in the City, a group of four Catholic Sisters, best friends ever since entering the same abbey, live in New York and-- get this-- don't have sex. They don't have boyfriends. They don't enter bars to drink the night away and recount tales of the liaisons they didn't have the night before. They don't talk about fashion, though every once in a while one might mention a good tip for getting guacamole out of a habit. The talked-about episode would revolve around the day Sister Carrie accidentally got drunk on the Eucharist wine and, in an involuntary outbursts, admits she misses her teen years when she was "more free" with herself. This series will undoubtedly end on a low note, probably with something like a jump-the-shark situation when a handsome new Priest comes to work at the Catholic school where one of the Sisters work, and they proceed to express no interest in him whatsoever.

Mad Women

On this spin-off of Mad Men, we follow the careers of women in advertisement in the 1960's. Seeing as there weren't really any, the series will take a quick turn to following the lives of several housewives who are part of the same book club and sleep with each other's husbands. The series will be accused of ripping off Desperate Housewives, which it will gladly and shamelessly admit to, get sued, and be cancelled.

60

In another spin-off of 24, we follow a CTU agent, based in New York rather than Los Angeles, through sixty minutes of his or her day. Seeing as this is New York, approximately forty-five of the sixty minutes will be spent in traffic. Considering this, the show's producers will admit to having considered making the show 24: Minutes. "But," they will tell their network executives, "that would have been stupid." These producers will then be summarily fired.

O.R.

After years of E.R., series producers bring viewers the next best thing to watching a series where most Emergency Room emergencies wind up in the Operating Room: a series that skips right to the O.R. This show is all about the surgeons. Of course, so-- for the most part-- is E.R. So nobody will watch, and it will flat line faster than a patient with multiple gunshot wounds.

Law & Order: Petty Crimes Division

In this we-thought-you-were-kidding-about-this spin-off of Law & Order and its already established list of respectable spin-offs, we follow the lives of several New York City beat cops and poorly paid public defenders. The cops will spend their days tracking down the punk who stole Grandma Gertrude's purse and standing guard while a fireman rescues a cat from a tree. They will on occasion be involved in high speed chases on the outskirts of New York, but only on very rare occasions. There will also be crossover appearances by popular detectives like Detective Green, Detectives Benson and Stabler, and Detective Goren; these crossover appearances will mostly involve said Detectives asking the police officers, "What've we got?", the police officers answering the question in about three sentences, and the Detectives responding, "Okay, we got it from here." The public defenders will spend most of their time on camera saying, "Wait, I've never tried a case like this before!" when confronted with major cases like murder; be prepared for several dramatic entrances by Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy saying, "You don't have to. I'll take it from here." Every episode will end with the cops and public defenders sitting in a bar talking about their close calls with real crime, and the line, "Well, that sure was a close call, though."

CSI: Alaska

This spin-off of CSI will die after the first episode, in which the crime scene investigator team puzzles over a mysterious death involving snow shoes and moose antlers. It really isn't worth going into much further than that.