Bizarre 90s Sitcom That Broke The Fourth Wall Has Been Erased From History
Posted by Jonathan Klotz | Published
Back in 1995, a new broadcast television network, the WB, was launched, and despite Ted Turner’s financing, every single show seemed to have a budget roughly the size of a college production. Hamlet.
One of the highlights of the first launch was Happily Ever Aftera sitcom from Ron Leavitt, the same man behind Fox’s hit single, Married…With Children. Although the two shows were similar on the surface, Happily Ever After it has become more popular for backstage drama than anything put on screen.
The Spiritual Sequence of Marriage … and Children
Happily Ever After it was about a dysfunctional family that includes a mother, Jennifer (Stephanie Hodge), who is cruel, judgmental, and hateful to everyone for various reasons. The father, Jack (Geoff Pierson), is a schizophrenic alcoholic who often seeks life advice from Mr. Floppy, a stuffed rabbit voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait. There are three children: the dim-witted Ryan (Kevin Connolly), the perfect Tiffany (Nikki Cox), and the forgotten, normal kid, Ross (Justin Berfield).
It feels like a typical sitcom set-up, even if it’s airy. So how did the show go so far that, out of nowhere, a WB executive appeared on camera to reverse the death of one of the characters?
Bobcat Goldthwait Steals the Show
First, despite the low-budget look and funny bad acting, Happily Ever After it was successful. The series ran for more than 100 episodes and five seasons, hitting the magic number needed to generate sales. Ron Leavitt’s production team has also been in tune with viewers, making changes each season based on viewer feedback, such as Jack returning to the house and developing more storylines centered around Ryan and Tiffany.
The problem was that as the show progressed, and the spotlight shifted from Jennifer and Jack to the kids, it became more about high school and college adventures than a dysfunctional family. As a result, in Happily Ever After In season 4, Jennifer is killed off-screen with the explanation that she fell asleep in a tanning salon and started haunting the family like a ghost. To say that the audience did not get this well would be an understatement.
Breaking the Fourth Wall Before Disappearing
I Happily Ever After the writers knew this was going to happen, as they postponed the lesson in the next episode by having the WB executive leave and declare the story unworkable, so Jennifer came back alive (following a failed exorcism). Stephanie Hodge left the show after the season, with the excuse of getting away from her femme fatale, but the damage was done. It’s always a weird moment in an already weird sitcom.
The audience accepted the schizophrenic father talking to the stuffed rabbit, but the ghostly mother was a bridge too far. Granted, part of that could be that Bobcat Goldthwait had great lines as Mr. Home Improvement.
If you want to see Nikki Cox start her career as a brilliant Honors student or enjoy life advice from Mr. Floppy, you can’t. It’s not just that Happily Ever After it’s never been on a streaming service, but it’s also never had a DVD release. For now, the sitcom will remain a weird fever dream that seems too weird to ever exist.
