Old Shame/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Old Shame in Live-Action TV include:

General

  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 refused to re-air KTMA episodes after they left that station and requested Comedy Central cease airing Season 1 episodes shortly before Season 4. While some of these (especially the KTMA eps) had to do with the legal issues surrounding the movies in use that has plagued the series to this day, they admitted to this very Trope in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, likening it to becoming a famous writer and then having an old classmate publish one of your shameful high school works. It's worth noting that several movies from the KTMA episodes were reused (with the rights properly attained this time around), essentially giving Best Brains a chance for a do-over.
  • In Brazil, famous children's television hostess Xuxa tried at all costs to retrieve old pornographic material involving her, which is understandable. After the advent of the internet, Xuxa successfully sued a big auction website to stop sales of a soft-porn movie with her, as well as a widely-circulated newspaper for showing a half-naked picture of her.
  • This post from Jack Coleman of Heroes, aka Noah Bennett, may utterly define this Trope.
  • Tina Fey apparently feels this way about the first episode of Thirty Rock, saying "if I never see that pilot again, it will be too soon."
  • Joss Whedon has made every effort to ensure that the unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is never seen.

"Ow! That was my favourite spine!"

  • Sarah Michelle Gellar would like to burn all the tapes from Girl Talk, a show she did when she was little.
  • In several episodes of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart refers to his previous film career in this manner. He seems particularly regretful over Death to Smoochy, as he said in his opening speech at the Oscars:

"Tonight is the night when we celebrate excellence in film - with me, the fourth male lead from Death to Smoochy."

  • One episode of the Japanese TV series Ultra Seven featured Monsters of the Week who resembled atomic bomb radiation victims, complete with scars and welts. Their plot was to suck blood from women and children in order to rejuvenate their polluted bodies. In the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used on it, this sparked an obvious backlash (especially from real radiation victims, who were already suffering severe discrimination). Similar to the Pokémon incident above, the producers' reaction was to strike the episode from the Canon and act like it never existed.
  • The Recut of Stargate SG-1's Pilot was the result of Brad Wright viewing it again and realizing how much Old Shame was in it.
  • Bob Saget felt this way about his family-friendly roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s on Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos. He cultivated an image as an edgy, dark comic and made a career out of Adam Westing his previous family-friendly persona by portraying a fictionalized version of himself that is drug abusing, foul-mouthed and sexually deviant in his stand-up.
  • Brannon Braga, writer of the infamous Star Trek: Voyager episode Threshold, acknowledges it to probably be the worst Trek episode he ever wrote, referring to it as a "royal steaming stinker". Despite this, the episode won an Emmy...for makeup. Braga had previously written and co-written some of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (such as Reunion, Birthright Part 1, Frame of Mind, and All Good Things), so it wasn't a trend.
    • Ira Steven Behr is responsible for many of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's best-loved episodes, but also some of its most-reviled episodes. Of the episode "Meridian" in particular (essentially Brigadoon In Space), he later said, "I am a moron."
  • Who wouldn't want a chance to play Superman? Well, facts in the matter are sketchy, but supposedly, George Reeves hated playing the character in the old series from the 50s. He thought such a role was beneath him, and he wasn't thrilled with being associated with such a role on an international level. (While not confirmed, there's a story about how at a test screening for From Here to Eternity the audience would recognize him as Superman in every scene he appeared.) It probably wasn't helped that Reeves wasn't paid what he likely deserved for the role, due to the shoestring budget, or that he had to appear on cereal commercials as a result due to product tie-ins.
  • Tina Louise, given how she feels about Gilligan's Island and her role as Ginger.
  • The Star Wars Holiday Special, a quick exploitation TV one-off produced a year after the original movie was released. George Lucas has gone on record to say he would hunt down and destroy every last copy of the Special if he had the time and money, and virtually every actor who appeared in it (most notably Harrison Ford), just about refuses to admit it exists.
  • While this show has been around a long time and fans have differing opinions on what seasons are considered good or bad, there is one thing Saturday Night Live fans can agree on: Season 6 (the 1980-81 season spearheaded by Jean Doumanian) was generally bad. So much so that, outside of a 60-minute Comedy Central rerun and a full 90-minute rerun on NBC, Season 6 hasn't aired in full anywhere in America, except for when it premiered in the early 1980s (Canada, on the other hand, did air all the episodes from Season 6) and it's highly unlikely that the episodes will be released on DVD now that Seasons 1-5 are out.
    • Season 11 (1985-86) also qualifies as an Old Shame, at least to current Simpsons writer George Meyer, ex-Simpsons writer Jon Vitti, and NBC executives, who referred to the entire season as a "horrible, horrible dream" at the beginning of Season 12.
    • Season 20 (1994-95) could be considered this in the eyes of Janeane Garofalo, who left mid-season after putting up with the "unfair boys' club" attitude of the cast and writers (in a comedy special, she compared being on SNL as being the Indian who gets the smallpox-ridden blanket from the white settlers) and Lorne Michaels (who cites the season as the closest he's ever been to being fired and having his show canceled).
    • All this said, you can watch the above seasons and all the other ones on Netflix, if you're so inclined.
      • Though unfortunately the episodes are heavily edited. Some of them are less than thirty minutes long.
  • ABC Family really doesn't want to be reminded they have to continue to give Pat Robertson and his 700 Club three hours a day on their network, along with one day in January for his yearly CBN telethon, just because some underling of Rupert Murdoch years ago couldn't persuade him to give up the network completely. The network airs the show very reluctantly, putting disclaimers on before it stating that they do not support Robertson's views and refusing to put up anything identifying the channel as ABC Family.
  • Sally Field hates The Flying Nun, pretty much dismissing it as I Was Young and Needed the Money.
  • Evangeline Lilly of Lost once did a phone-sex commercial.
  • Power Rangers. The cheesy, bright kids show brings many people old shame. The biggest is Danny Slavin, who won't even think about the show. Disney considered the entire show an Old Shame while they had it, to the point that they had no real problem selling it back to Saban.
    • Interestingly, despite its Loads and Loads of Characters, there are very few actors who actively treat it as such. Danny Slavin is one of a select few, since he only really took the job to pay for law school. Most of the others who seem to have shame for it have since come around, like Steve Cardenas (who originally refused to even mention it, but has since warmed up to it), David Yost (who didn't hate the show, but was understandably upset about getting gay-bashed behind the scenes) and Amy Jo Johnson, who is a pretty odd case (She doesn't seem to hate the show, but instead hated the typecasting afterwards. She'll be civil to fans who mention it, but generally doesn't like to bring it up.) Considering the number of Ranger actors currently sits around 90, and growing each year, the fact that Slavin seems to be the only real case of Old Shame is pretty damn impressive.
    • Slavin's case is interesting; as detailed on Lost Galaxy's page there was a lot of Executive Meddling (especially for the team-up episode with Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue) that understandably rubbed him the wrong way. Initially Slavin refused to return for the 10th anniversary episode "Forever Red", but changed his mind at the last minute as a favor to the producers. After this, though, he effectively retired from acting and has turned down numerous invites to Power Morphicon.
  • Apparently, just about every one of the live actors involved with ALF, mainly since the puppet was treated better than the actors (the numerous trapdoors that they would use were time-consuming to reset, which gave the option of either exhausting your actors, or risking their safety by leaving them open.) So much, that after the final scene of the final episode was shot, actor Max Wright simply walked to his car, drove off, and never spoke to any of the cast members ever again.
  • Despite many fans who remember him in this role from the 1970s, Morgan Freeman prefers not to talk about his time as Easy Reader on The Electric Company.
  • CBS seems to try to ignore the existence of the first season of Big Brother as much as possible, to the point of actually asking contestants in later seasons to not discuss it while on the show.
    • Interestingly enough, this was the only season that was close to the original (and wasn't as dependent on gimmicks as later seasons were).
  • Contrary to many rumors, Joe Odagiri doesn't directly hate talking about his stint as Kamen Rider Kuuga, but he has stated that he'd like to move forward as a more serious actor.
  • Seems to be the case with Dustin Diamond and Saved by the Bell. When the cast did a reunion for a magazine shoot sometime in early 2011, he was the only one who didn't participate (even Principal Belding was there) and instead released a book bashing the show. In an interview with TV Guide, Tiffani Amber-Thiessen said she thought this might have just been anger since he wasn't doing anything major at the moment, while the rest of the cast (except Lark Voorhies also), were.
  • One of Peter Davison's (aka The Fifth Doctor) early jobs was a guest shot on The Tomorrow People, an episode known as "A Man For Emily." Let's just say it opens with a nearly nude Peter sagging in manacles against a wall and goes downhill from there. Peter expressed utter horror upon learning that the episode had actually been broadcast in the US.
  • Drew Carey is still extremely embarrassed by Geppetto, his TV movie musical adaptation of Pinocchio, which the American Whose Line Is It Anyway? cast frequently mocked him for.
    • The Drew Carey Show may have Lampshaded this during a live episode, where the kid that played Pinocchio showed up in costume and asks how come he never wants to hang out with him anymore.
    • Speaking of Whose Line, performers Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie have said they don't watch their earliest appearances on the British edition because of how awkward and unfunny they were.
  • MTV prefers not to acknowledge the existence of The Brothers Grunt, due to the horrible reviews and ratings the show had (MTV viewers even started a campaign to get the show canceled). The only people that seem to remember it are fans of creator Danny Antonucci (who also did Lupo The Butcher and Ed Edd and Eddy).
  • America's Funniest Home Videos has pretty much disowned the time from 1998 to 1999 that John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes hosted it (and brought it to just this side of cancellation before it became a "special" show with rotating hosts before returning to form with Tom Bergeron). This disownment is evidenced by a retrospective episode of the Bergeron era, which brought back Saget but didn't even mention Fugelsang.
  • Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune fame starred in a 1988 TV movie for NBC called Goddess of Love. When Wheel host Pat Sajak brought it up on a December 2011 episode, Vanna just about physically tried to stop him from saying any more about it.
  • Drake doesn't like to talk about his days as Jimmy (or to some people, that black kid in a wheelchair) on Degrassi. This is a weird version of this trope of him, since that's pretty much the only thing he's known for other than rapping. When he was on MTV's When I Was 17, he didn't discuss it at all even though, again, Degrassi was the only notable thing he did when he was 17.
  • Some performers are fine with their work for Sid and Marty Krofft Productions being brought up. And then there are Deidre Hall (ElectraWoman and DynaGirl) and Jim Nabors (The Lost Saucer)...
  • Ellen DeGeneres has several segments on her show that highlight the old shames of audience members, notably "bad paid-for photos" and "hot glam, girl!" featuring embarrassing studio photographs and glamour shots, usually taken in the 80s and early 90s.
  • Not only did Martin Shaw hate Lewis Collins, his co-star on The Professionals [1], he also hated the show itself to the extent of blocking repeats for years (he later relented upon learning that the widow of the late Gordon Jackson (who played their boss) was having money troubles; the series has subsequently been shown frequently on British cable television).
  • FOX celebrated its 25th Anniversary in April 2012, which doesn't seem too out-of-place except for the fact the network actually debuted six months earlier (October 9, 1986) with The Late Show starring Joan Rivers. Okay, so the show had a rather tumultuous history until it was canned in mid-1988, but ignoring the first six months of your network to establish a "fake" start date falls squarely into here.
  • Jerry Springer, in regards to the trashy talk show he once hosted, admitted (and apologized) to ruining pop culture, half-joking saying "I hope Hell isn't too hot". He also said "I would never watch my show. I'm not interested in it. It's not aimed towards me. It's just a silly show."

Game Shows

  • Mark Goodson, the man behind many famous Game Show formats, once called his 1954 game What's Going On? his worst. The show involved celebrities doing an activity from the live remote while the panel tried to guess the activity. It lasted only five episodes and was greatly hampered by the still-developing camera technology of the 1950s.
  • Tom Kennedy's first game show was Big Game, which aired for about 20 episodes in 1958. It was a bit like a mini-version of Battleship, but with questions and a hunting theme. Oh, and Kennedy wore a pith helmet. Decades later, after rewatching the one existing episode, Tom said he was "absolutely pitiful".
  • Peter Tomarken reportedly called the 1987 game show / home shopping hybrid Bargain Hunters "a piece of shit".
  • Gene Rayburn declared an embargo on his version of Break The Bank (he wasn't happy with his performance and the behind-the-scenes issues), and may have had a hand in disallowing The Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour from being shown again (announcer Gene Wood reportedly said that Rayburn was "dragged kicking and screaming" into the Hour and disliked working with co-host Jon Bauman).
  • Now You See It: Los Angeles news personality Chuck Henry specifically requested that GSN never rerun the 1989 version, which he hosted, because he thinks it'll damage his reputation as a news anchor. (Although really, what more damage could it do than the time he had to be rescued while reporting on a forest fire?)
  • The Price Is Right: Fur coats (and, in at least five instances, live dogs) used to be offered as prizes. Obviously, this was long before Bob Barker became an animal-rights activist, and per his wishes none of the fur coat episodes were never (intentionally) re-run. [2] Among the fur-containing episodes are the first three episodes ever taped, including an episode that went unaired (and got replaced six days later) due to an ineligible contestant. BCI, which wanted to put the whole first week on the DVD set, offered to donate to Barker's favorite charities and/or put a disclaimer before the offending shows. Barker declined.
    • Dennis James' five years (1972-77) as host of the nighttime version, which frequently offered fur coats. That would be fine, if the remainder that could be legally aired hadn't been shunned by GSN at the same time they were doing "Game Of The Week" during the Sunday Night in Black And White block. Only one James episode was aired by the network, and then only twice — a daytime show (December 25, 1974) where he filled-in for Barker, which pretty much amounts to a "pity airing" since it followed James' death in 1997.
  • The one episode of You're in the Picture that aired in 1961 was so horrible that a week later, its timeslot was filled by host Jackie Gleason on an empty stage apologizing for how horrible it was. Ironically, the apology was far more well-received than the original show was, and led to Gleason seguing into a one-on-one talk show format called The Jackie Gleason Show.
  • Art James hosted a show called Blank Check in 1975. He and the staff called it "Blank Mind" because they thought it was an overly-simple number-guessing game with no skill, designed to cash in on the ESP craze at the time. (One wonders what he would've thought of Deal or No Deal, since at least Blank Check had on-the-buzzer questions...)
  • One of Regis Philbin's first TV shows was The Neighbors, a lame The Newlywed Game knockoff which asked gossip questions of (always female) neighbors. The A&E Biography on Regis failed to mention it, and Regis was none too thrilled when Alex Trebek brought it up on an episode of Live With Regis And Kelly.
  • Although he is not known to have said it in-show and hosted it with the same avuncular nature he gave all of his other work, Bill Cullen thought his short-lived game Winning Streak "just didn't work".
  • Bob Eubanks felt this way about The Diamond Head Game (a dull quiz with a tacked-on Hawaiian theme), although at least he was able to joke about it on Card Sharks.
    • Speaking of Eubanks, it had long since reached Urban Legend status that a lady on The Newlywed Game gave "in the ass" as an answer to "Where is the weirdest place you've ever gotten the urge to make whoopie?" For years, Eubanks denied that it ever happened, although this could be due to mis-remembered details. Many people thought it was a black lady who gave the answer assertively; when the clip finally surfaced (on GSN), it turned out to be a fairly normal white lady named Olga who said it questioningly. The clip appeared on several blooper shows that Eubanks hosted or co-hosted (always censored, except for its appearance in Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind), and on one such special Eubanks remarked "I hope we bury it!"
    • He never liked Trivia Trap because he didn't think its format made sense (players worked to eliminate the wrong answers, instead of just providing the right one), so the format was overhauled partway through the run...into a rather lackluster Q&A with a nonsensical title.
  • The original Wheel of Fortune pilot, taped in September 1973, was Shopper's Bazaar and bore little resemblance to any subsequent productions. It exists (held by GSN), as do the 1974 pilots and '75 debut...but Merv Griffin and NBC boss Lin Bolen essentially disowned Bazaar on the show's E! True Hollywood Story and no footage was used anywhere (only publicity shots, and even then all but 1-2 were monochrome). But then on May 30, 2012, the first segment of Bazaar unexpectedly surfaced on YouTube. And the Fandom Rejoiced.
Back to Old Shame
  1. ↑ (the feeling was mutual)
  2. ↑ (GSN accidentally aired three episodes with a fur in them {November 16, 1972; 1977; 1980}. Barker graciously allowed the mistakes to slide.)
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