Iconic TV characters who were written out of their shows unexpectedly
Jack died on This Is Us, and some of us are still not fine with it. The grief process was painfully real.
In the TV industry, a character leaves because an actor wants out, or gets fired, or dies between seasons. The story has to absorb it either way.
Eight of those exits follow, and the reason behind each one.
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, MAS*H
The most famous of them all. McLean Stevenson wanted out, so the writers gave Henry Blake an honorable discharge and a helicopter home. Then, in the closing seconds of the March 1975 season finale, Radar walks into the operating room and reads a telegram: the plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan, and there were no survivors.
Producers kept the ending from most of the cast until it was shot. Jamie Farr told People the actors “did not know that Colonel Blake was gonna die” and were stunned for some time afterward. Accounts differ on what Stevenson himself knew, but he was on set for the filming; the planned wrap party was canceled, and he left abruptly.
It was the first time a departing lead in an American comedy was killed off this way.
Susan Ross, Seinfeld
George Costanza picked the cheapest wedding invitations available. The glue turned out to be toxic. Susan licked enough envelopes to kill her, and the Season 7 finale ended with George’s reaction, which was mostly relief.
The real reason was chemistry. Jason Alexander later told Howard Stern he “couldn’t figure out how to play off of” Heidi Swedberg, and that their instincts kept misfiring in scenes together. Swedberg had appeared in roughly 28 episodes.
The 1996 episode was briefly pulled from syndication after the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Mr. Hooper, Sesame Street
Will Lee had played the neighborhood grocer since the show’s first episode in 1969. He taped his last segments in November 1982, rode in the Macy’s parade days later, and died of a heart attack on December 7.
Producers weighed recasting him, or saying he’d retired, or quietly dropping him. They chose instead to tell the truth. “Farewell, Mr. Hooper” aired on Thanksgiving Day 1983, deliberately scheduled for a day when parents would be home to answer questions, and it shows the adults explaining to Big Bird that death is permanent.
They decided not to say how he died, reasoning that “old and ill” might frighten children more than it reassured them.
Coach, Cheers
Nicholas Colasanto had heart trouble before he was cast. He was hospitalized in 1984 with fluid in his lungs, and the show covered his absences with excuses until he died in February 1985 at 61.
The Season 4 premiere, in September that year, announced Ernie Pantusso’s death without explaining a cause. Years later, in the series finale, Sam quietly straightens a portrait of Geronimo on the wall. It had hung in Colasanto’s dressing room.
Edith Bunker, Archie Bunker’s Place
Jean Stapleton agreed to appear occasionally in the first season of the All in the Family spinoff. When she decided she was finished with the character, Edith died off-screen of a stroke before Season 2 began.
Norman Lear had wanted the original show to end rather than continue without both leads. Carroll O’Connor talked him out of it.
Valerie Hogan, Valerie
An ugly one. Valerie Harper’s sitcom was named after her, and when a contract dispute reached an impasse, she staged a walkout. Unhappy with the publicity, the network fired her. She sued NBC and won.
The character died in a car accident between seasons. Sandy Duncan joined as the husband’s sister to help the family grieve; the show was renamed Valerie’s Family, and then renamed again as The Hogan Family for its last three years.
Prue Halliwell, Charmed
Shannen Doherty left in 2001 amid widely reported friction with Alyssa Milano. The Season 3 finale ends on a cliffhanger with two sisters gravely hurt, partly because producers were still considering recasting the role.
When Season 4 opened, Piper had survived, and Prue had not. Rose McGowan arrived as a half-sister nobody had mentioned before.
Charlie Harper, Two and a Half Men
The most public collapse on this list. After a hiatus, a rehab stay, and a run of televised rants about creator Chuck Lorre, Charlie Sheen was fired in 2011.
The Season 9 premiere opened on Charlie Harper’s funeral. He had been hit by a train in Paris, off-screen, and Ashton Kutcher moved into the beach house. The show went one step further in its 2015 finale, where a Charlie lookalike turns up at the door and is promptly crushed by a falling piano.
The bottom line
“Abyssinia, Henry” aired in March 1975, and most of the MAS*H cast learned of Blake’s death only as they filmed the scene. Will Lee died on December 7, 1982, and Sesame Street explained it to children the following Thanksgiving Day.
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