"8 Simple Rules..." to Live On

Less than 24 hours after the beloved prime-time star was laid to rest in Los Angeles, ABC announced Ritter's 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, one of the struggling network's few modest hits, would continue minus its signature star, whose role would not be recast.

"Obviously, it's been a very difficult few days...[But] we decided that we are going to go forward with the show," ABC Entertainment Television Group chair Lloyd Braun told reporters in an afternoon telephone conference call.

With the move, 8 Simple Rules..., which has averaged 9.8 million viewers since debuting last fall, will keep its scheduled September 23 season premiere, taking on NBC's Whoopi, which got off to a fast start last week opposite a rerun of the ABC family comedy.

Ritter completed three episodes before taking ill last Thursday, a day before taping what was to be the fourth episode. The 54-year-old Emmy-winner died Thursday night of what's believed to be a congenital heart defect.

The three Ritter episodes, to feature special intros from surviving cast members, will air in order beginning with next week's year-two opener. After, the show will go into reruns in its 8 p.m., Tuesday time slot until a revamped, reworked series is ready to air.

What the revamped, reworked series will look like remains to be seen, and, more precisely, to be written. The show went into production hiatus immediately following Ritter's death. The set is expected to be dark for another three to four weeks, although the writing staff returned to work Tuesday. It has not yet determined how the death of Ritter's character will be explained.

Network brass denied speculation that Henry Winkler, a Ritter friend and former ABC star (Happy Days) who was to appear on the 8 Simple Rules... that got scrapped last week, was being eyed to play the Hennessy clan's new father figure. "We have no intention of bringing a dad back into the family at any point in the near future," ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne said.

ABC made it clear that Ritter's befuddled dad, Paul Hennessy, would be not recast, and that the show's title would not be changed, even if the "my" in 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter referred to Ritter's character. (Braun said it's possible the show may be promoted by its less-lengthy nickname, 8 Simple Rules.)

"Future episodes will take viewers into the Hennessy household as they experience the loss of a father," Braun said. "We will not be recasting John. We will play out the situation as real life."

Given that the show heretofore was light fare, revolving around Ritter's bumbling attempts to keep his boy-magnet daughters from growing up too fast, a storyline about the wife (Katey Sagal) and kids in mourning will make 8 Simple Rules... a different show, at least at first, network honchos allowed.

Lyne said she guessed the first post-Ritter episodes would be "more dramatic, more emotional" than typical sitcoms.

Acknowledging Ritter as an irreplaceable force, Lyne said the network's first instinct after his death was to cancel the show. But execs said subsequent discussions convinced all parties--cast, producers, even Ritter's real-life widow, Wings alum Amy Yasbeck--that the show, in Hollywood tradition, must go on.

"John believed in this show and its message that a strong family can get through anything," Yasbeck said in a statement Tuesday. "He felt so lucky to be working with such wonderful people every day. They all had such a warm friendship, and I know John would want his friends to be able to continue doing what they love."

Cynics, being cynics, will say Disney-owned ABC, of late reduced to a Mickey Mouse-sized figure in the prime-time standings behind CBS, NBC and Fox, had little choice but to continue a show, however wounded, that was one of its few non-bombs, not to mention the product of its own Touchstone Television division.

But ABC execs sounded weary, not cynical, as they spoke of how continuing the show would be cathartic for the "incredibly tight-knit cast, incredibly tight-knit crew," if not the TV nation. (Forgive them their overstatements. As Braun said, it's been a long week.)

In the end, going on with 8 Simple Rules... is no simple path to success for ABC. Far from it. In the history of TV, there is no example of a series thriving following the loss of one of its titular stars. The ABC Western Alias Smith and Jones lasted one season after its Smith, Peter Duel, shot himself to death in 1971; the NBC sitcom Chico and the Man, likewise, eked out one low-rated season after its Chico, Freddie Prinze, shot himself to death in 1977.

"We've said this is unchartered territory," Lyne said. "We're going someplace that I don't think another show has."

ABC is scheduled to pay tribute to Ritter Tuesday with an hourlong news special, A Life of Laughter: Remembering John Ritter (8 p.m., ET/PT).

(Originally published on September 16, 2003, at 2:30 p.m. PT.)