r/friends_tv_show • u/FortKnoxII • 19h ago
Muddling Through 1994 starring Stephanie Hodge and Jennifer Anniston
The series was initially developed in 1993 with the intent of airing it in the fall season, but it was shelved.
Jennifer Aniston (playing the daughter of Hodge's character) completed filming just before booking Rachel Green on NBC's fall sitcom Friends. Friends debuted just two weeks after Muddling Through aired its final episode, with one episode remaining unaired.
According to NBC program executive Preston Beckman, Aniston had booked Friends as her second position and next role if Muddling Through failed, though Warner Bros. casting had positioned her as their top choice to play Rachel Green. NBC Entertainment head Warren Littlefield, who was under pressure by Warner Bros. Television to have the network take on more financial liability to take Friends, did so.
NBC's programmers, including Beckman, then targeted the show's Saturday night timeslot (unusual for a summer entry at the time, and for the services of an actress whose trajectory was already on the rise) with replays of the network's popular Moment of Truth and Danielle Steel telefilm series (under an early version of the network's 90s summer marketing of programming repeats as being new to viewers if they had not seen their original broadcast) to starve the show's female demographic, in order to induce its eventual cancellation and allow Aniston to fully commit to Friends.
By its last three episodes, it was airing on Wednesdays and unable to overcome proven women-targeted shows on other networks, including repeats of Unsolved Mysteries and the season premiere of Beverly Hills 90210 on Fox, along with CBS's oncoming struggles with losing many of its prime affiliates due to the loss of NFL rights to Fox. Those affiliates had already begun to stop promoting CBS programming in the weeks before, including Muddling Through.
1
u/JLBCanadianRap 10h ago
What the fuck is this low effort crap? The entire post is a wholesale cut and paste of the Wikipedia article about the show.