CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK - 3/27/06

This week's crossover came at the beginning of last week (on 3/19), in a throwaway line which I had forgotten about until I was reminded by a reader of the blog for Tommy Westphall's Mind.

'THE WEST WING'
&
'GOOD MORNING MIAMI'

While running through a list of the upcoming appearances Congressman Matt Santos would have to make on TV for the final push in his presidential campaign, Josh Lyman mentioned taping an appearance for 'Good Morning Miami'. This show is obviously following the 'Today' show - NBC wouldn't want to tout any other network, would they?

Like I said, it was a throwaway reference, but it was enough. What made it surprising was that it brought back memories of an NBC series that didn't do very well during its only season on the air, and which had no other real connections to other NBC shows except for 'Queer Eye For The Straight Guy', which airs on Bravo (owned by NBC).

Of course, there aren't really any other shows on NBC right now that deal with fictional TV shows, (unless you count the Out TV network on 'Will & Grace'), so they went with the recent past. (Had they dipped into the archive of classic NBC programs, then they could have invoked such fake shows as 'Lateline'.)

Overall, using 'Good Morning Miami' works out well for Toobworld purposes. 'The West Wing' had to be relegated to an alternate TV dimension because of Jed Bartlet being the President, when in Earth Prime-Time, the POTUS must always be the current Commander-In-Chief for Earth Prime. As I mentioned, 'Good Morning Miami' never lasted long enough, or wasn't prized enough by the Powers That Be, to get crossovers and tie-ins to any of the other fictional shows on the Peacock Network. This means we don't have to worry about banishing any other shows with 'Good Morning Miami' to Earth Prime-Time/Jed (for lack of a better classification).

As for 'Queer Eye For The Straight Guy', there's no problem with this - that's a "reality" series and the Fab Five appear as themselves. There have been a few other people who have appeared as themselves on 'The West Wing' (Jay Leno, David Hasselhoff, and this past week, Atrios perhaps?) and others have been mentioned, like Matt Drudge. (And there was a real-world scientist portrayed by Christopher Lloyd as well.)

So, like many other real-world celebs, the Fab Five have counterparts in at least one other TV dimension.

And this doesn't mean we have to lose 'Good Morning Miami' from the main Toobworld, although there's no real compulsion to keep it. The local TV show within a network series could just as easily have its own doppelganger in several different TV dimensions.

The TV dimension housing 'The West Wing' now has several TV shows joining it Among them are:

'The West Wing'
'Mr. Sterling'
'Good Morning Miami'
Smallville'

And even after it shuffles off its mortal coil with the end of this season, 'The West Wing' may still have a "life" should it ever be mentioned by some show in the future.

Hey, it happened for 'Good Morning Miami'!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

BTW ~
With the episode of 3/26, options were bandied about as to Santos making an appearance in a pre-taped Halloween-themed sketch for 'The Tonight Show'. Go-betweens handled the details and we didn't see Jay Leno, but as mentioned above, he has appeared on the show in the past.

I bring this up now so I don't feel the temptation to cite it for next week's Crossover Of The Week. Just this weekend, I noticed a great one that had been flying under the radar for weeks since the Super Bowl.......