Anti-Typecasting

For many actors, the craft is all about range. Being able to assume and fully inhabit another character showcases their true talents. Not all actors, of course, have this magnitude of expertise. There's a reason some guys are always the action hero and some guys are always the off-the-wall one-line spouting goofball--that's just what they're good at.

In some of these cases, an actor manages to transition from one type to another seamlessly, effortlessly demonstrating their breadth of skill as an actor. For others...not so much. As a career move, accepting a role against type can significantly boost an actor's credibility and garner them major industry respect. If done well, it can mean an outpouring of positive critical response and a shot at a prestigious award.
On the other hand, audiences aren't always quick to warm to watching an action hero play an allegedly comically out-of-character housekeeper/nanny; sometimes it's just not enough if the premise itself is the film's strongest punchline. As a general rule, lighthearted actor taking on a serious role, good. Serious actor taking on a lighthearted role, bad.


Robin Williams: Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society, etc



While now we have seen Williams in a wide range of roles, his road to fame was paved with comedic roles stemming from the goofiness of his breakthrough Mork television character. Williams has proven himself several times over as a serious actor with depth, particularly for his Academy Award winning role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting and as a teacher in Dead Poets Society. He broke free from his typecast slapstick persona with some distinctly emotional performances. He may have once been pigeonholed as a goofball comedian, but he has since assumed a number of roles that established him as an actor of range. Truthfully, though, more recent films like Old Dogs aren't helping maintain his reputation.

Jim Carrey: The Truman Show, Man in the Moon



Like Williams, Jim Carrey's breakthrough roles came mainly in the form of slapstick comedic characters. After rising to stardom with leads in comedies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber and Liar, Liar, Carrey explored his subtler side with some decidedly more serious parts. He showed us his range in The Truman Show as an unknowing reality star in a makeshift reality. A year later, he cemented his more serious actor status with the title role in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man in the Moon. Despite critical speculation about potential Academy Award nominations, he was snubbed for both. Either way, he established himself as a more credible, multi-faceted actor.


Betty White and Rue McClanahan on Golden Girls



The original casting preference for The Golden Girls was Rue McClanahan as Rose and Betty White as Blanche, a parallel to the previous roles they had held on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Maude respectively. Bea Arthur initially was not interested in the role of Dorothy, fearing that the new show would come off as Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann Nivens. Once they switched the roles, though, the dynamic changed entirely. The casting feels so spot-on that it's hard to even imagine the women in roles others than the ones they accepted.


Fred Savage in the Lifetime Movie No One Would Tell



Kevin Arnold abusing and murdering DJ Tanner? It sounds like a stretch, but that's the way this Lifetime Movie of the Week played out. The made-for-TV movie is pretty cheesy, but it's since developed a cult following in reruns. Undoubtedly the unlikely casting choices accounts for the bulk for its appeal, but it's still a bit unnerving to watch the whole sordid ordeal unfold.


Elizabeth Berkley: Showgirls



Here is an ultimate case of seeking to play against type. In an effort to move away from her squeaky clean family-friendly image as Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley sought to break out of the typecasting box in a very major way. Berkley took on the role of Nomi Malone in the controversial NC-17 rated nudity-filled film Showgirls. The first movie to ever garner the NC-17 rating, Showgirls outlined Nomi's aspiration to rise from a stripper to showgirl on the Vegas dance scene. The movie is comically bad, belying its alleged dramatic themes with tragically poor performances and gratuitous amounts of nudity. The film was nearly universally panned by critics, failing to give Berkley the image boost she craved.


Sylvester Stallone in Stop! Or My Mom will Shoot!



This is one Sly probably wants to strike from his resume--er, IMDB page. It's just plain embarrassing. This comedy debacle costars Stallone and Golden Girls' Estelle Getty as a son and mother duo. Stallone still plays the tough guy cop, but one who the writers intended to be humorously undermined by his bumbling interfering mother. Somewhere along the way, this attempt at humor goes horribly, terribly wrong, leaving us with a remarkably unfunny comedy. The critical response was overwhelmingly poor as well, leaving the film with a notably low 5% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.


Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins, Junior, Kindergarten Cop, and Jingle All the Way



Before Schwarzenegger transitioned from action hero/bodybuilder to California governor, he made a few lighthearted comedies. This man has a real knack for reinventing himself, transitioning easily from Austrian bodybuilder to action film star to comedy actor to politician. It's almost not fair to say he's acting against type; Arnold dictates his own type. Still, there's something uniquely comical about seeing the governor of California saying, "It is not a tumor!"


While not every actor can successfully make the transition from one type to another, it's nice to see him give it his best try. Whether he ends up with an Oscar nomination or is panned by critics for his abysmal out-of-character performance, it's nice to see the change of pace. In some cases, we end up with strong serious performance from actors with a reputation for silliness. In others, an embarrassing foray into the absurd.To be fair, it's much more fun to watch things crash and burn the second way. If you don't believe me, watch ten minutes of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! You'll become a believer.

Pogs

What kind of a child wouldn't adore playing with stacks of bottle caps, delighting in making little wavering leaning towers of Pogsa and later bashing them with a heftier, weightier cap? It's such an attractive option, I can't imagine how it took us 60-odd years since the games conception to discover its true awesomeness. It may have had something to do with printing technology; Pogs featuring psychedelically colorful eight balls and yin yangs are far more attractive to children than plain old guava juice bottle lids. Still, though, we're just hurling a slightly bigger disc at a pile of smaller discs, so something tells me we as 90s children possessed the inherent trait of being incredibly easily amused. You just couldn't sell that to today's kid. They'd be bored out of their minds before you even got to the word "slammer."aa

Pogs quickly achieved cultural phenomenon status, hurdling onto the toy scene in the early 90s. Pog legend (and possibly some factual information I didn't have the initiative to confirm) has it that the game originated in the 1920s/30s era in Hawaii, using milk caps. Decades later, a teacher introduced the game to her students using lids from POG juice: Passion Fruit, Orange, Guava. Get it? Pog? I think you get it, I just wanted to double check.


Pog play is incredibly, almost deceptively simple. In retrospect it almost seems as if a part of the original instructions have been lost somewhere along the way; it's hard to believe this basic game not only held our rapt attention but also lay claim to great chunks of our allowance money and precious limited recess time. The players would build a stack of caps at least four high with all pogs facing down. There are variations, of course; in some games each player built their own stack, but generally it required some buy-in of one's own valued pogs into the high-stakes mix of potential pog loss to superior slammer wielder. Each player takes a turn hurdling the slammer at the stack, claiming the pogs that land upturned and returning the downturned pogs to the original stack.

In some cases, we would play simply for fun, allowing each player to reclaim his or her beloved pogs at the end of the game. In others, though, we were out for keeps. We had to be careful which of our most beloved pog designs we decided to throw into the mix; in many cases, other players would leave the game with their pockets or patented pog stack cases lined with our once-treasured designs. It was sort of gambling 101 for children, and most of us were about three slammer throws away from needing a 12-step program. Each throw felt like this would be our chance to claim our neighbor's rarest and most valuable pog holding, but in most cases the house won and we were SOL. It's hard to look cool when all that remains in your pog case are the reject kitten and education-themed designs. Who's going to want to slam that?

If your memory fails to summon the high-stakes intensity of the game, just watch the following commercial. It will tell you all you need to know about just how hardcore 90s kids were about their pog play. Filled with semi-subliminal messages like "Wanna Play Gotta Play Above All," it's a frightening insight into the level of serious we invested in our pog collecting and gaming.



Pogs and their heavier, more potentially injury-inflicting counterparts Slammers established a ubiquitous presence on playgrounds and in classrooms everywhere. Schools called foul on the game, declaring it a soft form of gambling. Many school districts issued bans on the seemingly innocuous toys, declaring their "playing for keeps" nature to promote unhealthy and immoral gambling habits. Pogs soon went the way of the slap bracelet, reduced to underground, rule-defying secret game play.

The majority of parents pooh-poohed the schools' claims; the pogs weren't inherently dangerous and to many it seemed a reasonable alternative to TV and video games. Kids, after all, do have some inherent right to be kids, no matter how firmly schools push to eliminate it. In the schools' defense, though, they did have some grounds for banning on the same level of the later Tamagotchi craze: these things were distracting. It was tough to convince our teachers the slamming of a large disc into a pile of smaller discs was educational in its own right. Displacement? Physics? I'm still working on a viable explanation. I'm still meaning to get back to my second grade teacher on that one.

The game became so popular that manufacturers were scrambling to get their images plastered onto cardboard discs, releasing a horde of licensed designs and highly coveted collectible pogs onto the skyrocketing game scene. Soon fast food joints were offering pogs alongside children's meals, sports teams issued baseball card-esque designs, and even religious organizations sought to promote their moral messages on these ever more visible youth-accessible miniature billboard space. All types of licensed images found their way onto the fronts of pogs, giving a wide variety of kid-friendly enterprises an entirely new vehicle through which to promote their franchises.


Granted, some of the cross-promotional morally conscious pog marketing got a bit out of hand. While it might be cool to have a pog or two with some deeper meaning, many of the pog producing organizations sought to use the fad as a platform for their mission statement. Groups like anti-drug education program DARE and the US Environmental Protection Agency were soon printing pogs by the stackful, their well-meaning capitalization on a trend sucking a reasonable amount of the fun out of the game.

Like any good childhood fad, as soon as adults get too involved in utilizing the phenomenon to their benefit, it sends a message to kids that its trendiness is on the way out. Once adults have embraced a trend with the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude, kids' internal coolness radar alerts them it's probably time to find a new favorite pastime. Beanie Babies, anyone?

The "They All Go to the Same Made-Up University to Keep the Show Going" Phenomenon

It's a conundrum, really. Your sitcom or teen drama has maintained high ratings and loyal viewership, but you've stretched the characters' high school reign to the limits of its believability. Since in many cases you've already stacked your cast with barely-believable-as-teenagers 20-something actors, the duration of their high school run is becoming exponentially less credible with each passing season. What's a TV writer to do?

Here's a surefire plan to deal with your aging high school sitcom: invent a university. That's right, you heard me. Just make up a college. It's that easy. In the same way real life high schools never center around six or seven of the most attractive and characteristically disparate students, it's even less likely that this select group of golden boys and girls would all choose to attend the same local university.

Since we've already had to suspend our disbelief in swallowing week after week the fact that our main players are the only people that matter in a high school of thousands, it's not such a flying leap to assume we're willing to believe those kids would all head to college together.. Really, what kind of people go off to college to make new friends? It's much more interested to live studio and/or home audiences if you just stick with the same group of friends we've already grown to love over a series of seasons. Problem solved.

The transition isn't always a smooth one, of course. Major actors may not buy into the switch and will have to be expediently replaced by equally traited newcomers, certain lovable characters may not realistically be a part of the new college environment, and viewers may lose interest at the elimination of the original premise and setting. These hurdles are not insurmountable, though. Once you've decided to take all of your kids to college, you've already narrowed your credibility significantly. At this point, it's pretty much anything goes, as we can see from the following case studies:


Saved by the Bell ---> Saved by the Bell: The College Years (California University)



Saved by the Bell is a great example of a twice-rebranded franchise, though the SbtB team admittedly did a stronger job the first time around. The show was initially conceived as middle school Disney Channel sitcom Good Morning, Miss Bliss and was swiftly transformed into the Bayside, California high school network show we generally think about when referencing the show. After the cast had aged out of their high school years, the producers wanted to keep the wheels turning on their still-popular franchise.

Enter Saved by the Bell: The College Years. Although things had seemingly been resolved at the end of the high school series with everyone accepting admissions to different universities, somehow Zack, Screech, Slater, and Kelly all ended up arbitrarily changing their minds to attend California University. If you've ever watched this show, it has a considerably more stereotypically mid-90s look to it; the flannel, the haircuts, the general malaise. That's about all it had going for it, though, and the show was swiftly canceled after a single season due to lagging ratings. We did get to see a two-hour movie special of Zack and Kelly's Las Vegas wedding for sufficient closure, at least.


The Fresh Prince of Bel Air ---> University of Los Angeles



After four seasons, we just weren't ready to say goodbye to our mismatched pair of Bel Air-based cousins. Carlton and Will both decided to attend ULA and proceed to inhabit a series of new wacky and rite-of-passage scenarios previously inaccessible to them as high school students. Since Carlton and Will make up the show's primary character dynamic, it was necessary for writers to keep them together in order to keep the general scheme of the show intact. While I admit Carlton as the ULA mascot was an amusing visual, the family-centric situations become more forced and less believable as the seasons passed. I'd say between that and the peacock costume, it's something of a toss-up.


Beverly Hills 90210 ---> California University



Strange, isn't it, that the 90210 gang and the kids from Saved by the Bell all attended the same university and never once bumped into one another in some sort of ill-conceived crossover? Apparently creativity in the college naming department is scarce among TV writers, as "California University" was the best that the crack teams at both SbtB and 90210 could come up with. It seems both shows' casts attended separate versions of the same lazily decided inversion of the University of California. Who knew?


Boy Meets World ---> Pennbrook College



In the ultimate "they all go to the same college" offense, Boy Meets World went so far as to drag their wisdom-spouting teacher/mentor with them in the transition to university. Yes, apparently all it takes as credentials for professorhood these days is having a profound impact on a few incoming freshmen. Things took a bit of a sordid turn when they cast Cory's real life brother Fred Savage as a lecherous professor. Between this and his Lifetime movie with DJ Tanner, how was I supposed to maintain my image of sweet Kevin Arnold? For shame.

The Boy Meets World college episodes still held the attention of loyal viewers, but as is the case of in many these scenarios, the situation part of the situation comedy became more forced. The storylines got a bit wackier, Cory and Topanga managed to make it all the way to their still-in-college marriae before having relations, and we were supposed to be convinced that everyone the cast had picked up along the way (Angela, Jack, Eric, Mr. Feeny) had nothing better to do than to follow Shawn, Cory, and Topanga to college. I still love the show, so I'm willing to overlook the glaring forcedness of it all. You've just sort of got to go with it. Don't question, just watch.


Sweet Valley High ---> Sweet Valley University


This one may not be a TV show, but Francine Pascal's ghostwriters employed a similarly shameless college sendoff in the Sweet Valley series. At least in this version, they introduce slew of new characters into the mix. The storylines are far from probable--Lila marrying a count, Jessica randomly marrying a guy who later becomes paralyzed, Jessica's professor's wife is a homicidal nutcase. It's not a huge jump from the original series at least: these plots are fairly tame compared to werewolves and face-stealing plastic surgeon spa proprietors.


There's a reason these we allow these shows some creative license in manipulating our beloved characters and settings: they're fictional. As much as some over-zealous fans may try to fill in the blanks with all sorts of justifications, at the end of the day we can chalk it up to a last plea for sustained high ratings.

For any of us who have been to real colleges, we know the squeaky-clean veneer characteristic of preachy high school shows would be pretty out of place at a college kegger. The college shift keeps our characters in a sort of limbo between teen role model and carefree college student. While some of these characters may outlast their welcome or general believability, the most loyal of fans will generally power through to the very end. You know, the one where their middle school teacher is now their professor and their roommates all happen to be their former high school classmates or new characters with extremely similar characteristics to their former friends? Yep, that one. It's not always easy, but someone's got to keep watching. How else would we possibly snark on it fifteen years down the road?