The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Tony-winning dancer tapped into his comedic skills as a widower raising his 12-year-old son while trying to reenter the dating world. This hip sitcom got some good reviews but was an odd fit amid ABC's 'TGIF' refugees 'Family Matters' and 'Step by Step,' which CBS had picked up for its fall 1997 'Friday Night Block Party.' It was canceled in its first season.

'M*A*S*H' veterans Potter, Klinger and Mulcahy come home from Korea and try to adjust to civilian life working at a Midwestern VA hospital. Contrary to popular belief, the spin-off was not an immediate failure; its first-year ratings, in fact, put it at No. 15 (right above 'The Fall Guy'), but the numbers continued to fall and the show was canceled early in its second season.

Widowed newspaper columnist Hal Towne raises his 10-year-old son in a Manhattan penthouse, with the help of a formidable housekeeper nicknamed 'Sarge.'

Bomb about two klutzy brothers who decide that the road to success starts in maintenance, so they become janitors in a Chicago office building.

The CBS sitcom Welcome to the Captain may well have been inspired by Nathaniel West's searing novel Day of the Locust, which chronicled the hopeless aspirations and dashed dreams of Hollywood's "fringies". New York-bred writer Josh Flug (Fran Kranz) was a former "wunderkind" who'd been whisked to LA-LA-land on the strength of an Oscar-winning short subject he'd produced in 2003. Alas, since that time Josh had done absolutely nothing of any significance, and was on the verge of heading home in defeat when his pal Marty Tanner (Chris Klein) talked him into remaining in Tinseltown. Thus, John moved into the El Capitan, a once-legendary Hollywood apartment building which, like John himself, had fallen upon hard times, and was now populated by showbiz wannabes, hasbeens, and never-weres. Jeffrey Tambor costarred as Uncle Saul, manager of El Capitan and onetime staff writer for the long-defunct comedy series Three's Company. Also seen were Raquel Welch as faded soap-opera diva Charlene Van Ark; Joanna Garcia as acupuncturist-in-training Hope; Al Madrigal as irritable desk attendant Jesus, who refused to be referred to as Hey-Soos and insisted upon the Biblical pronunciation of his name; and Valerie Azlynn as eccentric starlet Astrid, who for reasons that must have seemed funny on paper began all her sentences with the "S" sound. Welcome to the Captain first checked in on February 4, 2008.

A former Broadway showgirl takes a job as a music and drama teacher at a girls school in the Northeast. Her unconventional methods won over her students, but not viewers: The curtain came down on the series after only four episodes.