I donít know what all the fuss is about over cloning. The television networks have been doing it for years! They remove a character from one popular series and then graft them onto another part of the schedule in a new show, hoping that show will grow into a hit TV series on its own. Sometimes the results are gratifying (The Jeffersons, Good Times) but more often than not, things donít go quite as planned and the network winds up with a hideous two-headed lamb on its hands, which has to be destroyed before it turns the whole lineup into a freak show. Here are some of the most noticeable experiments that didnít take and now reside in jars of formaldehyde on a high shelf in a room marked "TVíS Bad Ideas."

Garry Marshall became the man with the golden touch at ABC when his hit TV series Happy Days spawned two other hit shows, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy. Those sitcoms, however, were built around characters that only made guest appearances on the mother show.  Joanie Loves Chachi was a spin-off featuring honest-to-god regulars from the Happy Days cast. Unfortunately for all involved, the creative well had run dry by the time Marshall decided to give Happy Days heartthrob Scott Baio his own thirty minutes of prime time to run around in. And it didnít help matters that he hung two millstones around Chachiís neck by sending along Happy Daysí most unappealing character (Erin Moran as Joanie) and most annoying one (Al Molinaro) for support. Well, at least that gave Pat Morita an excuse to return to Happy Days as Arnold just before waxing on and off with Baioís evil twin Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid movies. Which is probably the only good thing that ever came out of this turkeyís short and ugly run on ABC. Besides, Marshall and the network broke a very important rule when they developed this show. And that is, always use an ampersand when connecting the names of the two characters in the title.

This is what happens when a bad show becomes so popular that it can take its most obnoxious character and build an even worse show around her. Alice, the sitcom that begat this grotesque blotch on the prime time schedule in 1980, lost bad idea status when it actually became a hit show and ran nine years on CBS. The "Fonzie" of that series was Flo, a sassy man pleasing waitress whose southern accent was thicker than the grease on the griddle at Melís Diner, the house of horrors where she worked alongside Alice and a sweet but creepy creature called Vera. Since Alice was a top ten program and everybody split a gut whenever Flo blurted out her hilarious catch phrase "Kiss my grits," it only made sense that she be sent packing to start up her own place and spread the ratings wealth elsewhere on the CBS lineup. Polly Holliday was the actress who brought Flo to life and it soon became apparent that a little of her grits went a long way after the show started off near the top of the ratings heap and then wound up in a heap of a different kind. After only a few months on the air, Flo disappeared without even saying good-bye - much like the men who tiptoed out of her bedroom the morning after a night of checking out her specials.

How could something so stupid come from one of the smartest sitcoms on television? Even in small doses on Cheers, the characters of Nick and Lorretta Tortelli (played by Dan Hedaya and Mrs. Kasey Kasem) could grate on oneís nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. Eventually those small doses got bigger and bigger and some programming Einstein decided it would be a great idea to base a show on these two cretins and their family of morons. And so Nick, who was Carlaís worthless ex-husband, and his bimbo wife Lorretta moved to Las Vegas and naturally Nickís teenage son and white trash bride came along because they were too dimwitted not to. The series only lasted four months (although each episode seemed like an eternity in hell) but at least it meant these yahoos spent less time at a certain favorite bar where everybody knew their names.

Another case of a steaming pile of monkey crap that was such a big hit the network took some of the feces and dropped it in another time slot. Stanley and Helen Roper (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley) were the neighbors and landlords of the happy bunch that lived upstairs on Threeís Company, a show that thrived in the Nielsen ratings when lame sex jokes and jiggle were all the rage on television. A large part of that showís humor derived from Mr. Roperís misconception that Jack Tripper (John Ritter) was gay. So when Mr. Roper sold his Santa Monica apartment building and moved to a condominium in a posh neighborhood, it meant he had to leave most of his best material behind. Thus this show had to get its yuks from the Ropers being totally out of their element and Mrs. Roperís hopeless attempts to get her husband to climb on top of her and make whoopee. In an effort to find the series an audience, ABC moved The Ropers from Tuesdays to Sunday to Saturday and then flushed it after a final switch to Thursdays, thus proving crap is crap no matter where you put it.