Five Sitcoms That Introduced a New Cute Kid When the Original Cute Kid Got Too Old
Being a kid on a sitcom is tough. If you manage to dodge addiction issues and kleptomaniacal parents, one thing will still always be gunning for you: Father Time. When sitcoms center around a family with at least one young child, a decent percentage of its humor usually comes from the young kid saying impossibly pithy lines crafted by adults.
But as the kid gets older, they often get less cute and their character is forced to change. So, where do all those snarky remarks and cutesy moments go? The solution is usually the same: bring in a brand-new cute kid regardless how much shoe-horning you need to do.
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It’s happened a lot in sitcoms — like, dozens of them — but here are five of the best examples...
The Brady Bunch
The most famous example of this is Cousin Oliver (Robbie Rist) fromThe Brady Bunch, who was introduced in Season Five, after the youngest Bradys — Bobby (Mike Lookinland) and Cindy (Susan Olsen) — were becoming tweens and teens. When The Brady Bunch premiered, both actors were cute little eight-year-olds, but teenagers aren’t quite so adorable, so the show made up some nonsense about Carol Brady’s brother having to drop off his kid while he went on an archeological dig.
Meant to bring new life to the show, Cousin Oliver did the opposite. The Brady Bunch only lasted for six episodes with Cousin Oliver before ABC canceled the series. Since then, the desperate addition of a new character to a sitcom to boost ratings has been called “Cousin Oliver Syndrome.”
Diff’rent Strokes
The central premise of Diff’rent Strokes was that an old, rich white guy (Conrad Bain as Mr. Drummond) adopted two impoverished black kids. The sitcom was a vehicle mostly built around 10-year-old Gary Coleman, who was already well established by that time and had been a stand-out guest star on more than a half-dozen sitcoms. Due to a kidney disorder, Coleman remained short for his entire life, which, during his tweens and teens, essentially allowed the Diff’rent Strokes writers and producers to pretend he was still a little kid.
But that could only go on for so long. In Season Six, Sam McKinney (Danny Cooksey), the redheaded son of Mr. Drummond’s new wife, showed up as the new little kid in the Drummond household. Like most new sitcom children, he was a cute kid with snappy lines that the audience hated. Still, Diff’rent Strokes survived three whole seasons with him, so he wasn’t quite as much of a “Cousin Oliver” as Cousin Oliver was.
Family Matters
Remember 3J? No one does, but let me refresh your memory.
Family Matters had so many kids over the course of its run that at one point the producers thought they could disappear one of them without anyone noticing. After Season Four, the youngest Winslow child, Judy (Jaimee Foxworth), was written out of the show without explanation. They did this because the show felt like it didn’t have time for her with all of its Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) stories. Plus, if it needed a cute kid, it still had Richie Crawford (Joseph and Julius Wright), the Winslow nephew, to rely on.
Given Judy’s disposability, it was especially strange that, in Season Eight, the Winslows adopted a street-wise, big-mouthed kid named 3J, who had previously been “Little Brother” (as in, the Big Brother Program) to Steve Urkel. So, even 3J’s presence on Family Matters can be blamed on Urkel.
Full House
After a while, Michelle Tanner putting her little thumb in the air and declaring “You got it, dude” lost its charm and instead just felt like a forced attempt at getting laughs that were no longer there. Full House certainly got a good run out of the character though; Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were cast at just six months old and they grew into truly funny kids who were more than capable of delivering sitcom lines.
Michelle couldn’t say baby lines forever, however. So, at the end of Season Four, Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) became pregnant, and by Season Five, she gave birth to two incredibly blond twins. By Seasons Seven and Eight, the writers were giving Nicky and Alex Katsopolis (Blake and Dylan Tuomy-Wilhoit) the same kind of lines Michelle used to deliver.
To the show’s credit, the Katsopolis twins weren’t just random relatives dropped off on the Tanner doorstep as soon as the ratings started to dip. They planned for the characters and built them up over several seasons — a direct contrast to the typical Cousin Oliver treatment.
The Cosby Show
Keshia Knight Pulliam was just five when The Cosby Show debuted and her cuteness was a small but significant part of the show. Still, while Rudy was more realistic than your average smart-alecky sitcom kid, it was clear the show was losing some of its sweetness as she got older. Enter Raven-Symoné as Olivia Kendall, the step-daughter to the second-oldest Huxtable child, Denise (Lisa Bonet).
Bonet was downgraded to a recurring character in Season Four when they spun her character off into the show A Different World, which she was then written out of when she became pregnant. In the context of The Cosby Show, Denise moved to Africa for a year. When she returned in Season Six, she was suddenly married to a Navy officer named Martin Kendall (Joseph C. Phillips) who had a spunky, sassy three-year-old daughter named Olivia.
Olivia was there to stay as the show’s new cute, funny kid, but Martin and even Denise got the boot. Denise left the Huxtable house for the second time in Season Eight, and as a member of the Navy, Martin appeared in the show just enough to occasionally remind the audience of how Olivia was related to the Olivers… Or was it Huxtables?
