The shows that do this most effectively are crime shows and soap
operas. These genres work because the character types are fairly
inter-changeable and there are plausible reasons for people to pup up
somewhere else.

Detectives working on a crime in New York might find a clue that leads
them into another jurisdiction.

In soap land, a cosmetics mogul from Genoa City might liaise with
fashion pack in LA (see current The Bold and the Beautiful storyline
featuring Ashley Abbott from The Young and the Restless or previous
appearances on both shows by Lauren Fenmore), which is believable.

Sometimes a crossover appearance is merely a lame promotional tool,
leveraging the appeal of one show to boost a flagging stablemate (see
Ally McBeal and the Practice). Sometimes it's a natural fit (The
Bionic Woman meets The Six Million Dollar Man).

There are in-jokes by producers (the song by Driveshaft in Lost
apparently plays in the background of an episode of Alias, another
show created by J.J. Abrams).

Then you've got your spin-offs, which occasionally match their
forebears (Frasier) but frequently detract from the show that spawned
them (hello Joey).

So this preview of Las Vegas / Crossing Jordan -- in which Danny and
Delinda (Las Vegas' Josh Duhamel and Molly Sims) visit Boston for a
romantic break that includes boxing and murder -- was going to note
how characters can flounder or flourish outside their natural TV
habitat.

Blonde stunner, Delinda, for example, reveals an aptitude for ionic
spectrometry and a strong stomach. Danny, on the other hand, gets into
a beefcake-off with Woddy (Jerry O'Connell).

But none of that matters -- thanks to Tommy Westphall.

He was not a pit boss or a mortician on screen or a director behind
the scenes, but it turns out he is the lord and master of these shows
and hundreds of others.

He was an autistic kid, played by Chad Allen, who appeared in the last
episode of 1980s hospital drama St Elsewhere. In the final frames he
shook a snow dome with a hospital inside, St Eliguis where the soap
was set, implying that the entire series had been a figment of his
imagination.

That's not the end of it because of crossover between St Elsewhere and
other shows. If St Elsewhere doesn't exist, neither can its co-created
Homicide: Life on the Streets. If that latter doesn't exist, there
goes the entire Law & Order franchise. And Chicago Hope and ER and down
the line X Files and therefore The Simpsons.

The theory goes that any show tracing back to St Elsewhere exists only
in the fictional sphere of Tommy's mind. Somebody has plotted out all
among us) and it goes right back to 1951's I Love Lucy and forward to
today, 282 shows in all, including Crossing Jordan and Las Vegas. So
these two shows don't really exist. And thank God for that because
they are awful.

END OF ARTICLE