This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
(Red Shoe added to the main entry:) The value-neutral version of Dropped a Bridge on Him.
Looney Toons: Actually, no, not the way I've learned it. First, it's a meta-level decision, not a story-level implementation. And second, it's usually done with malice by the producers, who want to punish an actor for jumping ship by making it (theoretically) impossible for the actor to come back and resume the role. From another angle: Dropped a Bridge on Him is one way of implementing a McLeaned, not a different version of it.
Red Shoe: Okay. I just threw it in because my kneejerk reaction was "Wait, isn't this the same thing as Dropped a Bridge on Him."
Looney Toons: <sigh> I just went back and reread Dropped a Bridge on Him. Although the distinction I'm making does exist, in retrospect I think that the two entries overlap sufficiently that this one could probably be adequately covered by a note there to the effect of "Within the TV industry, this is called being 'McLeaned'" with a bit of explanation why.
Rosybloom: Ah, McLean Stevenson. Such a sad story. The failed lawsuit against Mcdonalds. The anonymous, drunken, "POTTER SUCKS!" phonecalls to the MASH set. It's also a little known fact that the real reason he left was being fired after killing and devouring three successive actresses who played Nurse Abel.
Gus: One suspects Rosybloom has come down with a mild case of hyperbole. McLean Stevenson committed no atrocities — beyond Hello, Larry — that I am aware of.
Scifantasy: Also, I don't think it was malice that got him killed off. If it was Rogers, maybe; he's on record saying that he didn't like being a second fiddle to Alan Alda. But I think they killed Henry Blake to remind everybody that this really is a war, you know...
Looney Toons: Hey, hey, hey, Hello, Larry had Kim Richards
— how could you not love it? (slides quietly into fond reminiscences of Nanny And The Professor, Sunday night with Walt Disney, Escape To Witch Mountain and Tuff Turf... No, wait, I never saw Tuff Turf...)
Looney Toons: Seth, when you added
to the Charmed entry, did you mean how she was one of the reasons Doherty got canned?
Seth: According to every magazine and interview of the time yes. The two hated each other, Milano pressured the producers and Prue got killed off because Milano was seen as a more valuable asset.
//Later: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=milano+doherty&spell=1
The first few google hits on Doherty Milano meantion the feud.
BT The P: We knew that part, I think he was just saying that "did the leaning" doesn't make much sense in context. Or at all, really. It's kind of clever, but maybe too clever to be immediately understood.
Seth: Then if they go to the talk page unsure they see this text and understand.
BT The P: However, the idea is that the entry, when it is complete, will be able to stand quite well if this page did not exist. That's why it's here. Wikis are always in flux, but we'd like to think that it will eventually serve as a resource on its own merits, and even one as informal as this shouldn't require a genuinely interested outside party to seek explanations for the entries on the discussion pages.
seth: I thought it made sense but if you feel strongly enough about it wipe that line.
Looney Toons: Not wipe, revise. I should have said that I found it unclear what meaning you intended, and wanted to clarify it in the correct direction.
Seth: I still think the idea of pointing out the producer responsible for a Mc Lean and saying that they were leaning the other person out is pretty cute.
- In the early 1980's, the rights to a film adaptation of Thunderball, and the characters of Blofeld and SPECTRE, were owned not by EON Productions (producer of the other James Bond movie series) but by Kevin McClory. This may explain why The Teaser of EON's For Your Eyes Only has James Bond dropping a bald man in a wheelchair into a smokestack. However, this did not prevent McClory from using Blofeld in his remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again.
This seems more like a Take That! than anything directly related to this trope.
- As this editor recalls, Hayes himself did not quit, the Church of Scientology quit for him. To some fans, the episode is yet another jab at Scientology while still maintaining the respect for Hayes that he had for the show.
Conversation In The Main Page. And I'd disagree; considering what happens to him, there seems to be some personal bile.
Po8: Excised "Kid-friendly McLeaning: Whenever a main performer left Power Rangers, his/her character was sent to a peace conference." This is Put on a Bus rather than McLeaning, and is fully described there.
- Of course, this may result in a Long Bus Trip. Peace conferences seem to last a LONG time in the Power Rangers universe. But it's not really a Mc Leaning in any case. McLeaned, unless I'm mistaken, means the creators of a show reacting to an actor's departure by killing off their character ... sometimes in a Dropped a Bridge on Him manner (meaning it's awkward, anticlimactic, mean-spirited, or all or some of the above).
