10 Things Television Fans Found Too Distracting
3. Actor Swaps
It's easy to fall in love with a character when a talented actor plays them, and the thought of replacing them with someone else isn't one most fans would like to entertain. Creating a character is more than just reading lines off a script, and the best actors build their roles from the ground up.
Unfortunately, it's not always possible to keep an actor in a role they helped define, and when life steps in and mucks things up, the studio has to do something about it. Typically, actors leave a TV show when they have a waning interest in playing the character, if the actor attends college or passes away.
It's a sad reality that our favorite actors don't live forever, but it happens. The studio can choose to do one of two things: replace the actor with someone who looks a bit like the original or retire the character. When Roseanne Barr torpedoed her show in 2018, she was killed off, but not all series do that.
Another example from Roseanne stems from the character of Becky Connor, who was played by Lecy Goranson for the first four seasons. After that, Goranson went to college and was replaced by Sarah Chalke. It was impossible not to notice, and while they played it for laughs, it was nonetheless distracting.