NBC's The Golden Girls, Empty Nest and Nurses were all made by the same production company and all aired on the same night. Since the same folks made all three shows they also made them all part of the same joint reality. The folks on Empty Nest lived next door to the Golden Girls and Empty Nest's Dr. Harry Weston worked at the same hospital that appeared on Nurses. Having these shows all connected enabled NBC to do big event nights where all three shows shared some common plot point (a hurricane for example) and had characters crossing over between the shows.

   A few year later ABC decide they wanted to try the same thing with one of their nights of programming and had four of their shows crossover in a big Las Vegas story. The Drew Carey Show, Coach, Grace Under Fire and Ellen all had episodes set in Vegas with characters moving between the shows. The only thing was that in ABC's case there was no previously established link between the shows which were all made by different producers. The shows had this crossover event forced on them against their will, pissing off stars and producers. It was a cynical ratings stunt the network made happen unlike the NBC events which were just a natural extension of their shows already being connected.

   That brings us to CBS's entry in this sort of programming. CBS's stunt nights fall somewhere in the middle. Everybody Loves Raymond, Becker, King Of Queens and Cosby were not all connected to start with like the NBC shows (although there were some ties between Everybody Loves Raymond and King Of Queens) but when asked to crossover with each other they seemed to do so happily. And unlike ABC's trying to make a forced situation look like a happy voluntary thing, CBS scores points for copping to exactly what it was doing by titling their first crossover night Shameless Crossover Monday.

   Now Becker was not a fully up and running show in time for the first Shameless Crossover Monday but by the next one it was. Becker starred Ted Danson as the prickly Doctor Becker. On the King Of Queens episode Where's Poppa, The King Of Queens' Doug Heffernan ended up getting smacked in the head with a baseball and going to see Doctor Becker to have it looked at. Later that night, Doug also showed up on that night's episode of Becker.

   As a closing note, I have been informed that this is also another case where a shared reality is contradicted in another episode. In another episode of The King Of Queens Doug is acting as a limo driver for the president of CBS. In the course of driving him around Doug ends up spotting someone famous and basically says, "Hey! Isn't that the guy from Becker?" Hey, Doug, didn't becker treat your injury? Didn't you sit in his office? If he's a TV guy, how can that be? Crossover continuity can get a bit muddy I'm afriad.

Other Becker Crossover Links
Becker and Cosby

Other King Of Queens Crossover Links
The King Of Queens and Cosby
The King Of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond

Click here to return to main Crossover List

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