Man, here I thought salvaging good characters from a cancelled show and putting them into a new one was a rare happening. I thought it only happened between Civil Wars and L.A. Law and then between Homicide and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Boy was I wrong. They just keep popping up. Here's another one.

   Second Chances was a primetime soap that was only on for a very short time and didn't really go anywhere. Normally I'd slam it for being a bad show but I don't have the heart and don't really know that it necessarily was. See what happened in this case was that a California earthquake totaled the show's sets! I mean, you gotta have pity on the show for that. And then a couple members of the cast got pregnant so that if they took the time and got everything back up and running they would be jumping back in having to explain the pregnancies and... bah! It was just a mess and so the producers decided to chuck the whole deal.

   But then they started a new primetime soap by the name of Hotel Malibu set in, duh, a hotel. It was decided to save a couple of characters from Second Chances and give them a second chance in this new show. Why would they do that? Well for the same reason that Munch was moved from Homicide to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, why Eli and his secretary survived Civil Wars to go on to L.A. Law: they had solid actors whose characters were a shame to waste. Don't believe me? You will. You see the characters saved were a young Mexican girl and her father named Salvador and Melinda Lopez. Melinda was played by a certain not yet famous actress named Jennifer Lopez! See! I told you! I'm sure the producers saw the star potential in Jennifer and realized they would be fools to just let her go when Second Chances died. Unfortunately Hotel Malibu didn't last too long and it didn't have any earthquakes to point the finger at.

   Now again, I guess technically this is a spin off of sorts. One show is canned and some of its characters appear on a new show. But it's not like the characters in question were given the lead roles in their own new show called The Lopez Family. They were just pushed into the new show's ensemble with everyone else. Warren Coolidge from The White Shadow was an orderly on St. Elsewhere but I'd hardly call St. Elsewhere a spin off. So lets just say the shows are connected and leave it at that.

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