TV: The case of the missing actress

As you may or may not know (well, you'd know if you'd read my article at forcesofgood.com), the original, unaired pilot episode of Joey had a different actress in the role of Joey's neighbor/landlady. The producers replaced her and reshot her scenes before the pilot debuted.

Last night, NBC repeated that pilot episode. And the new actress (Andrea Anders is her name) was MIA. The two scenes in which she had appeared (one toward the beginning, in which she first meets Joey, and one at the end, where she reveals to Joey that she's married) were cut completely out of the show.

Man, that does not bode well for her future with the show.

This mysterious retooling of an already aired show is right up there with Spin City. Do you remember in the first season, Michael J. Fox had a live-in girlfriend, played by Carla Gugino? Gugino was abruptly written out of the show (midway through that first season, if I'm not mistaken). ABC later reran one of the episodes she had been in -- only she wasn't in it anymore. Not only had her scenes been cut, the other cast members actually filmed additional, brand-new scenes to fill up the missing time. They made her an unperson.

I wonder if this new version of the Joey pilot is the first subtle step towards erasing Anders from existence, too.