MIRROR TOOBWORLD

Earth Prime-Time is the main TV Universe, created by the gestalt of many TV shows combined (but not all of them.)   I don't mean to insult Team Toobworld by re-stating the O'Bvious, but Toobworld Central gets new visitors every day.....

So if Toobworld is an alternate reality created by the spark of Mankind's creative output in the medium from the Trueniverse, does the same apply to the TV shows from Toobworld itself? 

There have always been fictional TV shows within TV shows; it's not something that began once the kids who grew up watching TV starting creating TV shows of their own. 

 Here's a Super Six List of such shows:

1. 'Jed Clayton, U.S. Marshall' ('The Hero')
2. 'Zombo' ('The Munsters')
3. 'Inspector Spacetime' ('Community')
4. 'Exposé' ('Lost')
5. 'F.Y.I.' ('Murphy Brown')
6. 'The Alan Brady Show' ('The Dick Van Dyke Show') and 'Those Who Care' ('The New Dick Van Dyke Show')

[Toobworld Note: I know that adds up to seven.  I always cheat on the Super Six List.....]

To avoid the massive Zonks (discrepancies for our newbies) caused when TV shows mention other real TV shows which should be sharing the same TV dimension, our umbrella splainin is that TV shows are made about those characters. Paraphrasing Andy Warhol: in the future, everybody will have their own TV show. (And YouTube and other outlets may be bringing that about here on Earth Prime!)

Here's another Super Six List - TV characters - and one "location"! - who have had TV shows made about them:

1. 'The Twilight Zone' (mentioned on 'Night Court' among many other shows)
2. 'Star Trek' ('The Wonder Years', 'The Big Bang Theory', 'Nurses', many others)
3. 'Gilligan's Island' ('Cheers', many others - 'Alf' even dreamed about it!)
4. 'Doctor Who' ('Freaks & Geeks', 'Supernova')
5. 'Batman' ('Leverage', 'General Hospital', 'Alcatraz', 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent')
6. 'Murphy Brown' & 'Jerry' ('Seinfeld' for both; 'New Girl' and 'Dharma & Greg' individually, respectively)

Sidenote: Some of those pop culture references to other shows are not always from TV shows made about those characters. 'Alf' and 'Gilligan's Island' could also stem from trending news stories; 'Starsky & Hutch' references could be due to the movie based on the real-life cops.

So if the alternate TV dimension of Toobworld has its own alternate TV dimension, then all of those fictional characters and so many more have doppelgangers on this "Mirror Toobworld".

And this isn't just speculation - our main source of information about Mirror Toobworld comes from a sitcom called 'Hi Honey, I'm Home'. 

The premise established that the characters seen on the TV screens in Toobworld were alive in their own dimension. And unlike Toobworldlings with Earth Prime-Time, those characters from Mirror Toobworld could cross through the dimensional vortex and be "real" in Toobworld.

'Hi Honey, I'm Home' focused on the Nielsen Family who were living in a Jersey suburb as part of the Sitcom Relocation Program. (The SRP gave cancelled TV characters a place to live until their shows could return to the airwaves... which was rare.)

Their sitcom was an original fiction unique to Toobworld, but they were often visited by TV characters based on TV characters created in Earth Prime-Time. (The Nielsen neighbors were "First Generational Fictional", like the TV characters we watch. Mirror Toobworldlings are "second generation fictional".)

Among those Mirror Toobworld characters visiting the original Toobworld were June Cleaver, Mr. Mooney, Gomer Pyle, Grampa of the Munster Family, the always loverly Georgette Franklin Baxter, Alice Kramden and Trixie Norton, and the Bradys' maid Alice Nielsen. (If I remember correctly, she was related to the family.)

That series came out in 1992. But five years earlier, an episode of 'Amazing Stories' also featured visitors from Mirror Toobworld. A hen-pecked, down-trodden schlub named Walter Poindexter somehow got hold of the devices needed to cause these video transfers to arrive on Earth Prime-Time, most of them replacing members of his own family. Among these doppelgangers were Arnold Jackson Drummond, Templeton "Face" Peck, the Incredible Hulk, and June Cleaver again.

There were also a lot of appearances by the televersions of real-life celebrities who were now seen as second-generation fictional characters - among them, Jim Lange, Richard Simmons, and Ed McMahon. We could use these mirror televersions to splain away some League of Themselves member whose appearance in a main Toobworld storyline just doesn't feel right, as if he or she was an evil twin. (A good case in point? Bo Derek as herself on 'Chuck'.)

[Sarah saves Chuck and Morgan by knocking out Bo Derek when she turns out to be an evil agent.]
Sarah: Sorry I had to do that to your girlfriend.
Chuck: Oh, you didn't hit her in the face, did ya? I'm kidding! I'm kidding. But it is Bo Derek.

And even that intrusion into the main Toobworld by Mirror Toobworlders wasn't the first time it happened!

Intrepid crossoverist Matt Hickman, of the Crossovers Forum on Facebook, brought the following examples to my attention (as well as to the rest of our group):

These happened back in 1980 and are probably equivalent to Three Mile Island as a threat to the safety of Toobworld. It's apparent that there was no government oversight on these crossovers from Mirror Toobworld to Earth Prime-Time. These were not long-cancelled characters needing a place to go into hiding until their shows were brought back from the "dead".  These were characters currently appearing on the networks' airwaves and were based on "real-life" citizens of Earth Prime-Time.  

And they made themselves visible to the "real" humans and interacted with them.  Who knows what may have happened had the characters who had crossed over had been psychopathic killers or rampaging monsters!  What if the Телевизионные русские - the Tele-Ruskies - figured out how to control this version of "sliding" and used it to target specific high security locations in the United States, by creating a fictional super-spy or assassin?  (Remember the Cold War was entering its final, darkest phase in the real world and this would be reflected in Toobworld as well.)

I don't know if TV characters from the main Toobworld could make the return trip into a TV Land of their own making.  But I have seen Toobworlders get transported into a badly dubbed martial arts movie in the Cineverse, simply by a bartender banging a bottle of light beer on top of the bar's TV set.  (I think this is what happened when we saw the Eleventh Incarnation of the Doctor with Laurel and Hardy.  He wasn't in the actual movie; he was just appearing - through Rory's tablet - in the Mirror Cineverse.  Whether he got into there via a bottle of light beer, I have no clue......)

So that's my splainin for those CBS promos - at least as far as the Toobworld Dynamic is concerned. I would not be surprised if some other televisiologist comes up with a theory that better serves their own alternate universe.....

BCnU!