 Tork said in DVD commentary that everyone had developed such difficult personalities that the big-name stars invited as guests on the show invariably left the experience "hating everybody".Screen Gems and NBC went ahead with the existing format anyway, commissioning "Monkees" writers Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso to create a straight-comedy, no-music half-hour in the "Monkees" mold; a pilot episode was filmed with the then-popular nightclub act the Pickle Brothers.The pilot had the same energy and pace of "The Monkees", but never became a series.