I know the show has been off the air for a while now, but this always bugged me, and I was reminded of it when watching reruns of the earlier episodes lately.

During the first half of the show's run, Connie, aka Kahn Jr, was built up to be a fairly prominent character--one of Bobby's best friends and on-again off-again next door crush. In fact, some of the very best episodes of the series featured her. "Aisle 8a", "The Bluegrass is always Greener", and the one with the Buddhist monks.

But then she completely disappeared for more than five years. We see her parents often, many of Bobby's other friends and love interests--but not her. She's never even seen. She was very briefly in the very last episode, in a non-speaking cameo, and that seemed to have been done just for nostalgic completeness.

So why was she written off the series for the last half of its run? Was there some dispute with the voice actress? Did one or more writers just hate her for some reason? I couldn't find anything on Google. Does anyone know?