Did anyone really like The Cosby Show?

Cafe Society
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This seems to be a popular shtick lately – there was another thread wondering oh-so-curiously, “did anyone really think E.T. was a good movie?” These OPs must be fairly bursting with pride thanks to their amazingly discriminating, anti-establishment, anti-popular culture tastes!

Hell yes I liked and still like The Cosby Show, especially the first four years. Cliff and Claire were a smart, loving and sexy couple, and the kids weren’t wisecracking little faux adults. They had fairly normal and distinct, albeit idealized, personalities. Almost everything involving Theo in the first few years was gold. Theo’s earring, Denise’s attempt to make Theo a Gordon Gartrell shirt, the Welcome to Real Life game (especially Claire’s hilarious “Welcome to furniture city!” lines), Cliff’s unexpected response to Theo’s “I just want you to love me the way I am!” '80s sitcom speech (“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard!”), his terror of Mrs. Westlake… man, Theo got the best episodes, though Vanessa had some great stuff too. Rudy (Keisha Knight Pulliam) was a believable (and absolutely adorable) child, without the affectation or smugness of Olivia (Raven-Simone) – whose introduction pretty much ruined the show for me.

Cosby, during the early years, was absolutely not a big mugging ham; he was mostly believably and hilariously reactive to the kids, which was what he became famous for. But it was Phylicia Rashad as Claire who rocked my world. She was funny, smooth, sexy, smart, and unlike most sitcom wives/mothers she wasn’t just there to react to the standup comedian husband’s gags. As mentioned earlier in the thread, when Claire went off on one of her furious rants she was on fire. You did not want to piss that woman off!

Sure, like most longrunning shows (including Seinfeld – which I love too), eventually the show became tired and repeated itself, but for its first four years it was revelatory and, as has been said, saved both NBC in particular and the sitcom form in general. Was its humor sharp, incisive, ironic, or raunchy, the way we expect every post '90s sitcom to be? No. But there’s nothing wrong with a family comedy that’s gentle, comfortable, wry, and relatable.

I strongly disagree with the notion that comedy is necessarily bound to its era or generation. Sure, certain topical jokes can be dated, especially if they’re just thrown in to get a laugh of recognition out of the audience (c.f. many Saturday Night Live sketches), but if you know the context, funny is funny. Humor can survive trends. My eleven-year-old niece adores I Love Lucy as well as the Marx Bros. and Hepburn/Tracy comedies – just as I did when I was a kid in the seventies, and that stuff was decades old even then. Frankly I feel sorry for people who can’t find the funny in a variety of different styles and eras. You’re missing out.

Odd, I’ve seen every episode from the first four years and have no memory of this whatsoever. Theo was a good kid in general – all of them were – but the Huxtable kids definitely did some whining and neglecting about chores. I wonder if your memory’s faulty and the request was something negligible (like “Theo, put the milk away”) or, if it was really the onerous chore you describe, he’d’ve agreed because he felt guilty about some screwup and was hoping to hide it or butter up his mom.

Plus, see above re: Claire’s temper. Theo wouldn’t have thrown something 'cause she’d probably have thrown it right back!

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Not necessarily. Some of us weren’t that stupid.

We’d have a bunch of guys coming over on Friday. Everyone was showing up at 7:30 or so. Brian isn’t there, yet.

8:00PM. 8:30PM. 9:00PM. No Brian.

Usually about 10ish, Brian would roll in. Why was he so late? Because he got into a huge argument with his mother about doing something that would have taken fifteen minutes to do. Sometimes it was something like changing the cat box, which takes, what, three minutes?

Not all of us were that stupid.

-Joe

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Bwahahaha - “Welcome to Furniture City!”

What did Cliff say to “I just want you to love me the way I am”?

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I thought The Cosby Show was hilarious, at least for the first few years; it was one of the few shows my sister and I could agree on. Also, Phylicia Rashad was ridiculously hot back back then.

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The line I put in parentheses – “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard!”

That was in the pilot. The exchange occured because Theo was getting lousy grades and then stood up to his father telling him how much pressure he felt because his dad’s a doctor and his mom’s a lawyer and parents should love their kids no matter what, etc. etc. etc. The great thing about this is that the live audience – clearly conditioned by Sitcom Conventions 101 – reacted exactly as if we were supposed to admire Theo’s speech: with applause and some “awwws.” And then Cliff slams Theo with “That’s the dumbest thing…” bit and the surprised crowd adored that even more.

46

Eh, this has been going on forever.

The jackasses that hate every summer movie that doesn’t star Johnny Depp.

The morons who tell everyone they know that “No one I know owns a Celine Dion CD, therefore she hasn’t sold any CDs!”

The idiots that think the Wii isn’t very popular and the only reason it’s selling so much is because Nintendo isn’t making enough.

It’s hard to be the coolest, most pretentious asshole in Hipsterville.

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Sure seems easy to be in the running, though.

-Joe

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As I remember the window-washing incident, Claire was punishing Theo for injuring Rudy by playing a reckless wrestling game, and then lying about it. Given the fact that Rudy was maybe 6 years old, Theo about 15, and Claire’s temper, I’d say that Theo’s muted reaction stemmed from his relief that she was biting his head off.

49

It was OK but doesn’t hold up well over time. It got way too preachy which is never a good thing.

Also Cosby was (and is) consistantly funny but no one else really was unless they were playing off him. The show was somewhat different as Cosby and his wife were not stooges to the kids. This I believe made the show a hit. Too often in sitcoms the parents have an IQ level of about 50 and come off as ridiculous.

Part of the appeal was an affluent black family, but that seemed to lose the appeal as the show went on. While Cliff was still funny, the show declined as the kids grew up and none of them really amounted to anything. Having two black people struggle and wind up as a doctor and lawyer and raise a bunch of brats that can’t amount to anything is not funny, especially as you look back

50

That probably has to do with the first few seasons being rooted in Cosby’s standup routines, as mentioned by Loach. I believe the choreographed routines–which I hated–were added when Coz started running out of material.

51

The Cosby Show was great in it’s day. It was on top of the ratings for years. I just don’t think it holds up as well as shows like Seinfeld or Dick Van Dyke.

Lisa Bonet really got on my nerves.

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I loved that because I think it signaled the beginning of the end of that “very special episode” era in sitcoms. The Facts of Life, Diff’rent Strokes, and that ilk would have ended that scene with a hug and maybe a few tears. Blech. Cliff was right! And he wasn’t afraid to say so…not to Theo, and not to the audience. Very cool.

I recently saw a later episode where Theo is in college, and he’s telling his parents about how much pressure it is to be in the family, with dad being a doctor & mom a lawyer. Claire says something like “we never say, be a doctor, be lawyer, we say go to school & be whatever you want.” Theo says, “see what I mean? Go to school. Become something. That’s a lot of pressure!” I like that because it shows the continuity of the characters, even as they matured.

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Re: Theo and school

Later in the series, as I recall, they did a sort of double-fake on that idea, when Theo was diagnosed as dyslexic. If I recall aright, this was to mirror the real-life travails of Cosby’s son Enniis. As the family is discussing this, Vanessa points out that many, if not all, the times Theo was grounded in middle and high school for doing poorly academically were not his fault, and wondered aloud if their father their doctor felt guilty.

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With regards to the fact that the kids grew up to do a whole lot of nothing - isn’t that the way it is? The parents work hard to get where they are, and the kids grow up with money (well, "We (the parents) have money. You have nothing.) and don’t have to work as hard at it, so they, like, start a wilderness camp, or go to grad school forever, or what have you.

–Zsofia, daughter of a self-made millionare, currently a public librarian.

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I don’t think that’s even a fair criticism of the show. Here’s what I recall of the five Huxtable kids:

Sondra: Goes to Princeton, graduates, & marries. Lives in poverty for a while after marriage because she and her husband are idealistic. Has twins, decides this is stupid, and accepts help to move into a non-squalid apartment while her husband goes to medical school. She may or may not have gone to law school–I don’t recall–but certainly she was en route to a comfortable middle-class life.

Denise: Okay, she’s the family fuckwit–dropped out of college after her freshman year and drifted for quite a while. But she eventually marries a career officer in the navy and settles down. Solidly middle-class.

Theo: Struggles through high school because of his learning disability; gets diagnosed in college, learns how to deal with it, and graduates with a degree in education. Has at least one responsible, “real” job in college and heads to grad school.

Vanessa: Annoys her parents by nearly marrying an older man while in college, but breaks up with him and never seems in danger of dropping out. Still incollege when series ends. Inconclusive.

Rudy: Still in middle or high school when series ends. inconclusive.

Olivia: mysteriously never murdered though there were thousands of reasons to.

I can’t see that the Huxtables raised losers.

56

If I remember correctly, they were playing the “circus game” or “trapeze game” or something like that. After Rudy was hurt, it came out that Theo had been balancing her on his feet and was trying to launch her through the air or something. It was just the sort of absolutely idiotic thing I could see an older brother doing to a younger sibling and Claire’s reaction to finding out how the injury happened was fabulous.

I was pretty young when the show was on, but watched the reruns for years and love to occasionally return to the early seasons. The first and second were likely my favorites.

57

Starting from when my baby sister was 5, and probably lasting till she was 10, our mother typically delegated her care & feeding to me. There were several occasions when Baby Sis came in the house, crying because of something idiotic I’d done. But as she always wanted to go out and play some more with me afterwards, Mother let me off with a lecture, spanking, another lecture, grounding, and yet another lecture.

(Though more than a few times I could see her grimly considering a more lethal response, possibly involving firearms.)

58

There was one reason and one reason only that I didn’t watch The Cosby Show. Claire Huxtable fucking LOVED punishing her children. I mean, you could see it was what she lived for. Don’t believe me? Think of the following two facial expressions for the following two characters:

  1. Claire Huxtable denigrating and humiliating her children.
  2. Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) from Sex & The City talking about sex.

In both cases, each looks sublimely happy.

59

I liked Cosby and never liked Seinfeld. Cosby did get rather preachy and kind of soft over time, but it was generally funny and the first few seasons were great. It hasn’t aged well visually, but that’s a style thing. (Think Vanessa’s hair)

Seinfeld was always annoying to me and just not funny. I’ll give them credit for one thing though. If the character of George was intended to evoke within viewers the desire to run him down and improve the species, they succeeded remarkably. An utterly loathsome character. Kudos to Jason Alexander for that.

60

I had a mad crush on Lisa Bonet. I didn’t have to watch the Cosby Show after Angel Heart came out on video tape.

/me goes to google images, safe search OFF for the memories.