she is annoying as heck
I understand why she was on the show; Rudy was grown up and they needed to add a new cute kid to the show
Rudy never annoyed me but Olivia is just grating
does anyone like her?
I thought this was gonna be a zombie from 1989.
Are you watching that in your time machine, after watching Star Wars in laserdisc?
I have watched it over the years on TVLand and Nick @ Nite when it was on
just because it’s 2014 doesn’t mean it’s impossible to watch older shows and have opinions on them
Wait, it’s possible to watch older shows? How is that? Are you some sort of wizard?
I was just thinking about her last night partially because me daughter’s name is Olivia and I don’t think she has ever seen the Cosby Show. I thought Olivia the character was adorable and light years more entertaining than the vast majority of other sitcom child add-in’s. I don’t know where you are getting annoying from.
I love the bit where Cliff says he wants a Maserati and Olivia interprets it as a Mr. Ragi. Precious and priceless.
In my opinion, the problem with Olivia was that the character was artificial and forced. The Cosby kids’ characters developed and grew over time influenced partly from the way they were written, but also based on the actors performances and the audience’s reactions. So Rudy’s character developed organically, at least pseudo-organically. But when they brought in Olivia, they tried to instantly create a “Rudy II”* out of whole cloth. It would have been better to ease her in to the family and allow her character to develop in a more natural fashion.
*Try saying that 5 times fast.
Rudy was supposed to be a boy, but Keisha Knight-Pulliam’s personality just blew Cosby and everyone else away. Olivia always seemed a bit forced to me. “Central Casting, send over a cute 4 year old with a lot of personality!”
Cite? Bill and Camille Cosby had two daughters, a son (may he rest in peace), and then two daughters. They were roughly the ages the Huxtable children were shown to be.
Why would he base the Huxtable family on his own family in every detail except that one?
To the OP: Every sane person hates Olivia. Just a little bit less than they hate Lisa Bonet, and just a little bit more than that twerp the oldest daughter married.
Some of the funnier moments, I thought, were outtakes of Cosby and Knight-Pulliam, with my personal favourite being here, after Knight-Pulliam fumbles with a tea set.
By the time Symoné was cast, I’d pretty much lost interest in the show.
Lisa Bonet had a severe case of the hots. Here character was bad, but i couldn’t care less. Time has not been her friend, however.
Originally there were only four Huxtable kids. In the first episode his wife says something like “why did we have 4 children” and he answered “because we did not want 5”.
Bill decided they should have an older child who had been successfully raised, so they added Sondra.
ETA: also a cite for Rudy was originally supposed to be a boy.
Theo and Rudy were the only Huxtable kids worth being on the show. They had the best storylines and laughs. The two eldest daughter’s plots always revolved around how their philosophies annoyed and plagued and worried Cliff, and that got old fast - plus it always smacked of the sort of privilege that was fleetingly rare for black youth at the time.
My dispute with Bonet (notice I didn’t refer to her character above, but her) is that she had a severe case of the “I don’t care if you handed me a career and my own goddamn TV show on a silver platter, Bill, I’m perfectly happy flushing it down the toilet.” Ingratitude is ugly on everyone.
Known, but you can never count pilot oddness against the rest of the show. 
And that, in short, is why one asks for a cite instead of calling bullshit. Ignorance fought.
But time has been very, very good toKeshia Knight-Pulliam.
You left out one, assuming “the two eldest” refers to Sondra and Denise.
I thought Vanessa had some funny moments, like when she got drunk at a sleepover and that time when she was supposed to be at a sleepover but they were really sneaking off to a concert (and everything that could go wrong did).
As for Olivia, she was there for one reason, to let the Cos interact with a little kid, since that was some of his favorite material. Rudy got to old for that, and Sondra’s kids were still babies, so it was either age them or bring in a Cousin Oliver-ia. When dealing with him, she wasn’t too bad, but when her plots involved most any other character instead of Cliff she got really annoying.
Still, the real garbage came in the last two seasons when the brought in “cousin” Pam. Talk about a stupid pointless addition.
I think a lot of people, me included, would argue that she was a Cousin Oliver-ia.
I didn’t grow up a privileged kid, but I can assure you that privileged black kids weren’t so vanishingly rare that it was unbelievable to see one portrayed. I knew tons of them and oohed and aahed over their big houses and backyard pools.
I hated Olivia and loved Rudy. I HATED Rudy when she got bigger though. She was gold as a little kid. Theo and Vanessa was GOLD as young kids and INSUFFERABLE as big kids. Denise was gold all the way through, as was Claire and Cosby. The grandparents were awful. The oldest daughter was useless but her husband had his moments. Cousin Pam was the Apocalypse.
Her hotness has been passed down to her daughter, Zoe Kravitz.