By that time the show had become such a self-indulgent ego trip for Bill Cosby that it was barely watchable. As for the grandparents, I never thought the actors had any chemistry at all: she was too old and he was too gay.
My least favorite reoccurring character on Scooby Doo was Scrappy Doo. I could buy the stoner kid hanging out with the pimp and his dumb girlfriend and the geeky lesbian. I could buy the talking dog. I could even buy all the aliens and the ghosts and the Harlem Globe Trotters. But Scrappy Doo was just too much.
That’s kind of like how Olivia was for me.
I liked Rudy until puberty. She was just a couple of years younger than me, so when her awkwardness started showing, I was reminded of my own condition. Plus, her hijinks as an older kid just couldn’t compare to the juicer incident with Peter.
I didn’t care for Sondra. It was hard to accept her as belonging to the family. Too “goody-goody”, with no personality. The only rebellious thing she did was decide not to go to law school so she and Alvin could open up the wilderness store. Oh yeah, and there was the time she was sick and she thought Claire had kidnapped the babies or some nonsense like that. I couldn’t relate to that.
I loved Denise. I liked that she wore a different hairstyle every episode. I liked that she went to Hillman, which spun off one of my favorite TV shows. I love the episode where Cliff and Claire sit the kids down and let them know that if they ever have a problem, they should talk to them about it. And then Denise tells them she spent the night with a boy and goes, “Are you annnngry?” According to the IMDB she ad-libbed this part. I always laugh when Claire says, “No, I’m not angry. I’m MAD!” My memory then has Claire chasing Denise up the stairs with a high-heel shoe in hand, but I’m pretty sure this is me confusing TV with incidents from my own childhood.
I liked Vanessa until she went off to college. Then she hooked up with that old dude and became weird. But she definitely had some funny moments and always inspired the best tirades from Claire. She always struck me as being the most intelligent but the least street smart of all the kids.
Theo was okay. I liked him best when he was friends with Cockroach.
Cousin Pam was horrible. But it wasn’t Erica Alexander’s fault. She was just as much of victim as anyone else.
Whoever said Olivia was forced and Rudy wasn’t is spot on.
I always liked Denise. I thought Bonet and Cosby had good chemistry together, and she played the role of “daughter who means well but just can’t ever seem to get her shit together” very well.
Besides Olivia, my least favorite characters were Sondra and Elvin. Elvin deserved to be punched hard.