"I wish I'd had the internet back when [tv show] was on the air..."

We have so many weekly threads about tv shows, both here at the SDMB and on other message boards all over the internet. We have wikipedia and online episode guides and the imdb. We have so many more resources to make watching TV more fun these days than we used to, with the internet.

What shows do you wish you could have had these things for, back in the days before the internet existed (or before it was as widely used/accessible)?

I wish I’d had access to the kind of things we have today back when I was watching Twin Peaks when it was originally on, for example.

That’s exactly the show I thought of when I saw the title!

Imagine the discussion at the first sight of the Dancing Dwarf!

Quantum Leap. All the music questions alone would have occupied a pretty busy thread each week.

“What was that playing on the radio when the guy broke down the door?” etc.

Oh good one!

On the other hand, it did get us out of the house. My wife and I were members of a Twin Peaks discussion group that met at an independent book shop that got together every week to discuss what the fuck we just saw.

We can do that on the Net, but gestures and incredulous expressions on faces add so much.

“Dink the Little Dinosaur.” A kiddie Saturday morning cartoon on CBS when I was a kid.

For the sole reason that, while I wasn’t really a fan, I could not remember the name of a pitiful little amphibian-thing that showed up in one episode—or, more accurately, couldn’t quite remember it’s name. Drove me nuts. For a long time.

P.S.: It turns out it was “Dippo.” I knew it started with a “D.”

Some of the most active discussions I’ve read were on usenet’s tv groups. I used to follow the Star Trek TNG and Babylon 5 groups in the early 1990’s.

I would have enjoyed discussing Tracey Ullman Show and the Simpsons when it first started in 1987.

The early seasons of X-files were pre-internet for most people, myself included. It would have been nice to have it on a larger level than it existed then. Bulletin Boards was all I had back then.

ST:TNG

Maybe some of you had internet when this was first run, but I didn’t. Had to join the Nitpickers Guild via snail mail.
Twins Peaks and Quantum Leap, too. Good calls, above.

Night Stalker

Dark Shadows

Planet of the Apes (TV series)

Battle of the Network T&As, I mean, All Stars

Dark Shadows.
Any of the Irwin Allen shows (Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).
Soap.

Dallas! Imagine the chatter and polls around Who Shot JR? As for Bobby in the shower…

It’s still on the air, but I wish I’d had the internet back when I was still watching SNL. I’d have loved to figure out what some of the jokes were that I didn’t get back when I was 8 or 9 and watching the show.

Seconded. That’s what sprang immediately to mind.

Snip.

Margaret Nolan must be spinning in her grave right about now. Well, okay, no. (She’s still alive. But still.)

Babylon 5

The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5 was around during the show’s run. I’d go there after each episode was aired to catch what I might have missed.

Twin Peaks and Quantum Leap are good choices.

I would have liked a Doctor Who site when I was first watching it in the early 80s. By the time I got Internet, it had gone on hiatus.

I actually partcipated on a great usenet board about Twin Peaks. If I google my old email adress from then (1992 ish) old posts come up!

Alt.rec.tv.twin-peaks or summtin.

Yep. Clicked to open thread in new tab as I cruised through New Posts, and that’s what I was thinking without even reading the thread. Twin Peaks.

I sorta had internet then–I used a local dialup message board, but nothin’ like the web is today.

Hell, I wish we had VCR’s “back when [tv show] was on the air…”

As to discussing shows like Twin Peaks, yes, it would have been interesting.

Definitely the Prisoner. Of course, that was before I was born, so it probably wouldn’t have helped all that much.