On a long ago SDMB thread, somebody brought up the companion of the “two dates in one night” piece, which is the “Special Date” episode. A character (usually somebody “cool” and “hip” and “groovy” like Jack Tripper or Zack from Saved by the Bell) somehow gets roped into going out with a girl he has somehow fall in love with without meeting (Internet chat room have probably revolutionized this tired line). When cool boy meets the person, they’re obese or they’re in a wheelchair or otherwise not “Grade A” dating material. Invariably the cool guy comes to the conclusion that “You know what? Obese people/people in wheelchairs/people with extra digits/whatever ain’t so bad, they’re just like everybody else and it was a really fun date…”, but then the person they dated is never seen again. (The unaired question of these episodes is “So cool guy- you say she was a cool girl- you gonna go out with her again?” Cool guy: What, are ya drunk?) Meanwhile the glass unicorn loses its horn and the special date blows out her candle for nowadays the world is lit by lightning.
Episodes: Zack dates a girl in a wheelchair, Tripper accidentally asks out an obese lady, Alex Rieger asks out an operator who’s obese, etc… (Of these, only Rieger ever sees her again, and that’s in a special episode when she’s lost the weight.)
Well, there were a few enlightened doctors, even in the 1950s. Evelyn Hooker began studying gay men in 1953, so it’s not too unreasonable that Hawkeye within a couple years of that showed tolerance and understanding doesn’t stretch my credulity that much.
Now if you want to talk MASH, how about Potter in one episode acting to take an incompetent officer off the front line even though he was an old friend versus Potter a couple seasons later fighting like hell against taking an incompetent officer off the front line because he was an old friend.
Also, in that Dick Van Dyke Show, the alians had eyes in the back of their head, which, towards the end of his dream, is how Laura showed Dick that she was an alien.
Or the fact that there were about 8 Christmas episodes in a war that only lasted three years and had not just begun when the series started. Or Margaret’s complete transformation from Frank’s hose-beast girlfriend to a totally cool and alright comrade of the other soldiers in what would have been, in real time, a matter of months or even weeks rather than the course of a couple years as on the sitcom. And I’m still working on how a Lebanese guy got the name “Max Klinger”. (None of this is to imply I didn’t really like the show, btw.)
The problems with The Cosby Show and Friends were typical of those shows. Both shows were what’s been called “time pornography.” Real people in those circumstances (a doctor and a lawyer with five kids and a group of six employed single people) never have that much free time. The Cosby couple would be lucky to see each other once a day for a couple of minutes and would never be able to do all the things they are supposed to do with their kids. The six people on Friends wouldn’t have time to all see each other more than once a week and certainly wouldn’t be able to spend several hours a day in conversation. These shows are, respectively, the fantasies of married and of single people about what their lives should be like.
MAS*H is a fantasy in a different way. Despite being set during the Korean War, it was clearly about the Vietnam War and the period just after the Vietnam War. The attitudes of the characters were never right for the 1950’s. Happy Days was also untypical of the 1950’s.
The Jeffersons was typical of many shows in that the main character is supposedly very successful (a man who worked his way up from a working-class background_ to running a chain of dry-cleaning establishments) and yet most of the time acts like an idiot.
I liked the ending of Rosanne because it went back to the shows roots of someone just barely hanging on in a rough world. It also dumped the last season as being total imagination.
The Rosanne episode which totally made no sense was the prince coming from Moldavia to romance Jackie. Next episode, no mention of it. As someone else said, during the last season when Goodman was in a show, it was closer to the series origins while shows where he was absent were insane, such as the terrorists on the train.
Golden Girls had one recurring plot which drove me nuts. Something would happen and Rose(Betty White) would not have enough money to pay her share of the rent. The other women would either say “we will let you live here as long as we can”(implying she was going to get kicked out eventually or nothing. They were such great friends but none of the others ever offered financial support or said anything to the effect of, “Pay us whatever you can toward the bills and we will make up the rest”.
In the episode where Roseanne finds out that Dan is cheating on her, we find out that the Prince is also cheating on Jackie (hilarity ensues earlier when Jackie starts talking about what pig men are and Roseanne thinks she’s talking about the Prince and not Dan).
I have to admit there was one (1) episode from the last season of Roseanne that I loved: Debbie Reynolds as Dan’s psychotic mother who tries to kill him and bury him alive. Otherwise it blew (even the cameos by Patsy and Edina didn’t add anything other than a long applause from the audience).
I missed that episode so didn’t know that the prince was ever mentioned again. The episode after she meets the prince, they go to a health spa and he never comes up.
Ending parts which made me cringe. The two gay friends over at her mother’s apartment: Seriously unfunny episode. When everyone is leaning over the baby’s cradle: Really unfunny, drawn out and annoying.
See, that’s a pratical joke. I was referring to the “Neither of us have dates for the big party. Hey, I know! You dress in drag and be my date!” gag, as seen in Silver Spoons.
Tell me about it. I grew up watching Saved by the Bell and came of age while Friends was on and I remember being dissapointed that high school was nothing like Bayside and that after I graduated, I didn’t have a swank apartment with half a dozen friends to hang out with all the time.
Really. If I caught my sister masturbating, (or vice-versa) there would be plenty of embarassment for both of us, but I can’t imagine that we’d stop talking to each other.
Well, “never talk again” was hyperbole, but I would still think it would bother them for more than 15 seconds. The way it came off on the show was as if he caught her trimming her nosehairs or something. Also I’m a female and I have a brother and even though I’m not a prude, if he ever caught me masturbating (or vice versa) there’d be reverberations for at least 24 episodes.
My mother’s caught me twice and I would say that’s much worse than any of my three sisters catching me. Aside from some initial embarassment (and her knocking from then on out), there were no lasting side-effects.
Hell, I even finished what I was doing when she left in both circumstances.