'OUR' favorite TV shows -- Am I the only one who hates 'em?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I keep trying to tell younger folk, we didn’t watch these shows - Bewitched, Gilligan, the Brady (shudder) Bunch - because they were good. We watched them because we had no choice.

We didn’t have any of these fancy cable systems or satellites or even VCRs. We got the Big 3 networks, the odd UHF channel and possibly PBS - if we were lucky! We watched Gilligan just because it was opposite some other show that was even worse…the Flying Nun, for instance - or (gack) Family Affair.

Nowadays things are much better. We have 150 cable channels, DVD, WebTV - so we are no longer forced to watch those nauseatingly insipid programs…

Oh, that reminds me - I have to go. I need to set the VCR to tape a rerun of Friends.

22

I agree with the OP’s list of overrated TV shows. Never saw much in those.

Gilligan’s Island was bad, but it had a strange fascination that’s hard to explain. I watched it as a kid (I had to make a deal with the devils – my brothers – to watch it if I wanted to see Get Smart) and KNEW it was bad, but still continued to watch.

A lot of this is nostalgia.

“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx

Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

23

nightgirl44:
“Weird MTV cartoons”? I loved “The Brothers Grunt”. I wish it was still on. There’s a site where you can download the title animation and theme song. Way cool.

But speaking of bad shows… “Three’s Company”. I only watched it because Joyce DeWitt was cute.

24

Speaking of overrated TV shows, what about “Married With Children”?

I mean this show was moronic and was on for around 11 years. 11 YEARS!

I’m fond of humor that caters to idiots like Jim Carey or Adam Sandler humor, but this show made those two look like geniuses.

Man I hate that show! I’m going to go puke now.

25

Shows I despise:

  1. Bonanza, Gunsmokeetc. Complete crap! Except Wild, Wild, West. I liked that one; I even liked the Will Smith movie.
  2. Sanford & Son and All in the Family: my husband loves these two pieces of monkey doo.I think it’s some kind of genetic malfunction in his family.
  3. Little House on The Prairie. They didn’t follow the books, dagnabit! Half-pint, ech! Get some dental work.
  4. Dynasty, Dallas, Melrose Place, Knots Landing. Ugh. Get a life.

I’m sure there’s more but I thought I’d better pace myself!

26

wow.

everyone pause for a second and read this again.

wow.

what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox

27

Everyone dislikes Darrin, but he had to have SOMETHING to keep Samantha housebound and earthbound.

She could’ve wrinkled her nose and called Casanova, Don Juan, and Johnny Weismuller back from the dead for a four-way, for god’s sake!

Face it, folks. Like it or not, Darrin was the greatest lover in TVland history.

Uke

28

Well, Darrin was also a virulent anti-witch bigot. Can you imagine if he married a black woman and insisted she go around in whiteface? Or married a Jew and forced her to convert?

I’m on Endora’s side—I say turn the bastard into an end-table and have fun like your sister Serena! Go visit the Addamses and find out what REAL sex is like, from Gomez!

29

Nightgirl44-
Judging by your last post, I’m guessing you would really enjoy All In The Family.

Sweet Basil

30

Eve–right on! also, Darrin is stupidly bigotted to in-laws who could turn him into a toad. They should have, if they didn’t. Still liked the show as a lad, but only because Liz M. was a stunner.

The other shows in the OP all blow, and blow like a typhoon. Add to them–
Scooby Doo
All Lucy spin-offs
all Norman Lear English rip-offs
Happy Days when they started letting Potsie sing and everyone’s hair got blow-dried
MASH once Alda took over
Jetsons
Petticoat Junction

too many more to list right now

Bucky

31

Boy, sometimes you just can’t go back, eh? I’ve tried watching some of the shows that I used to catch when I was a kid: Welcome Back Kotter, Speed Racer, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Mork & Mindy, Happy Days, etc… They never live up to the memories. I think it’s a combination of several things that does this. We become more sophisticated in our entertainment choices–well, most of us do. We have more channels to choose from. We’ve got more life experiences under our collective belts. It all adds up.

Hey, someone mentioned Scooby Doo as a show that blows. Couldn’t agree more. Don’t forget the other Scooby Doo knock off cartoons: Speed Buggy, Funky Phantom, JabberJaw, etc… Come to think of it, Hanna Barbera has a knack for turning out some really shitty shows.

Other shows that shouldn’t have been broadcast, let alone rerun:

Eight is Enough
The Big Valley
Highway to Heaven
Full House
Family Matters
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

Now that I think about it, let’s just say that most stuff you would see on PAX or Fox Family channel should be erased from public memory.

“I know a place where dreams get crushed, hopes are smashed, but that ain’t much.”

32

Welcome to SDMB, Nightgirl. I’m sure you’re going to make lots of friends.

I wish Nick at Nite hadn’t gone so much with the old Norman Lear shows. I hate all Norman Lear shows pretty much equally, with the exception of All in the Family, which I hate with a passionate intensity. Apologies to anyone who loves it, but I find it to be vulgar, elitist crap, filled with contempt for working-class people and what TV producers think working people think. Vile.

About Married With Children: I thought that it’s terrible was sort of the point.

Catrandom

33

The first couple of seasons of Married With Children were the best – Al and Peg together against the rest of the world. Then it turned into a sort of Lockhorns. Still damn funny though.

I think Carol Burnett holds up well – especially considering that they were a “family” show. We’re too used to the cutting edge (and often foul mouthed) comics today – Carol went pretty far but it’s only obvious if you’re not LOOKING for obvious. Very low key. Sneaky, even.

34

Someone mentioned “Pettycoat Junction”. Harlan Ellison had an interesting observation in his book “The Glass Teat” (a compilation of columns from the “L.A. Free Press”) that the theme song was pornographic. To wit:

What kind of junction does one find under a pettycoat? The junction of a woman’s legs, of course! Yup. The “Shady Rest”.

“There’s Uncle Joe. He’s a movin’ kinda slow at the junction.” Which junction? The Pettycoat Junction! The junction under the pettycoat!

“Lots of curves, you bet, even more when you get to the Junction”. Uh-huh.

Oh, and it was set in Hooterville. HOOTER-fer-chrissakes-ville!

AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

35

I think I just learned more about Petticoat Junction than I wanted to! (Sigh)!

CHIPs bit pretty badly, though according to a program just on A&E, it was the hottest of the hot for some years, which kind of surprised me. Where DO they take these polls?

BAYWATCH! The only good thing about it was the babeage! When I watched them, in one show, use a speed boat to lift a sunken drilling rig to let a diver escape, I KNEW they had gone too far into fantasy. Besides, I PERSONALLY, never met any female life guards who looked like those chicks! (Most looked kinda manly, to tell you the truth.)

Now, I LIKED the new cartoon the PJs, but FOX whisked that off of the air damn quickly. Along with Brimstone, which was getting somewhat interesting and was kind of funny but they kept that depressing MILLENNIUM on and Frank Black AGED like 100 years while making it. (I never did like his wife, though.)

Now, they have Malcolm in the Middle, basically a sitcom about a dysfunctional family and Malcolm seems to spend most of his time yelling at everyone about everything. (Ah, yes. Back to good old family oriented television.)

I got tired of Star Trek real fast after the first few years because everything became predictable. Besides, WHAT military vessel ALWAYS sends off the command crew to have dangerous adventures and leaves the ground pounders aboard? DEEP SPACE NINE was cool, until Cisco decided to become a macho BALD BIG BLACK guy – which I hated, started roaming around in his off hours in Nigerian robes and ODO, the shape-changer rarely changed his shape. I guess the special effects must have been too expensive. Plus it was not until the last series that KIRA decided that being ready to blow up everything for THE CAUSE might not be all that wise.

Besides, don’t you Science Fiction buffs get kinda tired of seeing ALL aliens based on a bipedal human form with just assorted creepies attached to the head? I know I did.

What? Me worry?’

36

I LOVED Carol Burnett? Some of her skits, I admit, were lame. And she should have left the singing to a professional. But Mama’s family?! Oh my gawd, I still remember Mama and Eunice fighting over what color they got when they played Sorry. “You KNEW I wanted yeller.” Then they’d ring the bell and scream, “SOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRR-EEEEEEEEEEEEE!” And Eunice would give Mama that hairy eyeball look.

Okay. It seemed funny at the time.

And then there was her Gone With the Wind skit! What a classic. Her dress still had the drapery rods in it!

The show whose popularity I never understood was “Three’s Company.” It was the same, lame plot again and again and again.

37

Jim Carey and Adam Sandler make me nauseous. I have to mute the TV when an SNL skit with Adam Sandler comes on, because it makes my literally, physically ill. I liked Married with Children though :smiley:

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www.opalcat.com

38

Maybe it’s because I didn’t get sick of these shows back in the 70s (being not-yet-alive at the time) but I love most of the shows mentioned. I love Nick at Nite and I’m always dissapointed when they get rid of a show until I start watching whatever it was replaced with and find out that I like it, too.

Among those you dissed that I like:
I Love Lucy (and all spin-offs)
The Brady Bunch
Bewitched (yes Darin’s a twit, but so what? He loves her. He can’t help being an idiot.)
Gilligan’s Island
Three’s Company
Dick Van Dyke
Mary Tyler Moore (I love MTM!)
Beverly Hillbilles
F-Troop
Dragnet
Get Smart
Little House on The Prairie
Scooby Doo
Happy Days
MASH (especially the ones that Alan Alda directed. I love him!)
Jetsons
Welcome Back Kotter
Mork & Mindy

Any other old show that you guys mentioned I’ve probably just never seen.

Cessandra

The Power Of Christ: 2000 years and He hasn’t come yet!