And Vir Cotto!
P.S. Four of the cast members of St. Elsewhere showed up in one episode of “Scrubs” as a mini-reunion My Sacrificial Clam | Scrubs Wiki | Fandom
St Elsewhere was part of the abovementioned CHCH retro block a few years ago. I loved the series when it was on in the '80s, and it holds up remarkably well. Unfortunately, it also has problems associated with the music. For example, it’s etched indelibly in my mind that “Eye in the Sky” was playing when Mark Harmon got his face slashed, but it’s been replaced with some nondescript generic rock tune.
Hill Street Blues is another show I watched religiously in the '80s, and it was part of the same retro block as St Elsewhere. It too holds up remarkably well, at least for the first four seasons.
I quite liked LA Law when it first came on, but it left a bad taste in my mouth associated with an old girlfriend.* I quit watching after about four months and haven’t revisited it since.
*Nothing to do with the Venus Butterfly!
NYPD Blue.
It was before my time, but I do remember hearing people talk about it or reference it when I was a kid as though it was something everyone was intimately familiar with. I’ve seen it referenced in other shows and so forth from the 90s as though everyone was watching it. Mostly, I remember the “shaky cam” thing being associated with it and some incident where they showed someone’s bare butt.
I did watch some of it much later and it was… hard to come by. It was on at like 4 AM and wasn’t on consistently. I’ve since watched most of it on whatever streaming service it was on a few years ago. It’s dated, of course, but it holds up pretty well. I suppose it’s not the kind of old show that most people re-watch as a “comfort show” (like Boy Meets World or Friends) or really identify with (like they might with Buffy or the X Files), but I’m still kind of surprised that I almost never hear of anyone watching it at all.
As I remember, all three of those (St Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues and LA Law) were on Thursday nights at 10pm on NBC and part of its domination of that evening for decades.
I enjoyed the show. I figured the Nosferatu were as good as we were going to get on a TV budget. I keep hoping this gets made but with all of the other supernatural shows, not sure if it will work or not. I don’t remember a lot being based on C TH but it’s been an age since I have watched it.
We just rewatched the pilot of Friday the 13th the series last night! I think we would have watched more by getting the DVDs but apparently they aren’t cleaned up and it was tough to see. Darn it. I remember liking it back then.
I know of them as well. I had only four stations until college but they had repeats in the afternoon. I don’t think it was streaming that did it. I think they created stations that showed old shows, like TV Land, and then they started getting original programming where the older shows were played. Complete guess, though. I don’t know why but at some point, the afternoon schedule changed but I wasn’t watching those by '86.
My wife and I watched it! It was fun but I don’t think we saw them all. Might have to watch them.
I love this show! It just hit the right things for me.
Neither am I.
I remember Dukes of Hazzard. I did watch that. And Brimstone! John Glover as the devil. I remember watching Rockford Files as a kid, not that I remember a ton about it, but as my parents got the DVDs of it, they must like it.
I heard of New Amsterdam but didn’t watch it.
Oh, Reaper! Sins of the parents go to the son! Ray Wise as the devil. I think this got just over a season.
The Single Guy, IIRC, came about due to Silverman’s appearance on Friends. However, the premise of him being single was flawed and every show he either had a date or they gave him a girlfriend, negating the entire premise of the show.
I have a love/hate with Highlander. I did buy all of the big boxed sets they did with the series on VHS and the extras. Still have the katana. It was all over the place for tone. They seemed to forget about Richie. I think they did a spinoff Highlander: Raven with a female immortal but that didn’t last.
I did watch Seaquest DSV and again it changed a lot between seasons, IIRC. I watched Lie to Me, Eureka, Fringe, Torchwood, Misfits, and Falling Skies. Misfits reminds me of the 80s show Misfits of Science, with Courtney Cox. That reminds me The Powers of Matthew Star.
Heroes was definitely huge and had a better plan in first season then kept negating everything done in the previous season for the new season and I stopped watching it.
We did watch Allie McBeal.
Oh, Journeyman, about a reporter that Quantum Leaps into the past but goes back to his present to see what he did.
I think Buffy and Firefly are still remembered but not Dollhouse.
I knew of BatB but didn’t watch it. Went to a Doctor Who / Star Trek / SciFi convention back in the late 80s and Armin Shimmerman was there for BatB.
Repeating to show that I have watched a lot of TV, given what I have seen. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot.
Thanks for the discussion!
Yep. And Remington Steele was on Tuesday nights, as I recall.
Going farther back, I marked every week from 1962 to 1965 according to Combat! and McHale’s Navy on Tuesday nights. Batman debuted on Wednesday and Thursday nights during the first week of January 1966, and The Time Tunnel came on Friday nights starting in September 1966.
I could go on and on.
The '60s saw some of the greatest TV schedules in history. They started to suck around 1967, when all kinds of “now” and “relevant” crap began to come on.
It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1973-74, you could watch All in the Family, MASH*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show. And that was on CBS on Saturday nights in the days before anyone had a VCR or DVR so people had to stay home to watch these shows. (FYI, Wikipedia has pages showing the prime time television schedules.)
Re Friday The 13th The Series
As I said, Comet shows a block every Sunday. If you do net get Comet in your area, you can watch it live on their website. Unfortunately, Sinclair as it often does with programs that were shown uncensored over ther air, censors (by blurring) any shot with too much gore or nudity.
My favorite portrayal of the devil will always be Vigo Mortensen in The Prophecy. “I was once an angel- loved above all others.”
My second is Glover in Brimstone. He is brash and sure of himself and obviously less powerful and less in control than he claims. In one episode, Glover plays an angel. Once he explains to Stone that all angels, even fallen ones, look the same he takes him to a park.
“What do the women in this park have in common, John?”
“They’re all very pretty.”
“Yes, I suppose they are. But, the important thing is that each of these women would have been raped by Gilbert Jacks if you hadn’t killed him.”
The angel’s whole purpose is to convince Stone that the devil has been lying to him, and that he is not beyond redemption. Obviouly, I wish the series had lasted a lot longer.
Reaper- Wise is actually my third favorite devil. He wears a suit, looks and acts like a shady car salesman. Wise was very good in the role and obviously had fun playing it. The series was not as good as Buffy. But, it was very good.
Highlander- Re Richie Ryans
His origin
In one episode, Richie dies for the first time right before the episode ends. Duncan says “You’re one of us now. Watch your head.” They walk off in seperate directions, indicating Richie leaving the series.
His Final Fate
He quickly returned and fought along Duncan for a while. Then a demon named Ahriman escaped captivity and returned to destroy the world, starting with Duncan. Ahriman tried to tempt friend’s and allies to aid him. He offered to give Dawson his legs back etc. Nobody accepted
Ahriman started to appear to Duncan as various enemies, mostly people he had already killed. He killed them again with his sword. Ahriman appeared to Duncan as his friends, taunting him with his failures. Duncan killed these people with his sword. Richie appeared, Believing it to be Ahriman again, Duncan beheaded Richie. Duncan received Richie’s Quickening and realized he had actually killed his best friend.
Highlander also tried a kid-friendly animated series. In a post apocalyptic world with tamed dinosaurs, young McCleod seeks the 12 elders who will give him the power and wisdom to free the land from an evil tyrant whose name I forget.
Fringe
I stopped watching only because my reception started really sucking. I really liked what I saw and wonder if it was all wrapped up in a satisfying way.
Misfits Of Science
It was cheezy, brainless fun
“Amelia!”
Dollhouse
It was inetersting and some of the writing was clever, But the basic premise was creepy (in a child molester way not in a horror movie way) as hell.
You probably know this since you’ve written about working with the library, but you may be able to stream episodes via Kanopy or Hoopla (library streaming apps).
Reaper was fun, and then just as it was cancelled, they introduced a cliffhanger that of course never got resolved.
When the subject of hugely popular television shows that are now essentially forgotten come up, Ally McBeal immediately springs to mind. The dancing baby was arguably one of the first internet memes and I hear some offices actually implemented coed bathrooms because of Ally McBeal. Despite having never seen an episode, I know our hero Ally took on a sexist judge who held her in contempt for refusing to wear a dress in court with a decent hemline.
Some shows, I think just fade away due to time. Production on Bonanza ended in 1973, The Honeymooners in 1956, and Family Ties in 1989. For the most part, I think even popular shows are going to fade from our collective memories after a few decades. I don’t think I’ve seen an episode of Family Ties since 1989. I don’t recall it being in syndication though I imagine it was.
Speaking of syndication, I think things have changed over the last few decades. I grew up on a steady diet of syndicated programing from before I was born with The Addams Family, Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and many other shows produced before I was born that were on heavy rotation after school and during the summer. (I have never seen a single complete episode of The Brady Bunch in my life. I have no idea how that happened.) Certainly my niece has never known a world where she was at the mercy of what the local television stations aired as she can just stream pretty much whatever she wants.
I have never seen more than, I think, sixty seconds of any episode. I hope to one day die peacefully, being content and surrounded by loved ones, and never having watched The Brady Bunch.
If you’re implying that AmcB was the origin of the dancing baby meme, you have the order reversed.
Here’s one no one has mentioned yet. It was pretty popular, too. The Cosby Show.
(Short pause while everyone uncomfortably looks at the floor.)
Not only did people have to stay home to watch those shows, they actually did. All in the Family was #1 in the ratings (not the Saturday night ratings, the overall ratings!) MASH* was #4, Mary Tyler Moore was tied for 9th, and the Bob NewHart Show was 12th. Carol Burnett was behind at 27th, but her show’s ratings were only two points behind Bob Newhart and #1 in the time slot.
Two shows I would love to see again are China Beach and Thirtysomething (late 80s - early 90s). They were very popular at the time. Neither is available for streaming, I imagine because of music rights. The DVDs are too expensive for me so I doubt I’ll ever get to see them again.
I didn’t think I was implying that. It was a stupid internet thing that made it into mainstream culture via television.
I wonder if, ignoring the truths we learned about Bill Cosby, the show would hold up. I remember it being funny, but very goody two shoes (in one episode Clair finds that Theo has a large stack of ‘women in revealing bikinis posing with expensive sports cars’ magazines. She gives him several lectures on how women are not objects and makes him throw the whole stack out. I agree that a talk (an interactive talk. not a speech) on how women are not objects was called for. The angry self righteous tone was not. Additionally, except for the possibility of bare buttocks in a thong, there was no actual nudity, suggestion of sex, and no actual sexual activity. At the time, as a teen boy, I felt she over reacted. I turn fifty next month. I feel that way now more than ever. This was the time to be understanding and open a dialogue, not rant and punish. The show was cloyingly sweet.
I have good memories of that show. The writing and acting was good. The prostitute who lived near the camp (I forget her name) was depicted neither as a filthy slut nor a ‘hooker with a heart of gold’. She was a fully developed character. The actress became pregnant during filming. Rather than writing her out or hiding the pregnancy, they thought a pregnancy would make an interesting complication for the character.
The writing was clever. The acting was good. The show IMO was about whiny yuppies with no real problems.
The Facts of Life.
You take the good you take the bad🎶
You age me - I watched the Brady Bunch first run (and in rerun of course)
I can tell you this. When that show went into syndication, TV stations around the country leaped at the local rights at an outrageous cost-per-episode and lived to deeply regret it. And this was long before Cosby’s many scandals became public knowledge. As popular as it was on network TV, it was an utter flop when local stations stripped it Monday through Friday. I worked for a station that had taken the plunge (before I worked there) and the ratings were so low they couldn’t give it away to advertisers. Many stations pulled it off and took a loss on it. Much later, a friend of mine was programming a low-budget independent station, and the syndicator actually gave it to him for nothing, just to have it airing somewhere.
As to whether it would successfully play now, even if Cosby’s peccadillos had never come to light, I doubt it.