Imagine the horror that would result if a Dad of today installed a pay phone to cut down on teenage communications?
“Daddy! This thing doesn’t text!”
That time on Saved by the Bell where Screech actually said something funny.
To add to the All in The Family column there’s the episode where someone paints a swastika on the Bunkers’ house. Gregory Sierra plays a Jewish radical who comes to protect them. At the end of the episode he’s killed by a car bomb.
My first thought was from The Jeffersons as well. They befriend a very young kid that wants to be a gang member and is trying to find ways to prove himself and earn his “medals”. Someone comes up to see the Jeffersons and tells them the boy had gotten into a fight and earned his medals. They want to know if he is Ok and the answer is no, he is dead.
Thinking back to ‘Arrested Development,’ there were many, many moments where I was thinking “Holy crap, did they just say that?”
Like:
Michael (to GOB): Get rid of the Seaward.
Lucille walks up
Lucille: I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.
Tobias: I’m afraid I just blue myself.
Oscar: Maybe I’ll put it in her brownie!
AitF had some heavy stuff. Mine is when Edith’s drag queen friend (was it Beverly?) is murdered and Edith is furious at God and won’t go to church on Christmas. It was really sad and heavy. (And Archie is so sweet trying to cheer her up.)
I just came in to post that, Zsofia. Another one was when Archie was invited to join the KKK style group, and turned them down on the basis of his “blackness.” Apparently they don’t have that many shocking moments in new sitcoms…or no one in this thread watches new sitcoms.
I seems almost quaint, now, but I remember being shocked (or at leat surprised) by an episode of Married with Children where Marcie thinks that Steve is finally going to be the man he used to be. As part of this, she tells Peg “So I’ll be returning your shower massager”.
When I was young, people just didn’t talk about masturbation on TV.
Oh, and I think I saw an episode of Blossom that wasn’t very special.
I also remember wathcing an episode of ‘Roseanne’ when DJ hit puberty, and was spending a lot of time in the bathroom. I was a little uncomfortable about that, but that’s probably because I was only like a year older than DJ, and I was watching the episode with my mom. I just remember feeling my face being real hot and thinking “How can they be showing this on TV?!?”
The scene in Happy Days where the Cunninghams come home and Fonzie is having sex with Joanie on the dining room table and Chachi is lying bleeding on the floor with what looks like a knife(???) sticking out of his ribs. Mrs Cunningham looks shocked and says, “Arthur Fonzarelli, what is going on here?”
Fonzie raises his head from nuzzling Joanie’s neck and says, “What does it look like Mrs C?” and then flashes the thumbs up, “Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
Uhh, I think you’re mis-remembering…
That was Chuck, not Chachi.
Irony is what it is.
Play ball in the house and you break a vase.
Play outside and you break your sister’s nose.
Mom always said, don’t play ball in the house, play it outside on the astroturf lawn and hit your sister in the nose.
Hogan’s Heroes has a black guy in the barracks with a major role, and has Jews, some who escaped Nazi Germany, playing high ranking German soldiers.
Pretty shocking for a sitcom, and well before the Norman Lear 70’s cleared the way for shock.
Wasn’t there an episode of The Jeffersons when George finds out about Martin Luther King’s death? IIRC, he began rampaging through his shop? home?
Then there was that episode of The Cosby Show. Vanessa had lied to her parents and snuck out with friends to see a concert in Baltimore. Along the way their van got stolen, their concert tickets were stolen, and the parents found out that the girls weren’t having a sleepover after all.
Now, in sitcom world, there’s supposed to be some sass back and forth, then the child reminds the parent of some thing they had done when they were young, the parents realize the child is just like them, go up to your room, no supper, The End.
Only on The Cosby Show, Claire got all up in Vanessa’s face, screaming and hollering like real parents are supposed to do. I saw the episode recently and it still made me want to squeak out, “Yes, ma’am,” and hide in the closet.
Another one from “The Jeffersons” - when George got stabbed by the girls gang, and the episode ended with him lying in an alley bleeding.
And while Edith almost getting raped was definitely shocking, her shoving a bubbling hot casserole in the rapist’s face was the most awesome moment in sitcom history.
Beverly LaSalle. It was Mike who cheered Edith up, talking about how he didn’t know if God existed or not, but he knew it was important for Edith to think that he did and that everything happened for a reason.
On the rape episode, Edith put a steaming hot buring chocolate cake into the guy’s face. She was baking it for the party next door where everyone was waiting for her to show up.
The Roseanne where Beverly told Roseanne she had sold her share of the restaurant and Roseanne said “How did you find a buyer” and Beverly said “Oh, it wasn’t hard,” and the camera focused on Leon (Martin Mull) sitting at the table eating the sandwich is one of the most shocking moments in sitcom history.
There was the episode of South Park where they said “Shit” about 175 times.
Not to diminish the shock factor of the episode by picking nits, but I thought it was a roast that Edith flung into the rapist’s face.
IIRC in the MASH episode, only Gary Burgoff (Radar) had actually seen the script for that scene. The producers wanted the other characters’ reactions to be spontaneous.
I think JJ getting shot was a pretty shocking way to end a sitcom episode - but (and people tend to only remember the show for JJ’s routine) in one of those twists those early shows had - the *real *shocker is Mad Dog - the gang member who shot JJ and has been built in the show to become every white American ~1975’s worst nightmare - cries like a baby when his Mom slaps him for being a thug outside the courtroom. Very nuanced portrayal and not what you usually get in sitcoms.
I don’t know about that, but the first episode was pretty shocking. Who’d seen that kind of profanity coming out of cartoon children before?