Gimme a Break- it was never good. When the Chief (Dolph Sweet) died, the show should have died with him, but it went on and on and on and on… They changed the cast, they changed the locale, they brought in an adorable little Lawrence brother, they brought in a second adorable little Lawrence brother, they brought in half-of-Dawn, they made Nell an increasingly strident virago and gave her every conceivable excuse to sing, they brought on Rosie O’Donnell, but like the mad monk it just wouldn’t DIE. Reruns are almost unwatchable. I’ll never understand why they wouldn’t just cancel this turkey (and I can’t even imagine the ratings were high for the last several years.)
Mr. Belvedere- a one-joke premise (working schlub family gets proper British butler on loan [sort-of] from a then 30+ year old low budget movie franchise). Maximum number of enjoyable episodes possible: six. Number of episodes filmed: 117. Number of viewers at its peak: 842. Just-wouldn’t-quit-breathing. I don’t know who Christopher Hewitt was sleeping with, but evidently somebody at the network had a thing for beefy effeminate elderly Irishmen (though he spoofed the character brilliantly on an episode of the short-lived Ned & Stacey).
Get out of here! Man! I thought sure that there were no more than fifty, if that.
Happy Days—I’ve seen some good episodes from the first couple of years or so. Then they just started screwing off, all existing copies of the stylebook discarded and used for window towels, emergency bathroom tissue for on-location shoots, etc.
Charles In Charge—It was lame-ass. Dull. The co-star was driven to masquerading as a proselytizing superhero, for crying out loud!
Can we make Walker, Texas Ranger count? Please? PLEASE?
We had one in Australia Hey Dad which, during it’s run from 1986 to 1994, was at one time the longest running sitcom on TV anywhere in the world. Unfortunately it was not at all funny but somehow remained popular and was shown in 20 countries around the world. I couldn’t understand how anyone could watch more than one episode.
King of Queens. It had to be hard to make anything featuring Jerry Stiller and Patton Oswalt unfunny but they did it.
I honestly think Three’s Company takes the cake.
I’d say that they had a good number of decent episodes for more than just the first couple of years or so. However, it did indeed degenerate into buffoonery.
The first season was actually pretty good, IMO. And I think it’s unfair to say that this show drove Willie Aames to become Bibleman. This didn’t happen until many years after the show was cancelled. Indeed, it happened in the wake of Aames’s religious conversion, which occurred after he had sunk into the depths of sex, drugs and hard rock.
And I think they let her sing on two hundred and one of those episodes. (I have friends who use Lavin to describe anybody who seems to think that their singing is something the whole world wants to hear as often as possible.)
For some reason I loved that show when I was a teenager- it seemed to have a depth that others lacked and I loved the character relationships, etc… I didn’t see it for almost fifteen years before it was brought back in reruns on TV Land and then I was wondering “Dear St. Myron, what in the hell was I inhaling during those years?” Twas awful (though even in my teen years I thought it sucked by the time Cloris Leachman was brought on board).
Of course every lesbian friend I’ve ever had was as in love with Jo as Jo was with Blair.
Speaking of Facts of Life, I’ll throw in another Dick Clair production: Mama’s Family. I won’t deny that the show actually had a couple of funny moments (most of them from Dorothy Lyman or Beverly Archer), but they could have been condensed into a season with plenty of room left over rather than the 8 seasons they ran. (Trivia: most of the profits from Mama’s Family residuals go to fund cryogenic research; Dick Clair {aka Dick Jones, born Richard Clair Jones] was cryogenically frozen when he died and left most of his estate to Alcor, causing several lawsuits from his family- ultimately his family received his tangible property (house, money, etc.) and Alcor his rights to Mama’s Family (of which he owned half) and Facts of Life (of which he owned a much smaller percentage).