After I saw the first episode of Gimme A Break all I could do was roll my eyes and say that it sure was appropriately named.
Full House —so many cute kids it made Family Affair look like a day in the life of the Manson gang. And those kids got away with things I would have gotten spanked silly for.
There was one called Silver Spoons which featured the (non) adventures of some rich kid, but I don’t know if it even lasted 5 years. Typical episode: Kid goes hunting with his dad (in a Hollywood studio “forest”), shoots a deer, then is horrified to see the deer die and vows never to hunt again. At the end viewers are told that no deer were actually harmed during the filming of this episode. Hey, compared to this, Mr. Belvedere , lame two-joke wonder that it was, was shere genius.
Actually I’d include any sitcom that lasted more than 5 years that had a lot of “very special episodes” (such as Nancy Reagan arriving at the family’s home to tell us why we shouldn’t do drugs) or characters who sang, particularly if they sang 1930’s and 40’s type pop songs.
Maybe Little House on the Prairie doesn’t exactly qualify as a sitcom, but I’ll mention it anyway. It started out kind of cute and sweet, then degenerated into melodrama and a vehicle for Michael Landon’s heavy handed moral lessons.
Oh, and was Alice the one where Flo would yell “Well kiss mah grits!”? If so that was the main draw of the show. We used to watch it just for that reason when we were kids, and once when Flo didn’t utter her usual line we felt we’d been cheated and considered writing the network to complain.
I really think it’s a neck to neck race with Saved by the Bell and Family Matters. Can you imagine anything worse than being forced to choose between watching a Marathon of one or the other? Oh, yeah, Full House. When I think of a marathon, nothing could be as bad as 12 hours of Full House. Gotta agree, I’d rather see the Mongols overrun the world again than to see a return of Bob Sagat.
I heard they were actually trying to put together a reunion show for full house.
Laverne and Shirley–that was supposed to be funny?
the sitcom with Terri McNichols and the another old guy off another sitcom(who had been brilliant in Soap)–they lived in Florida and he was a widower with two daughters–then they brought in daughter number three when the ratings tanked. Early '90’s…eck-see? so un-noteworthy that I cannot remember it’s name!
spin off of Cosby show (and late Cosby show)
Gimme a Break—ugh
Family Matters (although I liked the actor who played the Dad. And also, who knew that Erkel would turn out to be gorgeous!?)
Facts of Life-I liked the first two seasons. What kind of name is Tutti, anyway? Freak.
The one where the white family adopted that midget black kid(not Gary Coleman, the other one)–ugh and yuck and blech.
Nurses or some such nonsense with Suzanne Pleshette. Luckily, it didn’t last long at all-the outcry against it was huge (at least in nursing).
I could go on, but am now nauseated…
“Good Times”–poverty is not funny; neither is Jimmie Walker!“The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy”–sorry, but after “I Love Lucy”, everything else was just a sham. “Ozzie and Harriet”–ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ… “Friends”–I grew up in NY; I knew people like this; I HATED people like this!
The “Eunice” sketch was always my least-favorite (in fact, most-odious) element of the Carol Burnett Show. What made anybody think a spinoff based on that sketch would be any good?
I watched Home Improvementtwice. I just can’t understand how it ran for nine seasons.
So let me get this straight. When they thaw me out 500 years from now, I’ll still be subjected to Mama’s Family re-runs? I think I feel sick. The whole point of the cyrogenics in the first place was to escape Mama’s Family.
That’s the one – ran for five years, so it qualifies. I watched one episode and I couldn’t believe any network exec, even from ABC, could have been so cruel as to foist this mindless cutsiepoo saccharine pap on an unsuspecting nation. (But then, The Family Circus still runs in newspapers all over America, so I guess you never know.) And Webster was supposedly 5 years old when the show started, but Emmanuel Lewis was actually 12 – it’s kind of creepy. And, of, course, it was a cheap ripoff of Diff’rent Strokes, which is kind of like making a knockoff Edsel.
I kind of liked Bosom Buddies – mainly for how little they did with the obvious setup gag of two straight guys spending part of each day pretending to be women. They could have played that for a lot more predictable cheap laughs than they did; instead, they made it about two young ad-men trying to make it in the big city. Better concept. Not great, but better.
I live here. I cannot reconcile their living conditions with their employment (or lack thereof). I shouldn’t have to suspend my disbelief that much for a current-day urban sitcom.
I hate those types of people too. But that’s not surprising…finding types of people I don’t hate would be quite hard.
The one I’d mention is Boy Meets World. I think they started with the kids in seventh grade and finished with them in grad school or something. Basically everything on ABC’s Friday night family lineup sucked.
