Is anyone else annoyed by television shows that have(or star) smart-mouthed kids that are “wise” beyond their years? Danny from The Partridge Family, Ruthie from 7th Heaven, Arnold from Different Strokes and many others. Which ones annoyed you the most? Which ones, if they had been a part of your family, would have spent most of their childhood banished to their rooms?
This is one of my least favourite things on television - kids exactly as you’ve described. I’m having trouble coming up with the ones I hate the most - I hate all of them.
Why Danny Partridge wasn’t left at an abandond gas station in the Mojave during one of their tours is one of the great mysteries of the universe.
I"ll see your Ruthie from 7th Heaven and raise you Rudy Huxtable from The Cosby Show. Could not stand either of those smarmy little twits!
Nobody else wanted to be the drummer.
Quinn Cummings as Annie on Family.
I WAS a precocious wisecracking kid and didn’t get sent to my room over it. A big difference between me and Danny Partridge and other smart mouth TV kids was that I’d never say anything overtly disrespectful or even particularly challenging directly to a grownup.
The ones that make me cringe are the ones who pause for the laugh, and make it painfully obvious that what they’ve said was rehearsed.
In general I find that kids do not add to a show - but yes, precocious kids are annoying.
Chris was the drummer, not Danny. And he was replaced!
Bass, then. Jeez.
Perhaps the character of Wesley Crusher (Star Trek - The Next Generation) was too old to fit into this category, but he was a grade-A irritation.
ALL of the Huxtable kids…I only watched maybe three episodes before quitting
I never liked the kid on The Dick Van Dyke Show. it was otherwise such a cool show, when he was on it was just a clunker.
Was Danny the first one? He’s certainly the earliest that I can think of - before him there were kids like Ritchie Petrie and Little Ricky who went offstage when there were adult matters to be discussed. After Danny, the flood gates of obnoxious kids turn up.
Oh, that Wesley Crusher.
I dislike the little kid who was brought in later. The Cousin Oliver syndrome. So situations like Andrew on Family Ties, or Olivia on Cosby Show, or Danny Cooksey’s character on Diff’rent Strokes, whatever the hell his name was.
About the only one who didn’t bother me in some form or fashion was Randy Taylor on Home Improvement. You know, Jonathan Taylor Thomas’s character.
The others you mention I never even really thought of as smart-mouthed, since, unlike JTT, they didn’t crack what I thought were jokes.
no, but the character was an irritating know-it-all.
I pretty much have come to loathe sitcoms in general. They were amusing up until I was, like, 15 or so.
Dylan from the original 90210.
I mean, come on; he drinks coffee, hangs out in a dinner and reads the newspaper a lot.
What f’n teenager does this?
Sam McKinney.
I like sitcoms just fine, but they pretty much have to be childfree. “Modern Family” is a surprising exception for me - I didn’t expect to like it at all, but I do.