Uh, Soap was really a 70s show; St. Elsewhere was good, but kinda nullified by its ending, and most of the rest pretty much make my point. Even the best shows of the 80s either just really weren’t that good, or are badly dated. If you really think that The Facts of Life is better than anything on today, you must have been really little when it was on, and not have seen it since. I was its target demographic, and I thought it was just horrid. Honestly, the only sitcom I watch now is The Big Bang Theory, but I have occasionally caught episodes of some of the really awful fare that’s on (2 Broke Girls? how has that not been cancelled?) and I grant that at least the 80s hadn’t discovered reality TV, but it was the era of the “Very Special Episode.” Words that couldn’t have me diving for the “off” button faster. (We did not have remote controls then. I was aware they existed, but we didn’t have them.)
Not to mention, a number of great shows that premiered in the 70s seemed to take a nose-dive in the 80s, and I don’t just mean SNL. One Day at a Time, MASH*…it breaks my heart.
Recently read a wild ass piece of fiction where the characters rode their horses across the prairie and when the Indians came they pulled out their cell phones and called for Blackhawk missiles to be entered into the equation. Delightful read. Don’t rember its name though.
I think the turning point of the traditional “cowboy” was when farmers and ranchers started going to town in Ford Model T’s and hauling stuff with trucks instead of horse-drawn wagons; maybe 1910-1920.
I was finishing college and getting ready for grad school. I started watching Facts of Life because of the woman I was living with and found myself liking it. And I dug Jo. I still think she’s hotter than Blair. (I dug Mallory on Family Ties, too.) :o
Soap kind of segued into Benson in the late '70s–early '80s. I could look up the dates, but I’m just too damned lazy. I still associate it with the '80s more than the '70s, probably because I detested most of the '70s.
I was tempted to include The Rockford Files, but it died prematurely because of Jim Garner’s poor health. Just barely made it into the '80s, though I watched every episode multiple times in syndication up until I moved abroad.
The new Columbo was more '90s, but I remember watching it just before I left the country, so I associate it with the late '80s too.
I stand by my earlier statements. I’d rather watch shows from the '80s five nights a week than channel-surf today.
Guys still work cattle with horses around here, but they have mainly been supplanted by 4-wheelers.
My wife, FWIW, would occasionally ride her horse to (one-room) school.
I liked The Trouble with Normal. Shows I like always get canceled. I liked the Friends pilot, so I was sure it wasn’t going to last more than a handful of episodes.
Actually, I like Criminal Minds, but for the wrong reasons. I like it in an MST3K kind of way. I still watch it. The fake TV genius really cracks me up.
Just found this thread about The Roy Roger’s TV show. Hope people are still posting.
I found discussions about Nellybelle and phones & such in the ‘Old West’. In a show that took place in the 1800’s there was a lot of 1950’s technology going around. The ‘Stage Coach’ was a 1936 bus, telephones and electric lights. What stunned me most as a kid was in 1957. Casually driving down main street in this old west town, was a new 1957 Mercury, full of people gawking at everything in sight.
Welcome to the SDMB, Shuham. We hope you like this place, and stay here for a long time.
But you’re mistaken. The show did not take place in the 1800s. It was set in the (more or less) modern day west,complete with electricity, telephones and Jeeps. The only thing that made it “Old West” was that some of the characters rode horses – which, we’ve noted, was not out of place in rural areas in the 1950s.
You take BACK that photo, and make it snappy, pardner. Get Dale BACK into her cowgirl outfit and BACK up on Buttermilk, her favorite horse. Why the very idea of seeing her that way BACK then is just shameful, shameful I say. We got a way o’ dealin’ with varmints like you.
#39 Also, pleased to mention the terrific fried chicken, the well-done beef sandwiches(all you had to do was ask) and the terrific, warm apple/cheese dessert.
I still dream of Double-R burgers. One of their restaurants on the NJ Turnpike brought them back several years ago, but the flavor was way different. RIP, Double-R.
I get my old time radio from OTRCAT, and one of the things they have is a series of “Samplers” containing an assortment of old time radio shows.
There was a DELIGHTFUL Roy Rogers radio episode, with Porter Hall (motion picture villain, hamming it up wonderfully!) The show was witty and fun, and had a charming retelling of the Pecos Bill myth.
I’d known about the TV show, but had never known of the radio show!
Zombie thread I know. But in a monster-related segue, let me point out another example of an anachronistic setting: the Universal horror movies of the thirties. While they’re based on nineteenth century novels and use plenty of items from that era, they’re actually supposed to be set in the nineteen-thirties. This doesn’t explain the armadillos however.
The Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies were also mostly set in a pseudo-Victorian thirties. It can be jarring to see Sherlock Holmes tracking down Nazi secret agents.
The ones with Nazis were preceded by the intro “Sherlock Holmes is a character for all ages” and were clearly set in the WWII era. At least the ones that I’ve seen, anyway.
Some places in Europe were still stuck in the 19th century in the 1930s. When Czechoslovakia was incorporated into the Third Reich in 1939, some of its inhabitants had never even heard of Hitler!
I selected my user name back when I was a huge fan of Riders In The Sky, America’s favorite singing cowboys. Their guitarist is Ranger Doug. Besides touring and releasing albums, they used to do a weekly radio program. Part of each show was 10 minutes of a continuing adventure serial. If you saw Toy Story 2, you certainly heard them sing.
Anyway, all the talk upthread of Pat Brady and NellieBelle made me think of this song sung by the Rider’s sidekick/camp cook, Sidemeat, Sidekick Heaven, where he remembers all the sidekick of old, especially the greatest sidekick of them all, the Ol’ Gabberoo himself, Gabbie Hayes!
