The worst television shows of all time.

The show that wasted most of my time was The Dukes of Hazzard, followed closely by Scooby-Doo. Two of the most predicable shows ever. I don’t know why they ever made more than one episode, when they could have just repeated the same one over and over and nobody would have noticed.

The evillest show around must have been the A-Team. Hackneyed theme (some good guys accused of war crime in Vietnam). Ridiculous premise (same good guys become nice caring mercenaries). The happiest violence on TV. Sure, most show are violent, but only on the A-Team could you blow up a jeep in a foreign country, have the whole crew climb out unharmed, and get away with it. Every show was a series of morally unassailable explosions.

My fantasy: a closing episode to the Dukes of Hazzard. About two minutes into the show, Bo and Luke get pursued by Roscoe and Enos to a bridge under repair. Actually, the whole section of the bridge is gone, with a downward slope section. So instead of jumping the canyon, the Duke boys hurtle downward toward the opposite wall. After a short (seven-minute) commercial break, we return to find the General Lee smashed to bits, with blood and autoparts all over the canyon floor. There is a faint gurgling sound issuing from under the vehicle’s more-or-less intact roof, with the Confederate flag obscure by debris. The next seen is a very sombre funeral, with Daisy and Cooter looking very upset. After another commercial break (seven more minutes), we see Uncle Jesse drinking a huge bottle of whiskey with a revolver to his head. The screen goes blank, there is the sound of a gunshot. Then there are commercials until the next show comes on, ten minutes later.

OK, here we go:
One Day at a Time
Happy Days
Laverne and Shirley
Matchgame '73
Dean Martin roasts
Chimleski (sp?) Fun Time (regional - Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa)
Lawrence Welk
Dif’rent Strokes
The Mike Douglas Show
Dukes of Hazzard
Are You Being Served (British)
Geraldo Rivera
Sally Jesse Raphael
Anything featuring Vickie Lawrence
Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon
Wheel of Fortune
Real People
Dallas
Beverly Hillbillies
any show where the main character is an angel
The Midnight Special (bad 70s rock music show)
CPO Sharkey (featuring Don Rickles as a Chief Petty Officer in the navy)
Tony Orlando and Dawn
Land of the Lost (70s Saturday morning live-action crap show)
The Man from Atlantis
Charley’s Angels
The New WKRP in Cincinnati
Mr. Belvedere (Reagan-era show about a limey pedophile nanny)
Bob Hope specials
Jake and the Fatman
The Jeffersons
Bionic Woman
Hunter
Dusty’s Trail (featuring Forrest Tucker and Bob Denver)
Doogie Howser, MD

LMAO! How can you list “Real People” and forget it’s trailer-trash brother “That’s Incredible!” My mother FORBID* us to watch both of those, no matter how much we wanted to see a guy hammer a nail up his nose, hahahahaha!

*Uh, forbade? Forbidded? Apologies in advance for not knowing.

Diagnosis Murder
Murder She Wrote
What’s Happening?
A Team
Blossom
Duke’s of Hazzard (If Daisy wasn’t in it)
Benson
(There was a show the title was the name of the main characher twice)
shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, panfried, deep fried, pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp… shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich…

Without a doubt, * Three’s Company *. The same bad script over and over and over.

I regret the omission of That’s Incredible! I should go into more detail about Dusty’s Trail. It was a Gilligan’s Island ripoff, if you can believe that. Only instead of an island, it was set in the Old West. Bob Denver and Skipper substitute, Forrest Tucker, are lost in the wilds of the Old West. Lamer, way the HELL lamer even than Gilligan’s Island.

Oh, I just remembered another one: WEBSTER

CARTER COUNTRY was ghastly, but it did come across with one line I still quote to this day, 20 years afterward:

“Bein’ poor is easy, ain’t nothing to it. See, every time you want somethin’…you can’t have it.”


Uke

On ON DAY AT A TIME, Bonnie Franklin was so sickening that member of my family, sometimes myself included, would retch. Only when Nancy Reagan appeared on Dif’rent Strokes to deliver her “just say no” message was television so effective in inducing dry heaves on its audience. And Mackenzie Philips (sp?) was so strung out on 'caine it made you queasy just to look at her. I watched it with morbid curiosity every week, like someone huffing glue.

Someone said “Everything on the Sci-Fi channel.” I have to disagree there because of “Quantum Leap.” (I don’t care what you say, I like it.)

To add to the “worst list”:
almost everything on TV Land
Late-night Disney
almost ALL the new sitcoms
Arliss
ALL Nickelodeon shows

and just for the record, the BEST all times TV shows:
Home Improvement
The Sopranos



White Wolf

“Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.”

“Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.”

Thanks. I kinda wanted to check it out; the way I perceived it, it could have been good or bad. But Mr. Rilch watches wrestling at that time on one channel, and I was watching “70s Show” on another.

No, she was in a show called Delta House in 1978 or 79. It was one of three ripoffs of Animal House; the most relatively successful, but it only lasted half a season.

Forbade. But I believe “forbid” would also be acceptable.

Kelly Kelly, starring Shelley Long?

I mentioned this once before, but does anyone remember a show from the early 80s called Making the Grade? It was a year or so before the (unrelated) movie of the same name. (Does anyone remember the movie, for that matter?) Anyway, it was about a high school, with the main character being the irreverent principal. (Unusual: a principal you’re supposed to root for.) It ran for seven weeks, and what I chiefly remember is that they didn’t even bother to resolve the last episode. Not a cliffhanger; they had a crisis, the principal was in a hospital, flipping out, someone came in to tell him that things were at critical mass, and he just carried on flipping out. Freeze frame, credits.

Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green

List bad television shows? Holy Moses on the mountain, this could go on forever. Still, I feel compelled to mention a few things that I remember from years past:

Yes, I remember Grand; I even remember the theme song. Thanks a mil for getting it in my head again.

I caught about 15 min of a Thanks episode weeks ago and still haven’t recovered.

Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader comes up with a few that I’d never heard of; how about Turn-On, a Laugh-In ripoff that was supposedly so bad the the Denver network affiliate cancelled the show halfway through the premiere? They claim that part of the producers’ cancellation agreement was that the tapes be locked up and never shown again. Needless to say, I really gotta see this show.

UJBR also lists a show called Melba that premiered as a mid-season replacement on the day of the Challenger disaster. Bad luck, Melba.

Bad sitcoms:
The Brady Brides
Hot! (Remember? The people at the record company? Remember?)
All of the Saved By The Bell wannabees that air Saturday mornings: what are they, something like Hang Time? Student Bodies? Laguna Malibu Surf Beach Pacific Spirit High?

Bad scifi:
M.A.N.T.I.S.
The Flash
Manimal
Automan
Blue Thunder/Airwolf (may have been the same show)
An unknown show that only had a pilot: a scientist gets combined with a defense satellite a la The Fly and transforms into a freaky metalbeast when threatened.

Incidentally, once, as part of a consumer survey I participated in, I was sent a pilot video of a potential sitcom. Lemme tell ya, if you think the stuff that GETS on TV is bad, you should see the stuff they REJECT.

In closing, does anyone else remember a show from the 80s that I used to like called UNSUB? It aired for about 3 months or so; it was about a forensic team (scientists, criminal psychologists, detectives, etc.) that tried to catch especially dangerous or freaky criminals. The UNSUB stood for UNknown SUBject.

Ah well. I have more, but that’ll do for now.

How about these stinkers:
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
The Partridge Family
Anything that has “Caught on Tape” in the title

As to networks, you have to pick and chose on Fox - I happened to like the recently created/canceled Brimstone on Fox. It had the virtue of being a semi-original thought.
Someone also listed Barney Miller on his bad list, but I loved that show - maybe because I was allowed to stay up late (11pm) to see the reruns.

The Trouble With Tracy (Canada),Apple Pie (w/ the actress that played Blanche on Golden Girls), Fridays (Saturday Night Live ripoff) and Howard Cosell’s mid 70’s tv series.

“Lassie”

Or “Flipper”. God, how I hated that damn dolphin!

Really, any show which stars an animal that is smarter than the human cast is bound to suck!
And any actor that consents to be second fiddle to a beast, & ends up looking dumber than the beast, is dumber than the beast. Remeber what WC Fields said about working with kids & dogs?


We have met the enemy, and He is Us.–Walt Kelly

How could we forget el lamo show, " BJ and The Bear."

I’m with you, Blue: Barney Miller was one of the best sitcoms I’ve watched over the years. Inspector Luger, on that show, was a gem.

For everyone that mentioned “Saved By the Bell,” HOW could you forget “Saved By the Bell: the College Years” (or, College Semester, as it turned out)? That was some much-needed programming. Bleech.

I forgot:

HEE HAW

Are you thinking of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (not sure about the spelling)?