Came in to post this exact exchange. The best Sopranos episode ever. “The Pinebarrens”
More Sopranos:
Livia - “Oh, poor you!”
Livia - “Psychiatry? That’s a racket for the jews!”
I think I was only 4 or 5 when it first aired, but a line from and episode of The Cosby Show has stuck with me ever since.
It’s the episode where Rudy tries to make jelly with Cliff’s new juicer so she and her friend Peter can have a PB&J. The plan fails and the juicer winds up spraying grape juice all over them and the kitchen. Peter, who is pure flight no fight, makes a B-line out the front door and is forgotten about as the plot resolves itself.
Then at the end of the episode Peter’s mom calls. She had found him standing in the clothes hamper and when she looked at him he said, "All I did was hold the bread."Which I think is a fantastic way to say, I was there, I saw it happen, I didn’t try to stop it, but I didn’t do it.
From The Wonder Years:
Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers, the next day you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses. A yard like a lot of other yards. On a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back with wonder.
And, basically the total antithesis of the above quote, from Tales from the Darkside:
*The dark side is always there, waiting for us to enter, waiting to enter us. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. *
Both interesting in different ways.
From the Brady Bunch (which I haven’t seen in over 30 years)
Buddy Hinton (to Cindy) - “Baby talk, baby talk, it’s a wonder you can walk!”
Peter Brady - “Pork Chops and Apple Sauce”
“They’re ruining this war for the rest of us!”
From the very first episode, MASH had some great lines.
Homer Simpson dancing and burning Ned Flander’s diploma.
I am so smart. Ess Ehm Are Tee! (S M R T with no A)
From the show Doctor Doctor - ‘Pole vaulting the grand canyon’.
“Space: The Final Frontier”
Come on people, the classics!
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It was his own diploma.
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It was a “Throw It In” moment - a genuine mistake that just happened to fit the character and situation perfectly. Wow.
i thought it was a stolen college diploma he stole that he burned but I guess I was wrong.
Professor Hugo J. Farnsworth: Good news, everybody! {followed by some horribly dangerous or disgusting new job for the crew}
Comic Book Guy: Worst. Episode. Ever.
MASH
Frank Burns,“You - - you!”
Hawkeye,“Who you callin a youyou?”
WKRP
Johnny Fever,“Oh, I almost forgot… BOOGER!”
BTVS
Giles,“Why would someone want to harm Cordelia?”
Willow,“Maybe, because they met her? ----- Did I say that?”
Xander,“I laugh in the face of danger. Then I . . . . . . hide until it goes away.”
“I, Claudius” had so many so I’ll add one.
Sejanus (smirking) “If Germanicus was profoundly loved, he is also profoundly dead. We’re all loved when we are dead”.
Livia: “I wouldn’t count on that if I was you”.
An episode of “Petticoat Junction”. Kate and Uncle Joe enter some kind of abandoned cave/house. Uncle Joe sees a horseshoe in the doorway and pulls it out saying “From now on, nothing but good luck”. Doorway collapses trapping them inside.
There was a show in 1967 called “The Second Hundred Years”…a “Rip Van Winkle-type show” where a 33 year old Alaska gold prospector from 1900 is found in a state of suspended animation and reunited with his now 67 year old son and 33 year old grandson.
In one episode the prospector tries to get a bank loan but is turned down because he doesn’t have any collateral. So he says “The only people whom banks will lend money to are those rich enough not to need it.” Another episode he starts farming corn and wheat. A Department of Agriculture agent stops by and tells him that farm subsidy programs will pay him not to grow these crops. Intrigued, the prospector notes he can take this money to buy more land so he can get paid even more money. Eventually “I will be the richest farmer in America, growing nothing”.
“Get Smart”…Agent 86 is in a sword fight with an actor who is a KAOS agent.
Smart “Why did you join KAOS”?
Actor “Hollywood didn’t recognize my talents. KAOS did so I joined them. Besides, my agent recommended it”.
Smart “But KAOS is mean and evil”
Actor “So is my agent!”.
An episode from “Adventures of Superman” where Clark Kent and Lois Lane are discussing a well meaning but fumbling scientist.
Kent “Why doesn’t the professor try to invent something useful, like a better mousetrap”?
Lane “Knowing the professor, he’d try instead to invent the perfect mouse”.
Hey, those ten years since I heard those lines have flown by like thirty!
From a really silly TV movie called Cruise Into Terror:
One of the few times I ever saw “Love Boat” one of the plot lines was a couple who hoped to adopt an infant from a Latin American orphanage. Complications arose and they ended up with a 12 year old boy, played by the kid (Gabriel Melgar) who replaced the dead Freddie Prinze in “Chico and the Man”. The kid turned out to be a petty thief and the exasperated father/husband said “We went looking for Oliver Twist and we ended up with Fagin”.
That was the show with Matt Frewer, right? One line that has stuck with me from that show was a scene where he (or someone else) spills coffee in his lap, and he says “I hope that was decaf or else I’m going to be up all night!”
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Seriously though, in the context of TV shows, and more precisely one’s memory of them, what is “a very long time”?
I’ll toss in a rough guess in my own case: ten years?
I saw my first TV show in 1951 or 1952. I KNOW that’s a very long time. But how long after a show is in reruns – or syndicated off to USA or Bravo or Nick At Nite – does it amount to “a very long time” ago?
Just asking. 
It’s a little frightening, really. In another thread I realised I was listening to ‘oldies’:
Sometimes I’ll watch an episode of Star Trek: TNG or Northern Exposure and look up an actor. Then I see that these shows were on 20 or more years ago! :eek: Yet to me, they’re not ‘old’. So when I see Buffy lines, it’s a bit of a shock. (I’ve never watched the show, but I did like the original 1992 film.)
When I posted the OP, I was thinking specifically about TV shows before 1985. Those are ‘old’ to me. Culturally, I identify more closely with people in their 20s than in their 40s. They don’t have the ‘touchstones’ that 40-year-olds do; but I’ve never been married or raised a family, so I never got into the habit of ‘growing up’ and can’t really relate to many of the things my generation is into. Hearing things from the '90s being called ‘old’ makes me stop and say, ‘Whoa… Dude…’