Two children’s shows from the late 70’s
Was Gladys then the first “Vera”? (Reference to Norm’s wife from Cheers, for the few who might not know.)
Whirligig, a children’s show from the early 90s.
There are two obscure 80s TV shows that I remember watching:
Wizards and Warriors, a series about a good prince fighting against an evil prince and his wizard, and…
Whiz Kids, a show about teenage computer hackers.
Fun Fact: In 19th century American slang, a “whirligig” was a testicle. 
Your handle is remarkable coincidence, seeing as how I was just about to post the following:
In one article of MAD Magazine, they interviewed a TV scheduling executive who played a game called “Switcheroo,” where every idea yielded two shows. One example was The Beverly Hillbillies vs. Green Acres (“Country folks in the city/City folks in the country”). Another was these two shows (“A couple who pretends they’re not married/A couple who pretends they are married”):
I remember watching the former with my mother and older brother when I was in fifth grade. So far as I recall, only my brother watched the latter, I guess because he had a “thing” for the female lead.
I remember that one. Although I didn’t watch it much, a few things have weirdly stuck in my head over the years. The Wiki entry says it was based on All in the Family, which first aired just a year earlier in 1971. I always thought some elements were taken from The Honeymooners (the main character is a bus driver, for example). I also remember that, when working, he kept one of those change-making devices on his belt loaded with aspirin, which he called “headache tablets.” I wondered about that for a long time, then I learned that aspririn was a trademark, and I’ve just seen that Bayer had lost the trademark in the US about 50 years before the show premiered (so, back to wondering).
My dad didn’t watch a lot of TV but when I was a kid, he really liked Combat! (mentioned upthread somewhere) and a similar show, Rat Patrol. I think they fascinated him because he tried very hard to join the service when he graduated from high school in 1943 and most of his friends were joining up, but the Army discovered that he was totally deaf in one ear and about 50% deaf in the other ear so he was classified as 4-F. I’m quite sure this saved his life but he always regretted not being able to serve.
Another show I haven’t seen mentioned is “The Mothers-in-Law” starring Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden as friends and neighbors whose children married each other and made them in-laws. I seem to recall that this came on immediately after “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights, which we always watched.
Weird the memories something like that brings back. I remember nothing about the show but watching the intro reminded me that the theme music from that was where I first heard the word “spouse”.
I assumed it was a joke because “spouse” sounds funny.
I too remember it vaguely. Wasn’t Goldbloom a black belt that had to give the “My hands are lethal weapons” warning before he could fight anyone?
He was voiced by the same actor who did Fred Flintstone, and he sounds
just like Fred…distracting. Also, Fred Flintstone was based on Ralph Kramden.
No idea if she was the first, but it was one of the earliest example of the trope. December Bride premiered in 1954.
Zackly. You know a lot about that old show. What do you make of the weird reference to aspirin? I think I’m remembering it right, but I have to acknowledge that was about 50 years ago. Sheesh… 
I vaguely remember it, so I consulted Wikipedia…I just remember thinking it was so bizarre to take “All in the Family” to the kids on Saturday morning.
Wikipedia says it only lasted 13 episodes. Youtube has at least half of them. You might find the aspirin dispenser in there. I don’t remember it…it sounds like his colorful nomenclature, a joke, like when Calvin remarked that his teacher Miss Wormwood was drinking antacid straight from the bottle.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Barkleys&page=&utm_source=opensearch
Aspirin is the genericized name for acetylsalicylic acid. Not all “headache tablets” are aspirin. Paracetamol aka acetaminophen, for example, has been available as an over-the-counter “headache tablet” in the U.S. since around 1960. There were probably “herbal” and homeopathic “headache tablets” around then as well.
“Headache tablet” may also have been a regionalism or now-obscure common term. Goody’s Headache Powder (which is actually aspirin), for example, is still popular in a lot of the South.
There might also have been some hyper-vigilance from the network about using a name that might still have been under trademark protection in some foreign markets. Or, it seems more likely to me, some concern about a direct reference by name to a specific drug in a children’s program.
My personal bet is that “headache tablet” was just the common term that the episode writer personally knew and used.
I remember the Munroes, the western about the five siblings mentioned at the top of this thread.
Another was Lancer, a short lived western copy of the High Chapparral.
A detective series starring David Janssen that came out around the same time as Rockford - called “Harry O”
And some British ones - a short lived one about a European Moonbase colony, Moonbase 3
And a really weird one, Adam Adamant, about a Victorian gent who was frozen and revived in the 1960s, heavy on his astonished reaction to miniskirts and the Beatles.
lobotomyboy63: Thanks for the link. I’ll probably get around to having a look at some point. It’s always interesting to check distant memories.
gdave:
There might also have been some hyper-vigilance from the network about using a name that might still have been under trademark protection in some foreign markets.
That’s what I was thinking. Assuming I haven’t mis-remembered the show, it’s the only time I’ve heard “headache tablets” used in conversation among regular people. I’d be surprised, although regional variation will do that.
I came here to list that one (nitpick: it was set in Pittsburgh.) I remember the episode where Skag ran afoul of the mob in dealings with the United Steel Workers. A USW rep wrote a guest editorial in the Post-Gazette expressing their shock–shock–at allegations of corruption in the USW.
The Super, starring Richard S. Castellano as the affable father and janitor, who practiced a different trade as Clemenza in “The Godfather”.
Fun Fact: Asprin may have played a part in the downfall of the Romanov Dynasty. When Rasputin was brought in to cure Tsarevich Aleksei’s hemophilia, the first thing he did was take him off the aspirin (a blood thinner) that physicians had been giving him as the new “wonder drug” of the 20th century. The marginal improvement in Aleksei’s condition convinced Empress Aleksandra that Rasputin was a miracle worker and she came to rely on him completely.
I remember the episode where they got locked in a department store overnight (they had been ordered by their husbands** to stop tying up their home phone gabbing with their kids, so they decided to tie up the store’s pay phone instead, and lost track of time). They had money for one call, but when they called home, something went wrong and sent their call to a guy in Madrid, Spain (played by Desi Arnaz, the series executive producer). They asked him to call their husbands the next morning to get them out of the store, which he did. After that call ended, one of the husbands mused, “I wonder what that guy does for a living”, and the camera drew back to show Arnaz dressed in a bullfighter’s garb.
** Yes, the show hasn’t aged well.
Lancer is referenced in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.