I think you’re right, thanks!
I remember way too many of these shows for my own good.
Nurses was a spin off of Empty Nest, set in the same hospital. There was a multi show crossover sweeps storyline about a hurricane hitting Miami featuring GG, EN, and Nurses one season.
Best of the West A cute show, I liked it and even caught a few episodes when TV Land would air them as part of their weekend western block years ago.
I can still vaguely remember the theme song to 60 Seconds and Ed Bradley’s voice.
My younger sister used to love ]I]Today’s Special* until she outgrew it. She told me years later when she saw the living mannequin character named Jeff on the show, that was when she realized what “gay” meant.
I remember seeing * Wizards and Warriors, The Powers of Matthew Star* and Automan as a kid and being disappointed by them all. I was such a sci-fi obsessed kid I would give anything with a sci-fi or fantasy element to it a shot back then. Years later I rememeber hating Time Traxx, and thought it was really lame.
Matt Houston was very popular at my school for some reason. I thin we all crushes on his female sidekick/secretary. It sure wasn’t the quality of the show.
I remember thinking how badly Gene Wilder had aged when Something Wilder was on.
I remember watching Jennifer Slept Here a few times. Mr. Smith is one of my most hated childhood TV memories, my sister (again) loved it, but I thought it was really stupid. The episode (maybe the last one) when a TV news crew revealed the talking orangutan to the world and the little girl was crying and pleading into the camera not to take Mr. Smith away was one of the most blatant and pathetic attempts to manipulate the viewer (and maybe try to save the show from being cancelled for all I know) I’ve ever seen.
And if Dusty’s Treehouse is the same show I’m thinking of, you’ve just brought back two of my more twisted TV memories.
The Adventures of Brisco County , Jr.
It was the best show ever and I mourn its passing.
Mine is Byrds of Paradise, a Steven Bochco show that ran on ABC, I think. It was about a family from Connecticut or somewhere on the East Coast who ends up moving to Hawaii after the mother is murdered in a botched robbery attempt. Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as the rebellious daughter, Seth Green as her brother, Timothy Busfield as the Byrd patriarch, and Arlo Guthrie as a spacey dude who enrolled at the prep school Mr. Byrd teaches at in Hawaii. Great stuff.
I loved Automan and Mr. Merlin. I imagine that if I saw either of them today I would die of embarassment. I’m sure that they probably were both terrible shows.
The other show I saw mentioned that I faintly remember is Ark II. I remember being freaked out by it because I never watched it long enough to figure out the premise. About the only thing I really remember was that the father had a jet pack. I put ‘jet pack’ at the top of my christmas list for years after that. Never got one. Still waiting.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Tick, starring Mr. Warburton (David Putty). This thing cracked me up. Too bad it was on Fox and opposite some stiff competition.
Space Giants! It ran on TBS (back when Ted Turner owned just the one station) in the late 70’s as part of their afternoon kids block, SuperStationFunTime. It was a poorly dubbed 1960s Japanese kids show about a boy and his friendship with a family of robots: the little kid sized robot, his mom (Silvar), and Goldar, the fifty foot dad who got to fight all sorts of monsters a la Godzilla.
My friends and I loved it. We’d all watch it at my house everyday 'cause we had the color TV. We’d even made up skits about it and performed them in the back yard. Man, nobody has ever heard of this one…
OMG, I just looked up the show and not only is there a website you can get it on video and DVD!
I remember a lot of these. I guess I just watch a lot of TV.
Oh boy, I have a bunch of these. I don’t remember the names of a lot of them:
In the early-mid 1990s, there was a Saturday morning cartoon starring Mac’ly Culkin called something like Wish Kid. I think it involved a baseball glove.
There was a “news” magazine show for teenagers that came on CBS around the same time, maybe a few years later. It was not Nick News.
I also remember a show in the late 1990s with Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch.
There was a show on the Disney Channel (?) called Eerie, Indiana. Strange things happening to a family.
Ready or Not was definitely on the Disney Channel. I think it was about two middle school or possibly high school underclassmen girls who were drifting apart in their friendship.
For the record, I rarely watched the Disney Channel, so I don’t know where these shows are coming from.
Hmmm, I have more, I know it!
Conan: the Adventurer (1992) - based on the comics by the same name, most will remember the two movies starring Arnold Swar… yeah, him. IIRC, the main villian was some wizard mummy whose only weakness was “star metal” weapons, weapons forged from metal from meteorites.
Dragon Warrior (1989) - a Japanese cartoon based on the NES game by the same title. I remember it being on the local KCAL 9 at 6am on Saturday mornings (how I found this or why I was even up that early I don’t remember). It had something like 13 episodes that were in constant circulation for a couple years.
WMAC Masters (1995) - think Mortal Kombat meets WWE. It used to air on the L.A. FOX affiliate on late Saturday mornings. The martial artists (!) competed for some star-shaped trophy/emblem.
TimeTrax was a funky one. I remember the lead guy being the jerk from Love Potion No. 9. I believe the local UPN affiliate aired it before it was associated with UPN (KCOP).
Once a Hero. The first show cancelled in the 1987 TV season, this was a hilarious and affectionate sendup of the superhero genre. Captain Justice begins to notice that his adventures are beginning to repeat themselves, so he travels to the Real World to see what’s going on. And the Real World is nothing like in comic books.
The show was quite cleverly done and very witty. Sample exchanges (from memory – I’m getting the gist):
Emma: Where are you from?
Captain Justice (in his secret identity of Brad Steele): Centerville
Emma: Centerville? The same place as that stupid comic book hero Captain Justice came from. Who are you? Brad Steele?
Captain Justice: No. Brad . . . . . Kent
The show got terrible ratings and wasn’t broadcast in some markets. Part of that was due to the fact that they recast the lead after the show was picked up by ABC; people thought it was a bad sign and some local affiliates bailed. A Saturday night time slot.
I have mentioned this show on the Internet for years, but have never come across anyone who remembers it.
There’s a nice, balanced review at Stomptokyo
I remember a lot of these, too, most notably the one and only ep of TurnOn. I remember it was pulled from its regular slot at the last minute but shown later in the week very late at night. By then it was mostly a morbid curiosity factor, not unlike watching a car wreck.
My all-time did-I-hallucinate-that (except that my Dad remembers it too) was Coronet Blue. A guy with amnesia trying to find out his identity while being hunted down by strangers who want to kill him for reasons unknown. Ran for 13 eps one summer, and we never learned what it was about.
My siblings and I never missed an episode of It’s a Man’s World, about a young single guy and his roommates raising his teenage brother. I think it stand out in my memory because it was our parents’s bowling night, leaving us home alone (bro & sis were old enough to babysit) and that show was the only thing that kept us from killing each other and burning down the house. (But that’s another thread.)
I somewhat recall a show about a clone or mutant invented in a lab. to be used as basically slaves. One (or the prototype) escaped or was taken by someone in the lab who did not think they should be used as cheap labor. I think it was supposed to be a series rather than a one time movie or mini-series.
Another one was Hot Pursuit which was The Fugitive with a cute redhead I believe, and her husband trying to find the real criminal or witness or whatever.
Finally there was a show where alien prisoners escape and come to earth. So a blond jailer comes to earth and teams up with a cop to track them down.
Lord, I watched a lot of TV…
I was obsessed with “The Young Guns” (it was “Lou” that was pretending to be a guy) and “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.”!
Was that Ann Jillian show the one where they were all cocktail waitresses? 'Cause yep, I watched that one too. Along with “He’s the Mayor”, which lasted about 2.7 seconds.
I loved “Jem” but does anyone remember a Saturday morning catoon called “Galaxy High”? Now THAT show was truly outrageous!
I see your “Great Space Coaster” and raise you a “Giggelsnort Hotel”…and don’t forget that I am holding a “Picture Pages” as well…
And correct me if I am wrong but was Matt LeBlanc in another series that lasted 2.7 seconds called “TV101”?
In its heyday, Betty Crocker Mug-O-Lunch was popular enough that Lipton actually launched their own line of competing lunch-in-a-mug products. (Said Lipton products were not, in my not-so-humble opinion, as good as the Betty Crocker variety, though.)
What absolutely killed Mug-O-Lunch (and its Lipton clones) was the advent of the microwave oven. Food items you had to prepare by dumping boiling water in them just couldn’t compete with food items you could prepare by tossing them in the microwave. In fact, the closest thing Betty Crocker has to Mug-O-Lunch these days is its Bowl Appetit line of instant pasta and sauce in a cheap throwaway plastic bown – which requires microwave preparation.
Knorr still puts out a line of pasta in a cup that you add boiling water to, called “Taste Breaks.” Their macaroni and cheese flavor is actually pretty similar to Betty Crocker Mug-O-Lunch mac&cheese, although to the discerning palate it is of course not quite identical.
I’m pretty sure I watched WAY too much television as a kid. I know almost all of these. The ones I watched with regularity were:
*Punky Brewster, Herman’s Head, My Two Dads * (hey–your mom’s dead AND she was a whore!), *Young Riders * (yes, the girl in question was called Lou), *Probe, The Charmings, Cold Feet * (British and American versions), *Sports Night * (now on DVD) and I do watch *Arrested Development * now. (It will be back on March 7).
Now, how about this one:
Small Wonder? A horrific, horrific show about a girl robot, called Vicki, who lived with a family and was passed off as a 10 year old girl. She always wore a red and white dress.
No, no. That was It’s a Living (renamed Making a Living, according to imdb, which was news to me). Not only do I vividly remember that show, I can still sing big chunks of the theme song. Yikes!
And my candidates for shows only I saw are:
Hawaiian Heat (short-lived cop show set in . . . I bet you can guess);
Double Dare (Billy Dee Williams as jewel thief turned undercover cop); and
Partners in Crime (Lynda Carter and Loni Anderson as mismatched partners in a private detective agency)
Not only do I remember that show, I have a funny “brush with mediocrity’ story to go along with it. It seems that actor who played the robot 'Yo-Yo” was a graduate of my junior high school. Several months after the series was cancelled, “Yo-Yo” (with apparently no acting work on his plate) came back to visit his old teachers. The principal made a P.A. announcement about the “Hollywood success” coming back to visit his school. My math teacher was apparently one of his favorites, since he sat in the back of my 7th grade math class. All the teachers in nearby classrooms dropped in to meet him, treating him as if he was a STAR!!! Yo-Yo even smoked a cigar in the classroom!! Mr. Konst (the teacher) didn’t say a word!
p.s. Natalie Marchand (a.k.a. Livia Soprano) went to my junior & senior high school too. Alas, she never came back to act like a diva while I was there.
Anyway, my own contributions to this thread are:
“The Quest” : The king of one of these pocket-sized European regents is in his elder years with no immediate heirs. The closest members of the royal family are four Americans who (prior to the first episode) had no idea they were related to any kind of royalty. The four americans were : A crusty, retired smalltown sheriff; a “heart-throb” helicopter pilot; a plucky working girl; and a (black) small-time grifter. In order to decide which one would become the king’s successor to the throne, they were subject to a “quest” : in each episode, they would have to reach a certain destination, using nothing but their wiles, and they had to demonstrate some kingly virtue in order to reach it as well. it was a great show, funny, well-acted, but ultimately went nowhere. (I think it was on opposite “Dallas” just before or after the who-shot-J.R. ? brouhaha.)
I thought of two more, and these were actually good shows:
Greatest American Hero, where William Katt played a hapless English teacher who stumbles upon a Superman-like costume that gives him superpowers when he puts it on. Connie Seleca played his girlfriend, and Robert Culp played the FBI agent who helps him out. The theme song was "believe it or not, I’m walking on air . . . "
There was another show called, I think, The Lottery. This guy went around delivering winning lottery prizes. These were always in $1000 bills each, which should have tipped me on to the fact that it was just, you know, television. 
I don’t remember the kind of scrapes he would get into trying to find the winners, but it was not a real show about the lottery.
And I watched It’s A Living, so that’s one more for Ann Jillian!
And who dares to remember Nightingales: A show about young nursing students who have a surprisingly large amount of time to sit around wearing revealing outfits.
There was also a show in the late 70’s or 80’s about a group of cowboys who travel in time from the old west to the present. I think they became detectives or bounty hunters or something. I can’t remember the name of it for the life of me but noone I know remembers it.
Does anyone else remember The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. It might have been more popular in GB than it was here in the US.
A friend of mine just discovered “Sports Night” - I’ve never seen it, but apparently the two main charichters are “soinlove”, to quote the friend.
I remember “Eerie, Indiana”! That was the one with the funky tupperware episode, right?
I don’t suppose anyone remembers the Disney shows “Ocean Girl” and “Spellbinder”, though? “Ocean Girl” had the chick who lived by herself on an island, a whale, and some guys who lived in an undersea community. Sci-fi, although it was fairly subtle about it until the last season or so. “Spellbinder(s?)”, I don’t remember as well - I think this girl and her brother got transported into another dimension where the people in charge could shoot electricity from their hands? Man, I miss the days when The Disney Channel had good shows. Seems like now everything is animated comedy, no plot necessary, or a rerun of an old ABC show (“Growing Pains”, anyone?).