Yeah, I’ve been guilty of some more TV Tropes surfing. I started to make some mental notes of various TV shows which at one time were high profile (either among the general public or amongst certain subcultures), but only a few years later nobody talks about them, no significant cult following has cropped up around them, their reruns aren’t shown anywhere, and basically they aren’t in the consciousness of hardly anybody anymore.
The two examples which came to my mind were Andromeda, and Ally McBeal. Unlike other recent skiffy offerings which have managed to acquire cult followings (Farscape, B5), I don’t sense that there’s much of a rabid community surrounding Andromeda. And as for Ally, this TVTropes page (bullet #5) talks about how quickly she slipped off the scope, going from morning coffee machine fodder at every office to an almost complete non-entity.
Feel free to expand the bounds of the topic to encompass movies which at one time had a much shinier patina (amongst critics and/or the public) than they do now, if you like.
Hogan’s Heroes for years it was a popular show, then suddenly everyone decided it was in poor taste to make fun of a bunch of Jewish guys who fled Nazi Germany and were spending the post-war years dressing up as Nazis for laughs.
“Get a Life,” “Starved,” “Soap,” “Hart to Hart,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Benny Hill,” “Alice,” “Eight is Enough,” " James at (Many ages,)" “Mork and Mindy,” “Angie,” “Makin’ it,” are these the kinds of show you’re talking about?
Remembered mostly for being groundbreaking, but that has the effect of making it dated which limits its value in reruns, I’d expect.
I’d guess that Falcon Crest and indeed the entire genre of middle-aged-but-still-kinda-hot wealthy-family nighttime soap operas has been consigned to TV history. Perhaps the one-note bitch/bastard character that typically drove such shows is no longer palatable.
As I was writing the earlier post, I considered DH as an example of the genre, but the central characters aren’t related (as are the Colbys/Carringtons, Ewings, Channing/Giobertis etc.) which eliminates much of the pointless family scheming that typified Dynasty, Dallas and Falcon Crest. DH takes itself far less seriously and if it’s to be considered in the same genre as D, D and FC, it’s as parody.
I remember during most of the first and second seasons there would be a dope thread going during each episode’s original broadcast. The thread would easily hit 5-6 pages each week. I myself often took part, trying to put together clues. Watching those crazy videos that were released only on the web. Sifting through screencaps of old episodes, trying to put it all together.
Then after about season 3, these threads stopped being a weekly occurance. It went from everyone and their brother watching the show to practically no-one. It was one of the largest turn-arounds in interest I have seen on a mass scale.
The show got really campy around the time of the Ray Switch. Overall, I like the show better when Ray Vecchio was on it, but I liked Stanley Ray Kowalski as a character a lot more. Watching the show again is making me like Ray a lot more though, as I can relate to him a lot (Catholic, ladies man, beats the snot out of mafia dons and of course, having had multiple examples of the same car explode)
OK, so we’re both Catholic and the similarities end abruptly there.
I’ve noticed Star Trek has dropped considerably in profile recently, but that is probably more because with the end of Enterprise, there’s no new Star Trek on TV or big screen for possibly the first time in 20 years. We’ll see how it picks up again when this new movie comes out (man, I hope it doesn’t suck. It has to be leaps and bounds better than Nemesis at least)
