Ren And Stimpy - by the time it got big, it started to really suck due to the show’s original creator (John Kricfalusi) being fired by Nickelodeon. He was one sick little monkey.
X-Files - The first series rocked. The second series was kinda cool. They should have killed this show off about six years ago, at least that way people would remember it as being ‘brilliant’ rather than ‘a sad caricature of its former self’.
I also have been watching The West Wing since day one. And I used to like a show called The Seinfeld Chronicles, but they changed it’s name and timeslot.
That 70s Show. Watched from day one. I particularly thought the use of canned laughter was brilliant, perfectly evoking the sitcoms of that era.
I tapered off watching when they moved to Tuesdays opposite Buffy. This season, the conflict disappears, giving me, in the immortal words of Xander, “a happy”.
Sua
IIRC, every X-Files was just Mulder and Scully going out doing their assingments, and weird shit happened. Were there any plot lines? Then the writers had to have romance between Mulder and Scully. Boo. Now I never watch it because it’s just one soap opera with some supernatural stuff thrown in. If you miss one episode, you can’t catch up.
I was a huge fan of NewsRadio. I thought Jon Lovitz did a good job after Phil Hartman died. I mean, at least they didn’t try to have him play the same character.
I used to love Ren and Stimpy until it started being ALL fart and vomit jokes. I really hate comedy based on purely disgusting stuff.
Seinfeld and MAS*H
…watched both shows from day one.
Also, The Adventures of Mark and Brian
[sub]…okay, so it never got big…reality show that was way ahead of its time…[/sub]
I watched the Tracey Ullman Show religiously - I loved her show, except for the crappy animated shorts in it (read:The Simpsons). Guess that’s why they don’t hire me to pick the winners in the tv world. (And I’ve watched Buffy and X-Files since day one, too. In spite of how bad an actress I think Sarah Michelle Gellar is.)
My pick for next tv show to really take off? The Chris Isaak Show. I haven’t laughed out loud at a tv show in a long, long time. That scene where the Christian rock band is running down the hallway with flaming toilet paper stuck between their butt cheeks - pure television gold, there.
What follows is one of the side effects of having a TV in your bedroom when you’re a teenager and the ability to stay in there all the time let me see many early shows.
I remember the Simpsons on the Tracey Ullman show. I especially loved the Pagan one.
Another Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy and Space Ghost Coast to Coast from the beginning. Space Ghost is the wierdest show on TV. I remember watching the tree episode where it just kept on repeating and repeating and I kept on watching and watching wondering when, if ever, they were going to do something new. More recently Spongebob Squarepants which has already peaked. Basically almost any cartoon you can think of that have been on Nick. In fact I remember Nickelodeon from back when it was Pinwheel. In fact I can still sing the theme song from Caliope. I also remember the contest on Space Ghost for the new cartoons and laughing by bootie off at Dexter’s Laboratory.
I’ve also been a big fan of Dragonball since 1990. It was big in Japan but not in the US.
I also watched Comedy Central back when it was The Comedy Channel which then combined with Ha! to become what we have today.
The of course the put Friends on right after Seinfeld so I had no choice but to watch it. Only 1 more year to go and then I’m free.
But typically I just wait till I hear other people tell me something rocks. Which is why I blew it with Seinfeld and other great shows.
I watched Rosanne from day one, cause I was a huge fan of George Clooney from his work on the original E/R (the one with Eliot Gould, saw every episode) and Facts of Life.
Quantum Leap from the beginning, cause I’d seen Scott Bakula on stage.
Okay, I’ve got one. Way back in the early 80’s Nickelodeon used to end its days at about 11:30 with a show called Pop Clips. A dj in a Hawaiian shirt, who resembled nothing so much as a Doobie Brother, would present a half-hour of music videos. At the time there were only ten or fifteen music videos extant, so if you watched Pop Clips for a week you’d seen them all. I didn’t care; I never got tired of watching the Police’s “Walking On the Moon.”
The show was so successful it was spun off onto its own cable channel: MTV.