I wasn’t allowed to watch the Smurfs, soaps, or Roseanne. I don’t remember why.
like pokey, I was also limited to 1 hr on weekdays and 2 on weekends, so I had to be choosey.
Wow. You hear stories about these kinds of things, but it’s still a shock when you see it. You seem like you came out ok LMM. That’s good to know. 
I’m trying to comprehend what that would have been like for me. Of course, I can’t really, because I did have TV in my life when growing up.
No Brady Bunch!?
No ABC After School Specials!?
I just can’t even begin to imagine it.
Sorry to hijack the thread, but hey, Paisley, were you going to e-mail me regarding a Cafe Society thread? If you can’t view my profile until you become a member, try <mojofilter05 at yahoo dot com>.
I watched pretty much anything I wanted. It was strange. I can remember watching Welcome Back Kotter with my dad…he loved it, but mainly for the theme song. I can remember watching movies that had breast and stuff in them, trying to avert my eyes and having him say, it’s just the human body…
My folks were a little more liberal than most, I think. My grandparents seemed to be carbon-copies of Edith and Archie…so even without the tv…I was exposed to it all.
My parents weren’t really all that restrictive, but I do remember being asked not to watch pro wrestling. I don’t think I was ever banned from watching it, but I rarely, if ever did. Mom even said something along the lines of “if you want to watch boxing, fine. If you want to watch real wrestling, fine. But don’t watch pro wrestling.” Not that boxing or wrestling was ever available as we didn’t have cable, leaving the only possible time to be the Olympics, and we all know that they never show boxing or wrestling.
Now that I think about it, she might not have included the boxing. But that’s the gist. Real sports (even violent)–fine. Fake drama pretending to be a sport–bad.
professor folk, we must be cousins! My mother swears up and down that Edith and Archie must have been based on her in-laws. 
I was not allowed to watch anything that wasn’t on WTTW (what PBS used to be here in Chicago) with one exception: My mom would take her shower during MAS*H. My dad would let me sneak out of bed and cuddle up to watch it with him. As soon as the credits began, the water would turn off and I’d race back to bed! (I now know that this was a plot between the two of them, which makes me go awwwwwww. Thanks, Mom!)
I’d also sneak out of the house half an hour early in the mornings to watch some of the Bozo Show at my friend’s house before school. I still don’t know if Mom knew about that one.
Sorry if this double posts.
Just tack on Married With Children, and you’ve got my childhood. I was recently on a study abroad trip in Argentina, when this topic came up. My host mother and sister were confused as to why my parents (or my roommates parents) wouldn’t let us watch it. Interesting, considering that my host sister was just a year older than my roommate and two years older than me.
I just remember my roommate asking, “Are we talking about the same show?”
I had no restrictions, but then I was in junior high when Hogan’s Heroes was in its original run, so there was precious little inapproriate on TV. Cable? We didn’t even have UHF then.
Oh, my father wasn’t too happy about when by brother and I watched late movies after midnight on school nights though - but that wasn’t a content issue.
Not really prohibited, but my mom’s second husband didn’t like it when we watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 because he thought the bots were satanic.
I asked my mother about it recently and she said he was never really able to explain what the hell he was talking about. It put a little bit of a damper on the fond memories I share with my siblings of staying up late to watch it together. Though almost invariable falling asleep before the end [except for The Day the Earth Froze – “I’m relative humidity. It’s not so much the heat as it is me.”]
Hogan’s Heroes and Adam-12 were the motivation for finishing my homework before dinner for the better part of my gradeschool life. The Hogan’s Heroes theme song is permanently burned into my brain.
I don’ t think there has ever been a cop show as clean-cut / straight arrow as Adam-12.
My parents (read mother) weren’t concerned about any TV shows, but oddly enough strongly believed that listening to any pop / rock & roll music would instantly convert me to a drug-addicted delinquent. Sadly, I believed them far too long, which most likely made me an insuferably self-righteous prick in high school. I’m still amazed I managed to make some friends at all… ::shudders::… thank God for growing up…
It’s strange discovering when you’re grown up that bands you originally though were corrupt are actually pretty good musicians & mostly harmless. Genesis, Rush, Queen come to mind.
Trupa, reformed goodie-two-shoes.
None were banned, although my parents thought a number of them were stupid. **Twickster ** and I are of an age, so…what he said.
Wait! I do remember not being allowed to watch The Day After. Remember that movie miniseries about a nuclear weapon blowing up in the midwest? Strange thing is, I moved to Lawrence, KS for a while a few years ago, and that’s where the movie takes place. I moved there for a girl, not a pilgrimage to represent an unseen tv movie .
My wife was not allowed to watch The Incredible Hulk. There were many more restrictions, but interestingly, that’s the one she uses as an example when the topic comes up. Based on what I gather, Little House on the Prairie was about the only show she *was * allowed to watch.
I on the other hand got to watch just about anything on network TV. We watched Baretta and Kojak at my father’s feet, and later wasted many hours on the Three’s Company, the Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, and CHiPs. Ooh, and BJ and the Bear (wasn’t there a woman truck driver named “Stacks”?!)
Cable was another matter. It wasn’t so much a prohibition against any particular program, but more a general anything after 9pm on HBO is off limits. I don’t think this rule was ever spoken, but we knew.
Don’t remember any blantant forbiddings, but I remember my mom hating Saturday Night Live (back when it was good). Sunday morning, she’d say in an icy tone, “So, I see you stayed up late and watched <i>that show.</i>”
Its funny that some people mentioned they were only allowed to watch TV for an hour each day in order to restrict their TV-watching. If my parents had forced this on me I would be spending all my free time watching TV right now, to make up for all the years I only had one hour/day. In other words, it would backfire horribly, because I’d get conditioned into thinking that the 1 hour was the only ‘fun’ I was able to have (since it was the only thing really restricted) and once I had the freedom to watch as much TV as I’d like, I’d probably go nuts with it.
That didn’t happen, and my parents gave me the freedom to pursue whatever I wanted (within reason) so long as other tasks were done. Video games were so much more interesting than Television, and Game Boy had a level of portability that meant getting dragged to Grandma’s wasn’t a boring evening anymore for me. I also read books, but books took up space and I never had room for enough new books to satisfy me. Game Boy games would keep me entertained much longer and were far more portable. After a few years, my Game Boy was nearly 3x bigger once I put on all the peripherals on it.
As for specific shows I wasn’t allowed to watch…all I can remember is seeing some movie on PBS that had a lot of nudity in it, so I started masturbating to a nude scene (I was like 12 at the time) and my mom walked in on me and was so embarassed about the whole thing she decided the simplest thing to do was to forbid me from watching PBS so she wouldn’t even have to think about the conept that her 12 year old son was masturbating to nude women on television :rolleyes:
Hey, at least it wasn’t scrambled porn! Let’s see her restrict me from watching THAT!
Love American Style.
We had to leap for the channel button when the units pulled into the driveway.
We didn’t have cable, so our options were already pretty severely restricted. My mom didn’t care about tv shows, never restricted us from watching anything, but she did make it a point to screen “rated R” movies. She didn’t do a very good job. I remember watching “Road House” with my dad, for example.
Meh…
I’ve always been a child of the internet. I am 22 now and I remember getting AOL when I was in 6th grade. Hmm… that would make me about 12. So I was never interested in Television too much in the formative years. I could always go find much more racy things on the Internet if I felt like it!
But I wasn’t allowed to watch Beavis and Butthead. My parents didn’t really want to prohibit us from watching shows as much as they wanted to not have to watch it themselves. But the funny thing is that my Dad actually started to like Beavis and Butthead! Now my dad was 35 when I was born so he was a lot older than me! But we would watch B&B as we secretly put on the tapes late at night after my mom went to sleep. They didn’t like the Simpsons too much either. My parents were pretty lax though…
Family guy reference. You really have to watch that show to get their hilarious take on some of these shows. There’s one where Brian the dog is watching an episode of some cheesy 70’s show (someone help me with the name) where a character named Schneider says this:
Schneider: “Oh I’ll fix your sink Ms Romano. And by fix your sink, I mean I’ll have sex with you. And by have sex with you I mean I’ll fix your sink. And by sink I mean your reproductive organ. And by reproductive organ I mean the thing between your knees. And by the thing between your knees I…oh I guess that one’s kind of self explanitory.”
Another one was an episode of eight is enough. It was hilarious. It shows the dad and the daughter sitting around. I can see where they get the disrespect idea too. There is some problem with the son, he’s depressed or something, and the dad says, “Maybe I ought to fix him a sandwich…” the blonde daughter laughs with a silly smirk, “Oh Dad… That’s your solution to everything” The Dad’s face turns to a scowl and runs over and starts slapping her, after the eighth slap, the wife comes up and grabs his arm and says, “Honey… Eight is enough!” and they all start laughing.
Man that show is great. Good thing it’s coming back.
I wasn’t allowed to watch The Golden Girls because my mother thought they were all a bunch of sluts. I also couldn’t watch Married with Children, Roseanne, or The Simpsons.
The funny thing is, my mother was completely against The Simpsons when they first came out- until she watched an episode. That one episode began her near-obsession with the show. Sometimes I think she likes it more than I do.
I wasn’t allowed to watch “One Day at a Time” I think it was called. The divorced mom of the two girls with the apartment super always in and out. I don’t know–I think my dad thought the divorced woman was bad or something. I couldn’t watch Laugh-in.
I couldn’t watch all of Carol Burnett. I could only watch the very beginning, then it was bed time.
I couldn’t watch Family Affair because I had my piano lesson that night. Whenever I heard that music I felt sad because it was time to go and I couldn’ t watch it.