Actually 80’s television in general. But sitcoms are what prompted the question. Born in '73 so grew up watching 80’s stuff. The most popular sitcoms from pretty much every other decade I can sit through for 30 minutes and still find things enjoyable about them,so it’s not just a matter of being ‘dated’. But not the 80’s.
Going by some of the most popular shows from each decade:
90’s: Seinfeld, Frasier, (even Friends, but much less so) still basically hold up and can get a laugh from me in spite of some of the anachronisms.
70’s: All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Mary Tyler Moore. Still watchable and sometimes still really funny.
60’s: Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, the outlandish stuff like I dream of Jeannie, still watchable.
50’s: I love Lucy, Honeymooners. Can still watch.
I can’t think of anything from the 80’s. Two very popular shows from the mid to late 80’s were Cosby Show and Family Ties. Its been probably 10 years since i’ve seen a Cosby Show episode but at the time I thought ‘God this sucks’. An episode of Family Ties was recently on and I thought exactly the same thing. ‘This sucks’.
Do you share this opinion? If so what do you think made the 80’s so bad in this regard? I haven’t seen it in decades, but I thought to myself "maybe, possibly, ‘Cheers’ might still hold up a bit. But probably not.
I can somewhat understand somebody being turned off by the Cosby Show after Bill Cosby’s other actions became widely known. But before that–anybody who did not enjoy the show has a seriously-defective sense of humor.
The fact that you enjoy some other good shows makes this even more bizarre. The Cosby Show was the funniest show in existence at the time. AND it still holds up.
Other '80’s shows–
Matlock was good.
Married. . . with Children was good (in more ways than one.)
The Golden Girls is still funny.
Night Court is amazing.
Your problem is that–for some bizarre reason–you apparently just don’t like the '80’s.
I didn’t care for 80s sitcoms back in the 80s. OTOH, I turned 10 in late 1989. I ended the 80s as a just-barely-pre-teen, still interested in after-school cartoons. Some of my peers were already into sitcoms like “Who’s the Boss” or “Family Ties”. I wasn’t yet interested in them, the first sitcom I started watching, at 9, was “Webster”, which was very family-oriented, had a cute and funny little boy as the main character, and also had a cast of very kind and affable adults.
“Full House” - straddles the 80s and 90s. I started watching it at perhaps the age of 11. That’s one I liked very much, and still do in hindsight. I wouldn’t say it has aged badly.
“The Cosby Show” - I never watched it back in the day. I watched a few episodes as an adult. I found some things funny about it, but ultimately it wasn’t for me. What put me off was the Huxtables’ (especially Clair, the mother’s) authoritarian parenting style. Maybe this is a good example of a show that has aged badly. We all now know that Cosby committed many acts of sexual assault. This in and of itself is not a reason for me to avoid all of his media, but for example, there’s an episode of the Cosby Show where I think he claimed to have barbecue sauce that was implied to be able to turn women on or get them to have sex with you, which is similar to his comedy routine jokes about “Spanish Fly”.
“Cheers” was never interesting to me. It had very adult humor, and even as an adult, I don’t think the format would appeal to me.
Honestly, I never was that much into sitcoms. I liked “Seinfeld” for a while at around the age of 13, but by 14, it ceased to interest me. “Friends” had no appeal for me. I did like “The Big Bang Theory” and I do like “Young Sheldon”.
But I have no problem with 80s television in general. A lot of it was I think very entertaining.
Forgot about Married with Children. As far as Matlock and Golden Girls…congrats on your upcoming 98th birthday. As far as Cosby, I loved the show in it’s initial run. But just seemed terrible when I saw it years later. And I rewatched it before we learned that Bill Cosby was not a nice man.
I dont dislike the 80’s. I still love lots of 80s music and movies. It’s just TV that falls flat.
Meanwhile, your examples of Seinfeld and Friends as good 90s sitcoms just left me flat. I never found anything funny, or otherwise worthwhile at all, in Seinfeld, and Friends wasn’t a sitcom, it was a misclassified soap opera.
I was born in 1980, so I was a kid when Cheers originally ran. I find it’s one of those shows that I didn’t like back then, probably because most of the humor was too “adult” and I didn’t get most of the jokes, but when I watch it now as an adult I find it enjoyable.
I do think a lot of sitcoms from the 80s, especially the “family” sitcoms like The Cosby Show and Full House, were stuck in a formula where everyone has to learn a lesson by the end of the episode. Then Seinfeld and completely threw out those rules with their show about nothing.
I think it’s generational. The stuff from when you were a teenager sucks now. For the OP that’s the 80s. For me it’s the 70s.
I also think the 80s were a time of transition in sitcom world. They were struggling to be inclusive and less male-dominant-alpha-asshole. But they were still figuring out what the future would be instead. Just as the rest of society was feeling their way forward as well. That led to less biting, more “safe” but boring, etc. Which does not age as well.
Yeah, I’d put Newhart and Night Court up for inclusion in the list of of the top 10-20 sitcoms of all time. Kate & Allie was another very good sitcom. Buffalo Bill, Frank’s Place, Police Squad, and Sledge Hammer! were short lived but very funny (the first two were groundbreaking in their own ways).
However, as someone who lived through the Eighties as an adult, my recollection was that it was the decade when the 8 o’clock hour was taken over by family friendly sitcoms, many aiming at pulling in early teen and preteen audiences (ALF, Charles in Charge, Diff’rent Strokes, Full House, etc.). So the traditional sitcom bloc on weeknights, 8-10, was sliced in half as far as availability for adult comedy.
As with any other time period, some material has aged well, some material has aged poorly. And let’s remember this is really not so much about the aging of the material, which content remains unchanged, but that of the viewers, one group of whom have moved along in their lives and see things differently now, and the other being people who were not even around then and don’t share any of the same referents.
70s sitcoms were about setting. 80s sitcoms put an emphasis on families. 90s were about young couples. 2000s were workplace comedies. Not sure what they’re about now. Diversity maybe.
Anyway, that factor, and your age when they were released compared with your situation now, are all going to be in play.
The best 80s sitcoms seem to deal with places away from family: Cheers, Newhart, Night Court, etc. The family ones are generally the glurge-filled ones off TGIF. Shows like Roseanne and Married With Children were a direct lampoon in the late 80s on the TGIF standard fare.
I’m not sure if many or even any sitcoms before the 1980s featured “male dominant alpha assholes.” I don’t think that was considered much of a source for comedy.
Ironically the 1980s seemed a little weak on sitcoms featuring female leads. Whereas in prior decades there was Lucille Ball’s shows, That Girl, Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, Mary Tyler Moore Show. I don’t really see the male assholes on any of these shows. Furthermore, one of the big leads was Shelley Long of Cheers, who was co-lead with Ted Danson who did in fact play a male alpha asshole.
There were also the various attempts with Dabney Coleman, playing… a male asshole.
Women did do better later in the decade with the ensemble shows Golden Girls and Designing Women. I suppose those shows were trailblazing.
As far as Cosby, I loved the show in it’s initial run. But just seemed terrible when I saw it years later. And I rewatched it before we learned that Bill Cosby was not a nice man.