The other lead, of course, was Sarah Jessica Parker. (And one of the male actors was Merritt Butrick, who played Kirk’s son on The Wrath of Khan.)
More importantly for CBS, the ratings for Square Pegs dropped steadily after the first episode. If viewers had kept watching, the network probably would have paid for everyone to go to rehab.
And that parent was played by Tony Dow, of “Leave it to Beaver” fame.
“Square Pegs” was great. I have the whole series (all 20 episodes) on DVD, and it’s fun to pull it out and binge-watch it occasionally. The interesting thing about it is that unlike other comedies set in a high school, it was shown from the kids’ point of view, in that the kids were the leads. Most other high school comedies (“Welcome Back Kotter,” “Head of the Class,” “Room 222”) focused on the teachers, with the students still important, but secondary. “Square Pegs” flipped that situation upside-down, and made the teachers secondary.
In general I just am not a fan of the aesthetic of the 80’s. Whenever I see Rifftrax is doing an 80’s project {And it seems like thats most of the thime}, I groan.
Its just so ugly. I’ll take a 70’s cheesy movie or short over an 80’s anyday.
I always enjoyed Perfect Strangers 86-93 with Balki and Cousin Larry.
Very few people in its country of origin do, and they’re baffled that the show has had such an enduring popularity abroad.
Exploring whether old TV shows hold up for present-day audiences is the raison d’être for The TV Museum Podcast. I discovered this podcast a few months ago and thought other participants in this thread might be interested.
The podcast is produced by a Californian husband-and-wife team who I assume are in their early to mid-40s. For each episode, they select a TV show that’s at least 20 years old, watch the pilot and three other episodes, and then discuss how well the show has aged. Most (but not all) of the shows they had already watched, at least sporadically, during their original airings, or in reruns in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s interesting to hear them compare their perceptions of the shows from their childhoods and from modern-day re-viewings.
The podcast does have its faults: the production is rather sloppy, with microphone drop-outs that the hosts don’t bother to re-record; one of the hosts has a tendency to atrociously mispronounce words; and the background material they present is sometimes recited almost verbatim from Wikipedia or the IMDb. But overall there are more positives than negatives.
They reach many of the same conclusions that have been voiced in this thread with respect to individual sitcoms: for example, they find that Cheers and The Golden Girls hold up quite well, Mork and Mindy quickly becomes insufferable, and a lot of individual episodes employ decidedly un-PC humour that is cringeworthy today.
To me, the 70s are ugly. Like everything is covered in nicotine and everyone needs a bath.
Not as much as they need haircuts. 
It makes sense when you explain it that way. That historical period was before my time, and when I watched the show at a rather tender age, I didn’t get any of the references.
That’s silly, but not surprising given that the show was not filmed with meticulous attention to detail. I remember when I found out that M.A.S.H. took place during the Korean War - it surprised me a great deal. The show definitely has a contemporary 70s vibe to it, and it is full of anachronisms. One of the most immediately obvious visual inaccuracies is the lack of military grooming standards. The women have their hair down. Many of the men have hair that would have been considered too long by 1950s civilian standards. Maybe they figured that as long as they looked Canadian, it didn’t matter if the markings of the truck perfectly fit what was required by the script. (As an aside, IMO they get credit for acknowledging the fact that Canada also participated in the Korean War).
I feel like the dividing line is whether or not the show was a product of its time, or something merely produced in that time.
By that I mean, that something like Family Ties was a definite product of the 80s- a lot of the setting and humor was inherent to the time that it was set in and produced in, and really doesn’t play well today as a result.
Meanwhile, something like “The Golden Girls” was a lot less 80s-centric, and could have just as easily been set in the 1970s or 1990s for all it mattered.
And that seems to follow through a lot of shows- “Sanford & Son” wasn’t particularly 1970s-centric, while shows like “The Love Boat” and “Soap” were. Similarly, “Seinfeld” wasn’t overly 90s-centric, unlike say…“Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” or “Friends”, both of which were sort of definitional to the 1990s.
How does this explain the success of period sitcoms such as Blackadder, Happy Days, and That '70s Show?
Those were “period sitcoms” which were looking backwards at a previous decade (or century). I think that what @bump was saying was that a show like Family Ties wasn’t a “period sitcom” at the time it was made. But, it was clearly “tied” (pun intended) to the era in which it was made: the topical humor was often specific to 1980s Reagan-era America, and the tension between a pair of one-time hippie parents, and their striving, Republican yuppie son.
I think you’re describing a different sort of “period” sitcom. Family Ties aired in the 1980s and was very much set then, about twenty years after the parents’ experiences as 60s hippies.
The other shows were portraying times in the past.
Exactly. To use that example, “That 70’s Show” was a show about the 70s that was produced in the 1990s. There wasn’t anything particularly 1990s about it.
“Family Ties”, OTOH was produced AND set in the 1980s. You had a very timely for the 80s comedic and dramatic tension set up between the ex-1960s hippie parents, and the young Republican son in the 80s. It was the juxtaposition that drove it- the historical pattern as we well know is that the parents are typically more conservative than their children, but not in this case.
Another way to look at what I’m getting at is whether you could remake the show in the present day. Some sort of “period” show like “That 70s Show” or “Happy Days” could easily be remade- just recast the actors and go to town. Something like “The Golden Girls” could be done, although the real lightning in the bottle was the chemistry between the four main actresses.
But you couldn’t really remake “Family Ties” in the second decade of the 21st century. The juxtaposition would have to be pretty contrived- something like Gen-Xers who are still basically slackers and fairly liberal, with kids who are motivated MAGA types. Or something stupider and technology-related. Either would bomb so hard it would make the USAF blush.
It’s that sort of inherent sense of time and place that makes shows often very topical and popular in their time, and unenjoyable afterward. Shows whose premises are more timeless often do well in reruns.
I know of the show and the character (how could I avoid it?), but I never watched an episode.
I’ve never watched much television and only watched a few of the 80s sitcoms regularly. I liked Murphy Brown, Cheers, Night Court, Married With Children and The Wonder Years and so did everyone I knew. I liked English ones like Yes (Prime) Minister too, but few people I knew watched it.
Why does any sitcom age badly? In general:
- It wasn’t genuinely funny
- The humour is dated - mean-spirited, bigoted, dependant on outdated events or social issues
- Every episode was basically the same
- Characters and situations uninteresting
- Appeals only to specific group or niche
- Acting bad, overwrought, condescendingly preachy or no longer appealing
I remember the shows listed above as mostly funny, relevant, well-written. I haven’t rewatched most of them recently to reconsider them. But have no reason to think they are no longer entertaining.
The problem with most sitcoms from the '70s to the present has been lame writing, with lovable characters making stupid jokes that are greeted with laughs and huge applause. The latter is one reason why I think live audiences are actually a step down from laugh tracks—if they don’t respond the way they’re expected to, canned laughter is added anyway (a process called “sweetening” in the business).
I watch very few sitcoms nowadays, and almost none from the '80s, even though they’re stripped five days a week between 10:00 and 18:00.
Don’t get the Seinfeld hate here. I thought it was hilarious then, and it’s still hilarious now.
Maybe it’s partly because I’m an urban (not NYC, though) Jew, so a lot of it was very relatable to me.
I knew nothing about Jewish-American culture or NYC living when it came out and found it funny as hell then as I do now. The humor is polarizing for some reason, but that show has always been a split among my friends. My wife and I have very little humor overlap, but Seinfeld is one that works for both of us.