That’s a great point. On this basis I suppose we could predict that today’s acclaimed shows like The Good Fight will be all but forgotten (or at least seen as dated and badly aged) in 20 years’ time.
At the time MwC was popular, I lived with my boyfriend and his brother, who were often visited by their buddies. All those guys watched the show the same way bigots watched Archie Bunker.
Although MwC was certainly sexist, it was not so in a unidimensional way. The women in the show had equal or better opportunities. All of the characters were roundly mocked.
Yeah, but when you add in the T&A, it didn’t feel very balanced.
Maybe. But is something like Modern Family so much better?
Is this a trick question? Married With Children seems incredibly misogynist to me. Modern Family is at least misogynist within normal parameters. But maybe I missed the episode where Jay started the NO MA’AM club up again.
Remember that Family Ties was itself supposed to be a reversal of the All In The Family setup, so it was already remaking a prior show.
It never worked out that well. I guess liberal parents railing against changing times wouldn’t have played the same. Liberal characters on most 1980s shows were played as benign relics and not big sources of conflict. So the kids wound up dominating Family Ties. Alex would learn some lesson about not taking speed to do well on the test, and his parents would offer a few carefully chosen words of encouragement. Other shows would be better at creating a fresh parent/child dynamic.
Married…With Children must be watched with the knowledge that it was conceived and produced as a spoof to The Cosby Show.
And let’s not forget that its theme song was “Love and Marriage”. The contrast between the old fashioned ideas of marriage and what you saw in the show was obviously deliberate.
Apropos of the idea of remaking That '70s Show, Netflix is following up the series next month with That '90s Show:
I came here to post a thread about it but I see someone has beat me to it:
Les Nesman taught me how to spell chihuahua.
And that mocking, the yelling, the bullying and berating, the gratuitous sexism and gratuitous cruelty was stomach churning and no matter how many laughs it garnered at the bimbos or pathetic excuse for males it was a disaster not fit to be called entertainment unless we join them in their zoo enclosures.
I watched it sometimes trying to find the funny, I felt then as I do today.
I liked Murphy Brown.
I have long said that a LOT of what’s wrong with America today is that such a huge fraction of our current citizens got most of their socialization from 70s-90 sitcoms and “family” dramas. If MwC is what you watched, and your parents were largely absent, MwC is what you became.
When the people who are just turning 20 now become the mainstream voters, having been raised on “reality” TV, Kardashians, and social media I think it’ll be time to turn out the lights.
Oh yeah … Get Off My LAWN!
I’m sure if I watched it again, and I don’t really care to, I would feel it aged badly. A running gag with the sound of flushing is hardly witty repartee. However, I considered the show at the time (and I was not very old) a parody of the preachiness and highly functional families of some other shows. Not necessarily a great one - there was certainly gratuitous sexism and formulaic jokes, but this wasn’t unusual for its time, not has it disappeared. It isn’t in the same league as the other shows I mentioned.
I maintain that Unhappily Ever After was a spoof of Married with Children.
Yuppers
Combined with the demographics of the average Doper, very few of the takes in this thread (especially of the ‘kids these days’ variety) are particularly surprising.
You’d see a gritty reboot with the parents being MAGA types and their relationship with their children are strained at best. Mallory will end up dating Nick, a non-binary transgender individual. Why not? If they can do a gritty Fresh Prince they can do a gritty Family Ties.
For the record, MAD Magazine was already imagining a “liberal parents of conservative kids” scenario in 1961:
Understandable, since the creators of Unhappily Ever After were previously a writer and producer of Married… With Children.
Mad Magazine was way ahead of Weird Al with parody lyrics. Also, I will always think of the lady from Lassie and Lost in Space as “lovely June Lockliver” because of Mad Magazine.