The Littlest Hobo sucked like a hairy goat.
Alf was pretty ordinary as well.
100+ posts and no one’s mentioned Baby Bob yet? Color me shocked.
How about AfterMash? CBS’ attempt to keep a-churnin’ the money machine that was MAS*H.
Cartoons, back in the day… We loved Warner Brothers (Bugs Bunny, etc.). To this day, I still like the non-character Warner Brothers cartoons made in the 30’s and 40’s . We adored Rocky & Bullwinkle! (hey, we weren’t stupid even as little kids). Roger Ramjet. Popeye, appallingly violent, but marvelous to look at. Even Beany & Cecil had a certain charm. And then, Hanna Barbera took over. Waiting for supper around 5 p.m., we didn’t want to watch the evening news or a game show, we wanted to watch cartoons. And what did we get but the crude, bland, primitive, witless Deputy Dawg. Hucklelberry Hound. Magilla Gorilla. Yes, and this includes f’ing Yogi Bear. Just bumbling along. Stupid voices. Lowest common denominator. Witless animated timekillers for babies! Watch a Hanna Barbera cartoon then and now, and I think: Dumbasses.
I don’t know about “all time”, but I’m gonna strongly agree with everyone saying Everybody Loves Raymond. I hate that show so, so much. I can’t imagine how or why anyone would ever watch it, never mind giving it an award.
I kind of liked a lot of the weird crap from the 80s, like Alf or Small Wonder, but I was like 10. At least I got over the Brady Bunch obsession I apparently had as a toddler.
nitpick: Deputy Dawg wasn’t Hannah-Barbera. It was Terrytoons. You could see it was a very different style.
Hanna Barbera was big because it produced cost-effective cartoons to fill the bottomless maw of network TV. They just weren’t particularly good cartoons. As the powerhouse that was Jay Ward productions showed (Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, and a great many others, including the nearly-forgotten Crusader Rabbit0, you could make up for cheap animation with good writing and wit. Hanna-Barbera didn’t have that, either.
I was in Japan a few years ago and experienced Japanese TV first hand. The talk shows, news shows and game shows were excrutiating on every level. The production values (sets, lighting, camera work, audio, etc.) were at a level of 1970’s American TV. The game shows all seemed to be designed to have cute young singers, comics and other “celebrities” do stupid things, while the talk shows were focused on having the same group of young celebrities say stupid things.
You know that scene in *How I Met Your Mother *when Robin was anchoring a Japanese newscast and a chimp was throwing stuff at her? Now imagine that scene overexposed, with distorted audio, where the set doesn’t fill the entire picture, and Robin not only has to deal with a chimp, but an annoying stand-up comedian who delivers a puncline after every story.
I swear, Japanese TV makes *Small Wonder *look like a Hallmark Hall of Fame production.
MASH
Who thought a comedy about a war would ever be a good idea? And can you believe it ran eight years longer than the war itself? Man, total shite and just no redeeming qualities about it whatsoever.
And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen at least two full episodes which is twice as much as some people in this thread have given their suggestions before passing judgment.
I think we’ve found our Raymond fan.
While I’m not the world’s biggest MAS*H fan, I can think of plenty of shows that are far worse. You can’t see why it ran for so long? I wonder how Three’s Company had such a long run, given how they recycled basically the same plot (haha wacky misunderstanding haha) about 3,000 times. John Ritter was funny but his character could only do so much when everyone else was so monumentally stupid.
Or how about the late '80s Miller-Boyett comedies like Perfect Strangers or Family Matters aka The Urkel Show? You may not like MAS*H but IMO there wasn’t anyone on that show as annoying as Urkel or Balki.
And I don’t even think these are in the running for The Worst Show Ever. Remember that they actually made a television show with the Geico cavemen…
My standard is “Big Eddie” an early '70s sitcom starring Sheldon Leonard.
Apparently he got tired of producing everybody else’s sitcoms, and decided to give it a try himself. It didn’t work.
Sakuma, I think you were whooshed. (At least, I hope so.) Read the last paragraph of Enderw24’s post again.
What, no love for the Star Wars Christmas Special?
Yeah, ok. I actually lied in my post above.
I’ve never seen a single episode of MASH. Seriously. Not one. It just never appealed to me. But that’s really a far cry from saying a show like is the worst show of all time. That is, as someone mentioned upthread, objectively wrong by almost any measure. Because opinions are like assholes and assholes can be wrong with alarming frequency.
My real vote: bridalplasty. Another show I’ve also never seen a single episode of and yet feel confident in the veracity of my choice.
For current sitcoms, another vote for House of Payne. They made the mistake of ordering several seasons without even seeing the first one.
Past sitcoms: bunches of syndicated ones present themselves.
She’s the Sheriff (Suzanne Somers as she), Small Wonder (how many child murderers were caused by that show?), The New Adventures of Gidget, etc. all come to mind.
In the same vein, but even worse: Hogan’s Heroes. A comedy set in a POW camp run by Nazis.
All of whom were played by Jewish actors, quite a few of whom either were in or lost family in the concentration camps.
The Ropers.
I actually think, of the Three’s Company family of shows, Three’s A Crowd was the worst one.