Old TV shows


Guest Mores
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Guest Mores

I recently came across an internet thread about "the worst 80s TV shows" or something like that.  One series was "The Powers of Matthew Starr."  I remembered that show.  I kind of liked it.  But when i went back to look at the plots and old videos, I had to wonder what on earth I was thinking.  Presentism, I guess.

What shows do you remember liking back in the day, but now you look back and think it was trash?

Another one for me is The Phoenix.

 

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1 minute ago, Mores said:

I recently came across an internet thread about "the worst 80s TV shows" or something like that.  One series was "The Powers of Matthew Starr."  I remembered that show.  I kind of liked it.  But when i went back to look at the plots and old videos, I had to wonder what on earth I was thinking.  Presentism, I guess.

What shows do you remember liking back in the day, but now you look back and think it was trash?

Another one for me is The Phoenix.

As a young child, I liked I Dream of Jeannie. I was secretly in love with Barbara Eden, 'cuz she was purdy.

As an older child and teen, I watched it occasionally and found it pretty funny. I remember when Major Nelson was given Jeannie's magical powers without knowing it, and hilarity resulted. "We're up to our ears in paperwork, sir." DOING! They're up to their ears in paperwork. "You're a brick, Rog!" DOING! Roger is a brick. "I want Roger back in his original form!" DOING! Roger is a newborn.

I watched the series with my wife long after we were married, along with our kids (sometimes). And it was funny. Sort of. But it was often pretty dumb. Not just formulaic, which is obvious, but...not really all that entertaining. Sometimes even boring.

I despise most current television, but I have to admit that from the standpoint of presentation, TV in general has gotten a lot—"better" is probably the wrong word—let's just say, more engaging. The dog poop fraction is much higher,  but Hollywood has figured out lots of ways to dress it up, not merely disguising the flavor but actually presenting that rustic, savory dog poop as one of the primary features people watch for.

But I eat Münster cheese, so maybe I shouldn't talk.

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This may have been from the '70s rather than the '80s, but "The Gemini Man". He had an accident that made him invisible (it's always a risk) so they made a device to make him visible again and built it into a digital watch. The upshot of this was he was able to press a button on his watch and make himself temporarily invisible whenever he wanted.

A digital watch was BTW a rather snazzy item in those days. Not many kids had them. If you were lucky enough to own one, an incredibly funny thing to do was to press one of the buttons and immediately cover your eyes - thus making yourself invisible (to ostriches).

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Guest Mores
3 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

If you were lucky enough to own one, an incredibly funny thing to do was to press one of the buttons and immediately cover your eyes - thus making yourself invisible (to ostriches).

I must say, you always have these clever, creative ways of saying the ridiculous that just makes me enjoy your posts.

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14 minutes ago, Mores said:

I recently came across an internet thread about "the worst 80s TV shows" or something like that.  One series was "The Powers of Matthew Starr."  I remembered that show.  I kind of liked it.  But when i went back to look at the plots and old videos, I had to wonder what on earth I was thinking.  Presentism, I guess.

What shows do you remember liking back in the day, but now you look back and think it was trash?

Another one for me is The Phoenix.

 

When I was a kid I loved the Pokemon tv show ( it helped that I loved the game too). They recently brought it back to Netflix, and I tried watching it again and I'm definitely left wondering what the heck I was thinking. Every episode ends with a rather silly moral ( you know like friends can achoeve anything together sort of moral) and an extremely cringeworthy poke-rap. 

Edited by Midwest LDS
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Guest Mores

Ooh!  Another one was Man From Atlantis.  Yes, "formulaic" is exactly what I would say.  The talking with bubbles didn't even make sense now that I think back on it.  But whatever.  It just didn't have the magic that it once did since today's Hollywood effects have developed so much.

Reminds me of "Wide Awake" (a story of a Catholic Elementary School kid) who talked about how the "magic" of childhood was disappearing as he got older.  And he was disappointed that it was so.

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1 minute ago, Vort said:

Is that the guy who supposedly swam so incredibly fast by flexing his body underwater as if doing a porpoise imitation?

Yes!  Forgot about that.  But, yes. That was him.

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Guest MormonGator

The Wonder Years. I loved that show as a kid, saw it once as an adult and thought it was horrible. It over romanticizes a time in life that was miserable for so many of us. I remember being ashamed of myself that I actually liked it at one point. Nostalgia is so overrated. 

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3 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

The Wonder Years. I loved that show as a kid, saw it once as an adult and thought it was horrible. It over romanticizes a time in life that was miserable for so many of us. I remember being ashamed of myself that I actually liked it at one point. Nostalgia is so overrated. 

I remember that show.  I liked it too.  I haven't seen it lately.  So, I'm not sure what was so bad about it.  I'll have to take a look again.

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Just now, Mores said:

I remember that show.  I liked it too.  I haven't seen it lately.  So, I'm not sure what was so bad about it.  I'll have to take a look again.

Maybe Kevin just had a vastly different experience growing up than I did. Maybe you did too, and I hope you did-but I remember watching the show recently and thinking "This is nothing like how high school/growing up was for me. I don't share the memories, I don't share his experiences. I was never in this or that situation, I don't have memories like this." Then I remember asking myself why I liked it so much in the first place. Probably because back then it was how I wished my life was. 

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I spent the last two years re-watching all the Star Trek series' on Netflix.   Except the original series.  I just simply couldn't make it past the first 3-4 episodes.  Holy corny kitchey outdated stereotypical subpar Batman!

I know TOS revolutionized many things and popularized the genre and spawned a hundred different wonderful things, but heck.  It's like trying to be interested in getting a light bulb from the 1940's.  You get it up and running, and then you start thinking about how it's taking the same energy as all the other sources of light in your house, to give off crappier light.  Then it blows out.   At the time, it was the bees knees though.

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2 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I spent the last two years re-watching all the Star Trek series' on Netflix.   Except the original series.  I just simply couldn't make it past the first 3-4 episodes.  Holy corny kitchey outdated stereotypical subpar Batman!

There's another one!  Batman.  Yeah, I know it was supposed to be campy.  But holy cow!  Did people actually like that sort of entertainment?  Wow!  What were we thinking?

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TBH, there's like a 5 minute scene where Catwoman tries to seduce Batman, and it's all done in a single take, with only one camera.  So much dialogue!  If you can bring yourself to appreciate stuff like that, the whole campy thing takes on a new dimension.   They really don't make quality stuff like they used to.

Also, old-timey Battlestar Galactica.  Stock footage and mullets never looked so good!  Plus, it had the star of Kolob, and the quorum of the twelve, and the 12 tribes, and even Lucifer the fallen angel!

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7 hours ago, mirkwood said:

M*A*S*H*

I actually agree with this. One of the most overrated comedies of all time. Lasted about four times as long as the three-year Korean War. Apparently, many people found Alan Alda's snarky humor engaging right up to the end. I was much less discriminating at the time, but I thought it was getting stale. Poor Radar was getting awfully long in the tooth for the naive kid who got drafted.

Plus, Hawkeye was a huge jerk, and almost never got called on it. He was simply mean, and hid behind his surgical skills so he could bully people incessantly and pretend he was justified. After a while, I just wanted to see someone come along and invert his nose.

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16 hours ago, mirkwood said:

M*A*S*H*

Ehrrr.  Uhmm.. What was that?

10 hours ago, mirkwood said:

@beefcheI was just stirring the pot.  MASH is/was great.  Watching Col. Flagg's antics right now.

Oh... Ok.  These aren't the droids we're looking for. Move along.

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16 hours ago, mirkwood said:

M*A*S*H*

I didn't watch MASH much as a young kid, but when I did I couldn't quite understand what sort of a show it was. Was it a comedy? It seemed like it (though I think most of the black humour went over my head) but why was there no laughter track?

Many years later I discovered  the the guy who originally created MASH wanted no laughter track, but the US TV networks overruled him. When the show was sold to the UK, his advice was taken, so the UK version of MASH is actually more authentic than the US one.

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10 hours ago, Vort said:

I actually agree with this. One of the most overrated comedies of all time. Lasted about four times as long as the three-year Korean War. Apparently, many people found Alan Alda's snarky humor engaging right up to the end. I was much less discriminating at the time, but I thought it was getting stale. Poor Radar was getting awfully long in the tooth for the naive kid who got drafted.

I didn't really watch it all that often.  Maybe three or four episodes per season.  I wonder if I would have seen it getting stale if I watched it more often.  I agree that Radar was getting old.

10 hours ago, Vort said:

Plus, Hawkeye was a huge jerk, and almost never got called on it. He was simply mean, and hid behind his surgical skills so he could bully people incessantly and pretend he was justified. After a while, I just wanted to see someone come along and invert his nose.

He was only a jerk to the resident whipping boy of the series (Burns, and later, Winchester, with the occasional guest star).  Stories of all kinds have such characters (both the jerk and the whipping boy).

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1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

I didn't watch MASH much as a young kid, but when I did I couldn't quite understand what sort of a show it was. Was it a comedy?

It was one of the first (possibly THE first) shows considered a "dramedy".  It was categorized as a drama.  But most people got a laugh out of it.  This was a departure from the practice of the time where comedies were much more slapstick.

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26 minutes ago, Mores said:

He was only a jerk to the resident whipping boy of the series (Burns, and later, Winchester, with the occasional guest star).  Stories of all kinds have such characters (both the jerk and the whipping boy).

Yeah you're right: Like Blackadder (jerk) to Baldrick (whipping boy). Or Bilko (jerk) and Doberman (whipping boy). Though I suppose Colonel North could be considered a whipping boy Bilko was a jerk to him too - though a very respectful one!

More complex though was The Young Ones: Neil was the whipping boy to everyone, but especially to Rik Mayall's character "Rick" - who was the biggest jerk of the four. However Rick was himself the whipping boy to Vivyan: for example in the episode when they played cricket, Vivyan forced Rick to be "the stumps", and even tried to set fire to him after the game (in the tradition of the "ashes".) Vivyan for some never explained reason hero-worshipped Mike, and always addressed him as "Michael". 

Edited by Jamie123
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4 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Yeah you're right: Like Blackadder (jerk) to Baldrick (whipping boy).

A fan of Blackadder!  You just went up several notches in my book.  

I have no idea who the others are that you mentioned.

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32 minutes ago, Mores said:

A fan of Blackadder!  You just went up several notches in my book.  

I have no idea who the others are that you mentioned.

You never heard of Bilko? (Or "The Phil Silvers Show" I should say.) Actually I'm not surprised - my wife is American and she never heard of it either - all though her parents remember it. It had a surge of popularity in the UK during the 80s and 90s - at a time when the Americans had forgotten it. Though oddly enough, everyone in America still remembers the other comedies from that era like The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Beverley Hillbillies etc.

I suspect the problem may be that the Americans like to respect their military, while Master Sergeant Ernest Bilko (Phil Silvers) was about the least respectable soldier imaginable. He was lazy, dishonest and manipulative. He constantly exploited the men under him and the officers over him - especially his commanding officer Colonel North, who (though he knew full well that Bilko was a creep) never learned his lesson. He was forever flirting with North's wife, and indeed any other woman whose influence he stood to benefit from. He was everything you feel you ought to despise, and yet you couldn't help liking him for his cheery cheek.

The Young Ones was a comedy from the 1980s about four VERY disgusting young men living together in a putrid apartment, under constant threat of eviction from their landlord Mr. Brovlovsky (played by Alexei Sayle). If you think of The Monkees crossed with Family Guy you'll get the idea. The roommates called themselves "students" but you never saw them doing any studying. Neither did they appear to have jobs. They spent most of their time either engaged in ridiculous schemes (such as digging for oil in their basement), dodging the TV license inspector (by eating the TV) or else inflicting comedic violence on each other. It was quite shocking for its time.

Edited by Jamie123
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