My most recent guilty pleasure has been old television series on Netflix. I’m working my way through Thirtysomething, which debuted when I was in the seventh grade. it was one of the many “adult” shows I was allowed to watch long before I was an adult myself. Thirtysomething is where I was first introduced to Timothy Busfield of West Wing fame (all hail, CJ’s boyfriend). I also remember watching St. Elsewhere, Moonlighting, and HIll Street Blues. What television shows do you remember staying up late to watch, only to look back and wonder– should I have really been watching that?
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Monday Night Flashback OT: 1980something
37 replies on “Monday Night Flashback OT: 1980something”
Late 70s, 80s blurs together for me. But I remember staying up late to watch Barney Miller and Sanford & Son, and I absolutely loved Night Court.
The only hour-long shows I associate with my high school years are Dallas, Knots Landing and Dynasty.Â
Growing up, Friday nights were family TV time–remember TGIF? Â Full House, Family Matters, Step By Step, and all the rest? Â But really, exciting part happened on the nights when my parents would doze off so I could stay up to watch the next show that came on that channel: 20/20. Â Lord knows it was entirely inappropriate, and I’m sure I didn’t understand at least half of what they were talking about, but watching Barbara Walters, John Stossel, and the rest of the gang made me feel ever so grown up.
It’s funny, they don’t have that effect on me today.
Also, this guy:
Most kids are given a teddy bear at their birth. Â My dad bought an Alf the day I came home. Â He’s in my baby pictures.
That is awesome! My grandma bought us a giant Alf doll that moved his mouth and told you a story when you put a tape a hidden pocket on his back. We loved that thing and we played with it all the time. Well, I went home last month for a visit and I was surprised to see that my grandma still has that Alf doll and it still works 20+ years later! Now her great-grandchildren play with it. :)
90s or 80s? It’s all a blur to me. Shows I watched: Rosanne, Married with Children, Simpsons, Family Matters, Who’s the Boss, The Wonder Years, Saved by the Bell, The Nanny (I love Fran Drescher!), and COPS. Oh, and who remembers The Dinosaurs? It was a good time to be a kid. TV was relatively wholesome and family based. Now it’s all drugs, crime, terrorism and Survivor Island. (Yes, I lumped those all together purposely in ascending order of horror.)
I remember Dinosaurs! I was a bit old for its target audience, but that was on our regular viewing schedule.
Not relevant to TV, but I am DREADING work today. There has been a series of bullshit that means today is going to suck mightily, and  no amount of positive thinking will make it otherwise.
I hope there’s something that makes you smile :).
The X-Files. As an imaginative, anxious child I should *not* have been watching that.
You just reminded me of The Twilight Zone. There’s nothing really adult about it, but it constantly scared the shit out of me when I was little, and it is the root of my fear of scary dolls.
The credit opening of the ‘new’ Outer Limits tv series scared the shit out of me. There was something about those trees that were really, really creepy.
I completely agree. When I went through the whole series as an adult, I couldn’t believe that I ever watched it when I was a kid; how did I *ever* sleep?
The guy who emerges from hibernation every 50 years to eat livers?? ACK.
Oh God. That guy was CREEPY– Doug Hutchinson gives me the heebie jeebies in real life to this day.
WHAT ABOUT HOME AND THE LIMBLESS WOMAN ON THE SLED?!
OH GOD STOP. And the baby’s hand sticking up out of the mud…..ARGH.
They get away at the end. THEY’RE STILL OUT THERE.
I Â had blocked that part out….
Oh yeah! I forgot (probably for a good reason) about that episode! There was some scary shit on that show. Is it my imagination or was there an episode about a gigantic human, tapeworm hybrid, that was also terrifying?
Maybe you mean the sideshow episode? There was a guy with a parasitic twin that could detach itself from him and then killed people.
Oh my. I should warn you, this is graphic:
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The flukeman! Yeah, that was the first episode that I thought was really, really creepy.
I CAN NEVER HEAR JOHNNY MATHIS AGAIN BECAUSE OF THAT EPISODE.
PISS SHIVERS FOREVER.
I think we’re gonna start rewatching this on Netflix. Mini’s never seen it.
My parents had no problem with us watching all kinds of grisly cop dramas, but if there was a hint of a swear word or even a bit of sensuality/sexuality, there was a blanket ban on the show. Since most shows aimed at younger/adolescent audiences are heavy on the sensuality (y’know, so teens can relate or something) and light on the other stuff, I basically grew up on shit like Law and Order. Nightmares for days about stuff I saw in that, but somehow they considered it more age appropriate.
It is so strange when that happens, but it happens a lot.
Oh I’ve just remembered the only thing that was entirely forbidden was the Power Rangers TV series because it glorifies violence. I remember being very put out about that. It was later banned in New Zealand, but they filmed it here. Weird.
Well, I was explicitly forbidden from watching the V tv series and got busted a couple of times doing so. I would sit real close to the tv with the sound on low so that I could find out what was going on with Diana and Co.
For many years, my bedtime was 9 pm. All the good shows like Chicago Hope, ER and CSI started at 8.30. I got to watch half then sent to bed. It was made all the more infuriating by the fact my bedroom was right by the lounge, so I could hear the muffled TV sounds, but could never find out what happened at the end.
Oh man, I watched so much inappropriate TV as a kid. I watched Married With Children when I was probably 9 or 10, which I was technically not allowed to due to the rampant misogyny, but I did anyway. Also In Living Color. I used to watch ER in middle school, too. For movies I remember that Speed was my first parent-sanctioned R-rated movie and I saw it when I was 12, but I am pretty sure there were more before that.
I remember trying really hard to get through “Revenge of the Nerds” but nobody would let me. Â Inappropriate, or something. Â In spite, I just lived my life as a nerd looking for revenge.
Have you watched it recently? I was shocked by how super-rapey it is. And I say that as the ‘keep things in context’ girl.
I watched it a few years ago (so mid-twenties) as one of maybe three women in a room otherwise full of men and spent the whole movie going “THAT IS SO NOT OKAY WTF” but not feeling safe enough to say anything out loud about it :(
Yeah, there’s a lot in that movie that is grotesquely sexist.
Ugh. I’m sorry.
The whole fair sequence is really upsetting — distributing naked pictures of a woman taken without her consent, tricking her into sex, the whole sheebang.
I am sort of curious if those sequences would be included if the movie had been made now — there’s been a lot of strides made in the last 30 years.
Not at all. Â The only thing I remember about it is ??everybody mooning somebody all at once?? Â ??on a cliff?? Â That might even be a different movie. Â But that shocked me enough to stay with me. Â BARE BUTTS!