Watching Sitcoms

The 80’s were my favorite time ever. If I could go back and just live those days over, I really might do it. I’m a fan of the music and the movies and even the amazing (and sometimes terrible) clothes and hair styles. I mean, like, totally. You know?

Here are the nominees for Best Show of the Eighties: Alf, The A Team, Benson, The Facts of Life and Married With Children. Once again there are more sitcoms than not in the picks.

First of all, let me say that I had no idea that Married With Children actually hails from the 80’s. I thought it was a lot more recent. But I looked it up. It was actually on from 1987 to 1997, which, in my opinion makes it more of a 90’s show. I never watched it cause I thought it was just too ghetto. If you know what I mean.

I actually have an Alf story. I never really liked the show, but did watch it and I can’t deny that it was iconic. It was on Monday nights - I believe - opposite MacGyver, which I really wanted to watch, but my mother insisted on Alf. Since my mother also worked very long days, she often fell asleep on the couch just moments into the show. I would try to sneakily change the channel, but that always caught her attention. So I was forced to sit and watch every ep, even the repeats, while she slept.

I did watch Facts of Life, although it wasn’t an absolute favorite, as well as The A-Team and Benson. I loved, loved, loved both shows. I just adored Murdoch on The A-Team- not Faceman, as could have been expected - and I remember touring the backlot at Universal and seeing their van. If I recall correctly, it was fairly close by to Tarzan’s “forest” and the Psycho house.

Benson was a complete family favorite and for years afterwards my mother would yell from the other room, “I can hear, you” in her best imitation of a Swedish accent. I have to say that if I’m voting for the Best of the 80’s, I’d go with Benson, cause I think appealed to a wider audience than any of the other shows listed.

Have fun voting:

To keep going with the sitcom stereotyping, if you go back a few years, women were actually portrayed as the weaker sex, and as needing the strong male role model. Look at I Love Lucy. She was always getting into scrapes and needing to be saved by Ricky. (”Lucy, you got some “splaining to do.” Insert your own fake Cuban accent.) Now, compare Lucy to Raymond (this has apparently become our standard sitcom, against which all others are judged), who plays the buffoon to his strong wife, Debra. Although, that might just be Patricia Heaton, cause she pretty much emasculates Kelsey Grammer in Back To You, as well.

How about looking at parents and children. There used to be shows like Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver and Happy Days where the parents were shown as actually being a little smarter than their children. As actual authoritative figures. Compare those shows to something like Married With Children or Aliens in America. I’ve already commented on how obnoxious and annoying the parents came across on that show. I suppose you could argue that the parents of today’s shows are part of the Me Generation (which as far as I’m concerned is a label for the Baby Boomers, and which should not be confused with Generation Me, a label now applied to people born in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, but only cause they are even more selfish than we Boomers and want the title for themselves) and as a result, they are more self-involved than the parents of the 50s. That probably started with Michael and Elise Keaton. Clearly, Alex P. was much more evolved than his parents. (But then they were all Boomers, right?)

Obviously, it’s a new world and maybe kids are smarter than they used to be. So what examples can you think of that prove or disprove my point?

I Love Lucy, Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, Kelsey Grammer, Father Know Best, Leave It To Beaver, Married with Children, Family Ties, Alex P. Keaton, Micahel J. Fox