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Snesgamer
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Posted: 07 Oct 2012 at 3:32am |
http://www.cracked.com/article_20042_6-tv-shows-you-wont-believe-were-actually-made.html
These are some of the bombs you can drop on someone who's arguing about how anything from older TV eras is automatically gold. If you can, check out and watch the entire pilot episode of A Dog's Life. It's truly terrible, and it's hard to believe the guy who made All in the Family and its spinoffs could pull something that horrible out of his ***. I do think Poochinski looked interesting, though. It looked like it could've been one of those super-cheesy shows you could brag to your nerdy friends about having watched. |
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DirtyD79
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Great article and I agree once in a while we need to pull off the nostalgia goggles and realize that there was plenty of crap back in the day too.
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Mind on My Money, Money on My Beer
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Thor
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I know it's sacrilegious to say, but although I used to love All in the Family, I don't think it's stood the test of time. I think it was a success mainly because it was so groundbreaking. But the themes are dated, and well, it's really not that funny. I remember how new and shocking and funny it was when I heard a toilet flushing on TV for the first time...but would anyone find that funny or shocking today? I doubt it. It was good at the time, though.
And then there's Maude.
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Ad nauseous
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Good article I never realized there was so much back in the day.
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One good thing about TV-you could always turn it off
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Thor
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Small Wonder (with Vicki the robot) was pretty bad in the 80s.
But as a kid, I used to like "The Hathaways", about a couple who lived in the Donna Reed/Gladys Kravitz/I Dream of Jeannie house, who adopted three chimps. It was stupid but, hey, I was 6 y/o at the time, and loved chimps.
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Jimbo
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Though I am occasionally guilty of wearing the "nostalgia goggles", I've never been under the illusion that TV back then was always good or necessarily better than what's on today.
There is a fair amount of modern TV that is light years ahead of the old stuff, with production values & techniques not dreamed of back then, not to mention the acting quality. But my point has always been that even though a lot of what was on back in the old days was shlock too, at least it wasn't 99.9% sex-driven shlock. Also, the violence was much more suggested & less graphic & in-your-face, & TV shows didn't celebrate crassness & being assholes like so much of today's garbage does. Obviously a large percentage of what TV has offered over the years has been low quality junk, at least in decades past it hadn't sunk as far down into the gutter as it has today. Today's slop is just downright depressing. Thank God for PBS. |
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...the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender
Jackson Browne - The Pretender C'mon, man! Joe Biden - 46th President of the United States |
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msmadz
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"What A Dummy" would have scared the ever loving @)( out of me and I was about 30 when that came out.
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The artist formerly known as Madawee
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Thor
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True, but we asked for it. It was our generation that set the stage for all the sex-driven stuff that's out there now. We thought it was all daring and radical and "a step in the right direction" when sexual matters started being addressed on TV. We thought it was about time TV delved into sex and treated it more realistically. Hell, prior to that, Jeannie couldn't even show her navel.
But, as relatively innocent the sex stuff was back when sex started being addressed in sitcoms, one thing leads to another leads to another leads to Two and a Half Men and Sex in the City.
In a previous post, I mentioned the toilet flush on All in the Family. Remember how great that was? The first time a toilet flushed on TV. How real! Well, now we get to see teenagers on skateboards dropping loads on suburban streets (Tosh.0). That oh-so-real toilet flush sure turned out great, didn't it? Seems to me it just took us into the sewer.
Gotta admit though---that Tosh.0 skateboarder dump was friggin' hilarious.
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Snesgamer
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Yeah, I have "nostalgia goggles" on quite often too I admit, but the thing is, a lot of the popular shows back then were actually good. Nowadays, the top shows are crap like the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo. You can't really say TV quality hasn't changed for the worse overall throughout the years. |
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Jimbo
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Agreed. TV has never been perfect, but it didn't used to be as blatantly crass & low rent as it is today. I'm thinking shows like Jerry Springer, Maury Povich & Judge Judy have a good bit to do with how low the level has sunk. It seems like white &/or ghetto trash is the "in" thing on TV nowadays. And the supposedly "serious" dramas all cater to young viewers who value style & flash over substance. No real story telling on TV anymore. On an "overall" level, TV has gotten much worse. |
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...the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender
Jackson Browne - The Pretender C'mon, man! Joe Biden - 46th President of the United States |
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regulus
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Yup, I've put on "Nostalgia Goggles" myself, (I did so six years ago) and I refuse to take them off!
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Poiuyt Power!!!
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Jimbo
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I think that sort of leads to a "chicken & the egg" type argument. Did society change TV or did TV change society? I don't think people consciously "asked" for more daring subject matter on TV, but as society's attitudes became more complex & mature, our taste in entertainment did as well. But I don't think that excuses TV for taking it to such excess. Wanting to see life depicted in a more realistic way is one thing, portraying it in the prurient, voyeuristic, juvenile manner TV does today is something else. And FYI, I tend to speak in terms of primetime, network fare. That Tosh.0 stuff is something I had never even heard of prior to you mentioning it once before. I think cable TV is a seperate subject because it's always been seen as "alternative" viewing. |
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...the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender
Jackson Browne - The Pretender C'mon, man! Joe Biden - 46th President of the United States |
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Thor
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I agree. That's why I used the term "set the stage for" rather than "asked for". Much more passive. I think that with values changing, so did TV. Nevertheless, I think the crudeness of today's TV can be traced back to that era, possibly right back to that All in the Family episode.
As far as sexuality on TV, I'll bet it can be traced back to Laugh-In. That show was considered groundbreaking, too---maybe even pivotal. It broke taboos. Girls giggling and jiggling and gyrating in skimpy bikinis like a bunch of lascivious lust-laden slatterns, their yearning young flesh emblazoned with sexual sayings designed to call forth the prurient male response, all in prime time...SHOCKING!!!
Here's Kate Hudson's mom, all a-wigglin' and a-jigglin':
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Tiz
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And there was The Benny Hill show.
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Jimbo
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Hard to say.
I think they started crossing a line into glorification of bad taste sometime around the late 80's & early 90's, right around the establishment of The Fox Network. Shows like "Married With Children", "The Simpsons" & "Roseanne" (ABC) reflected a "low brow" segment of society that, heretofore, had been politely brushed aside & ignored as though it didn't exist. Prior to that, in the early to mid 80's, all the shows seemed to reflect a more upscale, yuppie version of America in which everyone wore trendy clothes, drove nice cars & appeared well bred. The 70's started out with "cool" westerns like "Alias Smith & Jones" (Butch & Sundance) & "Kung Fu" being popular, then it seemed to morph into a kind of "countrified, all-American, CB squawkin, good 'ol boy, trucker" type thing. Right around the time Waylon & Willie started getting famous. I dunno. All I know is that quality-wise, whether good or bad, TV shows used to have more decorum & it seems like it was right around the end of the 80's when Fox was started, that the bar seemed to be lowered & the rest of the networks kind of scrambled to get on board the whole "trashy is cool" bandwagon. |
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...the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender
Jackson Browne - The Pretender C'mon, man! Joe Biden - 46th President of the United States |
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Jimbo
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Gawd, he had some little hotties on that show. Jane Leeves ("Frazier") was a Benny Hill girl at one time. |
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...the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender
Jackson Browne - The Pretender C'mon, man! Joe Biden - 46th President of the United States |
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Thor
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She also had a role as Jerry's gf on Seinfeld for awhile.
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Thor
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And that was right around the time that TV talk shows started turning into trash fests a la Jerry Springer.
I did like Coco, though.
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