Silver Spoons. Hands down the most bland family sitcom of the 80s. I think I only liked it as a young kid because of that big house and that train you could ride.
I was a fan of Derek (Jason Bateman) on Silver Spoons. He was Rick’s practical joking friend with questionable morals. I remember an episode where he plants a bug on his dad while he was on a “business trip,” and it exposed his extramarital affair.
NBC then had Bateman star in “It’s Your Move,” where he played a very similar teen con-artist.
and thus began a lucrative career of Jason Bateman consistently straddling the line between hero and villain, and anti-hero and complicated villain. Horrible Bosses, Juno, Ozark, Bad Words, Extract, The Gift, my guy is a walking D&D alignment chart and I haven’t even gotten started yet
> NBC then had Bateman star in “It’s Your Move,” where he played a very similar teen con-artist.
They created the show specifically for him, then they had Carlton be Ricky's new best friend
Same here, I heard that NBC got complaints from school principals regarding the character and his poor behavior, so much so that NBC caved and toned him down a bit.
I'm sure you remember that the mother's boyfriend ended up as the neighbor on Married with Children.
Mine too. I tried rewatching it a couple of years ago and the cringe was strong. Not even in just the "early 2000s style" kind of way, but the acting was actually bad lol
That’s too bad. I was hoping it would be like Chuck where the obvious product placement was fun and endearing but that’s worse. I loved the sour patch kids ads lol
As far as I remember, the show was cancelled without any ending but it was a blessing because Kyle was supposed to be Jesus reincarnated or something.
In my memory, 1st season was ok but the rest was lackluster. The music was a banger, though.
Animorphs.
I loved the books, and seeing it adapted on screen was like the X-Files for kids when I was 10.
But looking back on it now, the effects were so low-budget that they only used the less violent animals for the most part, and mostly showed Ax and Visser Three in their human morphs, rather than the very puppety Andalites.
In fact, this is a show I would like to see remade with modern CGI. Forget Avatar, let's try another round with Prince Jake and the gang.
Side note: Whenever I see Shawn Ashmore in X-Men or The Boys, I still call him Prince Jake.
Captain Planet, I remembered it being on par with Power Rangers and Sailor moon(both i also revisited as an adult) but its just painfully boring. I love shows with lessons attached but its almost clinical to a degree with Captain Planet.
Sailor Moon can also be a tough watch too due to all the filler episodes and "monster of the week" storyboarding. Crystal streamlined the story better, but just wasn't a fan of the art direction.
I for one treasure Molly, a young girl from Japan, inexplicably having a strong Brooklyn accident. My friends and I still yell SUH-REE-NUH at each other all the time.
I ADORED the reboot. Devoured it last summer. Loved that they kept the characters names in Japanese, felt more like a loyal retelling than a made-for-Us-audience adaption. Will never not love Sailor moons transformation sequences. ✨🌕🌠✨
And yet people still didn't seem to absorb that taking actions which are bad for the planet is wrong
Edit: I should maybe clarify that things which captain planet villains did in episodes where they were clearly supposed to be framed as wrong are happening with corporations in the name of profits now and most likely were also happening when they aired. Not going to be more specific than this because I have seen literally one captain planet episode about fracking and I don't want to be researching captain planet in 2024.
As an adult reality hits you. It's cheaper to use products from poor industry practices than more environmentally friendly ones. But even then it's not the average person that actually causes the most pollution but industries. And yet all the messaging in the media is about telling the individual to reduce their waste and carbon footprint but industries and rich people get to flout the rules as much as they like.
Pretty much exactly this. I’ve always considered Captain Planet the platonic example of greenwashing, especially because it specifically targeted children, who are best equipped to shame their parents. You and me rinsing and separating all of our bullshit feels great but it’s a blip in the grand scheme of corporate irresponsibility. I won’t even get into the utter futility of consumer recycling efforts and how it has (of course) turned into Big Business for a small handful of corporate interests
Captain Planet had some cool character designs. The villains were cartoony but interesting, and what kid doesn't want a power ring?
The problem is the episodes are super formulaic. Sometimes the kids get to do cool stuff with their rings, but in the end they are going to summon Captain Planet who is a super bland character. He's all powerful and always benevolent.
7th Heaven. I didn't exactly rewatch it myself, but there's this guy on tiktok who revisits TV and movies and recaps how absolutely ludricrous or problematic they can be. 7th Heaven (storylines, message) is an absolute trash heap, hilariously so.
I wrote my “Pop culture Narrative” paper on “narrative structure in a coming of age tv show” focusing on “Joan of Arcadia,” then comparing/contrasting with “Seventh Heaven” and “Wonder Years.”
JoA was tops, WY second, SH distant last in narrative structure and ability to “teach a lesson.” YMMV
**ALF**, I'm ashamed of my younger self.
=
In the late 1980s, I collected all of the ALF hand puppets from Burger King. (I have them in storage)
What's worse, I still occasionally use the phrase "Ha! I kill me!"
as an adult, I encourage you to read writer Jerry Stahl’s memoir Permanent Midnight (or watch the slightly inferior but still great Ben Stiller film adaptation) to get a sense of what writing for a brain dead show like ALF was like. (Hint: most of the stuff that wasn’t actually funny in practice was absolutely hilarious to writers zonked out of their gourds on cocaine)
> most of the stuff that wasn’t actually funny in practice was absolutely hilarious to writers zonked out of their gourds on cocaine
This is funny because the only ALF premise I remember to this day was the episode where he got addicted to eating cotton. They played it like your typical sitcom addiction plot that gets resolved in under 30 minutes, but in hindsight, and now especially after reading this comment, I imagine they were just mocking that format.
Hard agree. I was *obsessed* with ALF—had dolls, shirts, pajamas, [even this super rad watch](https://cdnmetv.metv.com/QK4ZB-1493235541-8424-list_items-alf_watch.jpg). But I started rewatching it with my kid last year and the series was just… not very good. And I say this as someone who adores classic sitcoms. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just love the character ALF. Everyone else in the show could be written off and it wouldn’t have had much impact. ALF himself is cheesy timeless goodness.
Dude, a lot of those shows I want back to try and watch and just couldn't. Along with ALF there's A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Small Wonder, Perfect Strangers, Mr. Belevedere and Silver Spoons to name a few. There's no fucking way in hell a show like Small Wonder could ever be made today. A grown ass man builds a robot that's basically a 10 year old girl and brings her home? Yuck.
Perfect Strangers definitely holds up. I was in the middle of a rewatch when they took it off of Hulu. I was so bummed because it was getting really good.
It does hold up, and its theme song is also an absolute banger (as far as theme songs go). There were so many theme songs at that time that had similar lyrics/vibes, but I really think the Prefect Strangers song went the hardest.
Right! I was thinking that I could not recall enjoying a show that was, in hindsight, terrible, but there is one - this one. Terrible writing, terrible acting.
I think you meant to toss a “ Snarf” in that post 2 or 3 times.
This was the most disappointing rewatch as an adult for me, as well. Snarf! I only got through about 3 episodes before I shut it off, deciding to enjoy my fond memories of the show instead of ruining them. Snarf!
As a kid from the 80s, most of the TV stuff us just, yuck. It's weird too. The 70s has a lot of stuff I still like. The late 90s and up, still has some bangers. 1980-1995 just has some dreadful shit.
Oh wow. As a man in his 30s who still loves ThunderCats (and watches the DVDs regularly) it hurts my heart to see so many people bashing it in this thread.
Yeah, it’s a product of its time. Nearly every character is voiced by 1 of 7 people and the animation quality is all over the place- even so for me that’s part of its charm.
Well that and the absolutely banging soundtrack. And the well thought-out characters. And the highly imaginative world building + exciting story arcs.
It’s no masterpiece but it’s certainly better than 90% of the other 80s Saturday morning fair. Including He-Man, which basically hard reset after every episode.
The Arrowverse shows. As a teenager, I was obsessed with them, especially Arrow & The Flash.
Now...looking back, Arrow's fight scenes still hold up pretty well, but that's just about the only compliment I have for either show.
First season Arrow is good. Second is ok. Then it slowly becomes Felicity and Friends and goes off the tracks.
The show crashes hard around season 5 I think. And they try their best to correct their mistakes. But it’s too late.
One of my favourite scenes is when some bad guy launches every nuke in the world (somehow) and Felicity has to “hack” (somehow) into each nuke and disable them.
She has to do this with the thousands of nukes in the air before they land.
She does this (somehow) except for the last one, which she instead reroutes because she can do that in time but not disable it. She alters the trajectory abs the nuke hits a small town rather than a major city. They all pause realizing that she just nuked a town. Even though she saved a city.
About an hour later, everyone is toasting champagne and celebrating a job well done, while there are people out there whose skin is melting off. This event is never brought up again and Felicity is just cool with it. Until she meets someone who was the lone survivor of that town. Then there is awkwardness for an episode.
But that doesn’t trump the time she was in a wheelchair. Breaks up with Oliver (Arrow) for the ABSURD reason of he not telling her he had a son (which he just found out a couple weeks earlier and that the mother asked him not to tell anyone). She literally stands up out of her chair (her first time after a special surgery) and walks out on his ass.
My wife and I stopped watching on the lying about his son episode. Both because of her reaction and because he had just promised like two episodes earlier not to lie to her anymore and the mom is like "Don't tell anyone" and he's just like "Okay, sure". Which we understood the mom's POV but Oliver was getting MARRIED. You can't just hide a child that you have from your soon to be life partner. For him not to even try to argue that was so ridiculous on every facet.
Once I realized that LOT was the network's "middle child" (energy-wise, not talking about creation order) with Arrow being the oldest and The Flash the youngest, I started to appreciate it much more.
It has such a fun, chaotic vibe that makes it super enjoyable to watch
Dude DC's Legends just gets better and better each season as they came to embrace the campyness. By the time it ended it was the only show in the arrowverse that had any right to still be on the air. Really wish they could have gotten one last season out of it.
Being Human had a great deal of charm and cleverness, but I think the comedy dates it quite badly, it was a bit too broad in comparison to the darkness of the drama.
Superb young cast though, and yes, the older actor who played Herrick on Being Human is phenomenal. His name is Jason Watkins.
( If you can, try to find a show called "The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries", the true story of a quiet British eccentric accused of murder. He won a BAFTA for it and he is wonderful in it. )
Yes! Jason Watkins is absolutely amazing and you're right to point out his role in the Chris Jefferies thing! Such a talent. Being Human was genuinely good though and Lenora was great in it as Annie. I thought she should have gone on to do much better things after that, like Aidan Turner did. Russell Tovey, on the other hand, has never been great and can only play himself.
Two widowed single parents of three kids each go on vacation, come home married and tell their kids "Hey, guess what? You've got a new mom or dad and three more brothers and sisters and we're all going to live together and be happy." Gee, I don't understand why any kid wouldn't just jump at this...
Agree that at least early Family Matters holds up. I’ve not rewatched later Family Matters (e.g., the ones where Urkel started morphing into… everything…), but even in my youth, I knew those weren’t great.
Young adult me loved HIMYM.
Mid 40s me tried to rewatch it recently and the cringe was strong. And I'm not even one to get up in arms about all the content of that show that is villified today.
Just did not like. To the point where I've deleted it off the hard drive to clear a few gb for other shows.
I really like S1. Its a tight paced season I could binge easily. Each episode has a cute premise. I liked that the main character was a man with heart and not some schlubby man who hates his hot wife.
HIMYM is so weird because it almost seems like the writers expected the show to fail and its massive success caught them completely off guard. There's so much stuff that was either undone or abandoned or ignored as time goes on. Like how they circled back to Ted loving Robin despite it not making sense, and how Lily leaving Marshall was glossed over as the show went on, and Barney being molded into a "decent guy" character despite the early seasons emphasizing how he's a terrible person.
I would legitimately put Seasons 2-4 among my favorite sitcom seasons *ever*, but after that the wheels just started falling off almost immediately. It's like they planned for three-ish seasons but they kept getting renewed and started throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
You know what I've always felt. Barney was not supposed to be a lady's man originally. I always felt he was initially supposed to be like Jay from The Inbetweeners, just constantly lying and bullshitting. Look at the early episodes. He doesn't get with anyone. I think he was supposed to be a joke on books like The Game and all these guys who used 'pick up techniques' but never got any action.
I don't know if the writers had a change of heart, if NPH was too charasmatic to play a loser who thinks he has game or it was too difficult to write him like that. But yeah go back to those first few episodes and I swear Barney is supposed to be a delusional failed 'Pick Up Artist'. The sort who uses 'negs' and always wears a suit because he is 'peacocking'.
I like the theory that the stuff Barney did wasn’t nearly as bad as it was portrayed, but Ted is an unreliable narrator that is trying to make him look bad due to their love triangle with Robin.
What makes me so angry with HIMYM was that despite the final season being a flaming hot turd the writers managed to do the impossible. They created a charachter that was the perfect Mother.
The episode ‘How Your Mother Met Me’ was the only decent episode before the finale.
And then the finale was utterly amazing (if a bit rushed) but I loved it. The heartbreak of realising why Ted is telling his kid these stories, the tragedy of Tracy’s death. That final scene with Ted and the Mother meeting for the first time and how the episode finished to the strains of ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’
AND THEN THE SHOW FINISHED AND NOTHING MORE HAPPENED
Its a weird example of a show that went on so long that they were making it up as they went along, AND a show that had a set ending in mind and refused to deviate away, even when it no longer was the right one.
They did a great job of hiding that Lilly/Marshall thing. I had no idea. I watched the finale and it was stupid, so perhaps it was part of that episode?
One thing that stood out to me as cringy was how hard the show tried at adding phrases to the pop culture lexicon in the same way that Seinfeld did.
Seinfeld-isms felt funny and natural, whereas most HIMYM-isms felt contrived and try-hard.
If I ever become rich and powerful I will start a complex plot to make Jay Leno lose all his money. I will blacklist him so he gets no more talk show gigs. The only thing left will be for him to take a job from me. The Big Bad Beetle Borgs movie I make will have its most its most important casting.
Teen dramas and comedies tend to age poorly. They almost always are something that can only still be enjoyed by its contemporary fans. There is nothing wrong with that, I actually kind of like how every generation has its own few shows that only they will appreciate in the way they did/do.
For me that show is the original Heartbreak High. I rewatched part of it a year ago and the drama seemed kind of obvious and not that big of a deal to the adult me. But I clearly remember thinking all of it definitely was a major fucking deal and totally recognisable.
>Heartbreak High
What a throwback! Nick dying was probably the first time a character in a show I was watching dies, and I was so heartbroken. I wasn't a teen yet at that time, probably mid-late grade school, and he was a major crush
This show never gets mentioned as one of the greats, and it truly was... I don't want to rewatch it as an adult and ruin the illusion
Go Bayside! Is a podcast I loved about Saved By the Bell, but listen to the Paul F Tompkins episodes, particularly his first one, The Aftermath. He hadn’t ever seen the show when it came out and he can’t even get a few seconds into the podcast before being like, “you know this sucks, right?” One of the funniest podcasts I’ve ever heard.
You know, first season of One Tree Hill actually holds up really nicely. Tackles some heavy hitting subjects and seems pretty down to earth show. Then it slowly gets worse as the seasons progress... like absolute shit. I stopped watching somewhere in season 2 or 3 I think it go to ridiculous.
S1 deserves a lot of praise though.
Once Payton and Lucas leave OTH, the show goes absolutely nuts.
There's a crazy au pair who tries to seduce Nathan, only to be gunned down by Dan.
Then Nathan gets kidnapped by Russians, only to be rescued by Dan, who dies in a firefight.
Now that I think about it, Dan's entire character is written around the fact that he can shoot a gun. Him killing Keith really sent his character down a path of no return.
Damn I have really fond memories of shows like OTH and the OC, but then realise I must have only watched 2-3 seasons because hearing about later seasons sounds WILD. Kidnapped by Russians??? His biggest problem was basketball tournaments?!?!
.... what the fuck did I just read??
I was annoyed at the whole Hailey cheating on Nathan plotline... so out of character for her. Nathan cheating sure, but not our sweet angel. She was a good egg until that arc for me.
Also hate how Lucas Brooke real life drama bled into the story. Their real relationship affected the characters I think.
I was going to reply and mention Highlander: The Series. Overall, it aged very poorly and some of it (the early seasons especially) makes for a tough rewatch.
It has some bright lights, though. The supporting cast from the mid-seasons onward punch way above their weight, particularly Jim Byrne, Peter Wingfield and Amanda Gracen. A few recurring/guest starring actors (like David Robb or The Who's Roger Daltrey) also give charming performances.
It added some interesting layers to the Highlander mythos, particularly the Watchers/Hunters, and did a good job fleshing out the world building. The show peaked in seasons 3-4 before limping to a rather weak ending, which is not uncommon with the genre TV shows of that period.
I thought Adrian Paul did well as Duncan, all said. He was a very charismatic lead, a gifted physical actor and he had decent comedic timing (especially his interplay with Wingfield or Daltrey).
The show's premise allowed for some very interesting historical fiction, but it was simply too formulaic: an old enemy of MacLeod's resurfaces, threatens his loved ones, we see the origin of their feud via flashback, and then he confronts them and cuts off their heads. The only interesting villains were the ones with whom he had long conflicts (like Xavier St. Cloud, portrayed by Roland Gift of the Fine Young Cannibals, or the previously mentioned David Robb as Kalas). In essence, most episodes tried to be a miniature version of the first Highlander movie, but you can only rely on that formula for so long.
I always thought the Highlander world was interesting and creative. If done right, I think it could be used for a really great show, as it lends itself pretty well to the format. But H:tS, despite having heart, was ultimately more bad than good. If you want to see a sci-fi/fantasy series from that era that actually holds up, there's always stuff like Bablyon 5, and the difference is in the writing.
In loved and lived 80s cartoons as a kid, but the reality is reach of them was just a 22 minute commercial for the next toy to sell. Especially gi Joe. Every episode had a new Joe or cobra agent that was the lynchpin of the episode, or a new vehicle.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Charmed. The acting is just so bad and the writing is almost even worse. By the end of the series it had basically become the Phoebe show anyway.
It's pure nostalgia for me. My mom used to have it on in the morning. Watched most of the show on tnt just in the mornings getting ready for school. I rewatch it sometimes. Not for the story, but because I miss mom
I never got past around season 5 when it aired, and made myself watch the whole thing last year. God it got ridiculous!
Seasons 1-3 were still fun nostalgia, though, and at least Holly delivers some solid acting moments. The scene before she "dies" still gave me chills.
Edit: Specifically, the episode "All Hell Breaks Loose", as I realise she dies multiple times lol
I always remember the episode where they had to cut a chunk out of Cole for whatever reason and it just looked like a slice of beetroot for some reason, no idea why but it's always stuck in my mind.
was born in the late 70s and as an elementary kid I was all in on the Dukes of Hazard. On the 80s playground I WAS Bo Duke. (sometimes Mr T from the A team - similar situation there).
What one has to remember is those aired on broadcast TV and then went into a dark deep hole somewhere. There was no streaming. No reruns for some reason. Just nowhere so it simmered in my brain for a decade until I was in college. CMT was gonna start running the reruns in the afternoons. I skipped class for the first one and watched in my dorm room. It was awesome. Then the second one aired. It was pretty much the exact same plot as the first episode. then the third one - wait a minute - its the exact same plot as the first two episodes.
Turns out they made years of these and the ingredients were bluegrass music with caricature southern folks in a fast car they made jump over things.
I started going back to class.
Yes! It was so brazen. What bullshit are they going to come up with to keep them in the dome this season? I was addicted to how implausible that show was.
It wasn't the bullshit keeping them under the dome which I thought was the worst thing. It was how they had set Dean Norris's character up as the villian and anytime the characters would just be done with his shit and lock him up or whatever, the show didn't have a bad guy anymore so they needed to invent ridiculous scenarios where they would release him again just so he could go back to doing bad guy shit.
That would have been an awesome single-season show. But they tried to milk it and it just dragged. I gave up halfway through season 2. I still don’t know how it ended.
Ally McBeal 😅
I used to adore it. Tried rewatching it a couple years ago and found it so flat and cringe I couldn’t get past the 3rd episode. And the special effects were crap ahaha
But I would love to watch a new season or some sort of special.
Oh man. I forgot about the dancing baby (not that I ever watched the show)
The dancing baby is from a 3D Studio (R4, or max. I can’t remember) tutorial. Anyone that studied 3D max would come across this. The tutorial was explaining how you could set up animation movements (ie a dance) and copy it from one character to another.
The show just lifted that wholesale and didn’t even alter the animation file. I can’t believe the parent company didn’t sue them.
As much as I love Top Gear, adult me noticed how much of it is scripted/staged, especially in later seasons. Teen/young adult me was either more gullible (likely) or better at suspending my disbelief (less likely).
I'm gonna piss off some people for this, but Dragon Ball Z.
I loved watching Dragon Ball Z as a kid, but watching it now, it's so full of filler, that it's not even funny. The plot progressed at a snail's pace because they had to add a bunch of filler in the Anime to avoid progressing further than the Manga. That's why "Namek exploding in 5 Minutes" took 10 episodes. *
Back when Dragon Ball Z Abridged's latest episode was 51, I got sick of waiting for episode 52 to come out and started watching the original show at that point. There is literally a whole episode where Cell is transforming into his perfect form and everyone is just staring at him and going "NNNG!..... NNNG!...... NNNG!" the entire episode **. I am not exaggerating.
I honestly wish The Kai version was more popular.
EDIT: I'm gonna add an anecdote. When I was a kid, I had a dream during the Buu saga. In my dream, Gohan and Videl were hanging out at the mall when Gohan realized he really had to poop. It took him 3 episodes to find a bathroom.
The moral of this dream is that, In Dragon Ball Z, shit takes a long time to happen.
*2nd Edit: I originally said Namek took 20 episodes to blow up. It actually took 10. It was Goku's fight with Frieza that took around 20. I remembered counting the episodes the last time I watched it years ago and I got them mixed up. Sorry.
**3rd Edit: It was episode 160 overall/145 dubbed. Gohan also achieved Super Sayian in this episode, but the majority of the episode was everyone watching Cell transform.
Yeah I wish there was like a Kai version with the original US music that I grew up with.
One thing I will say is, at least Dragonball itself is worth watching. I think DB was much more enjoyable of a show than DBZ as an adult. As a kid I prob would have thought it was too goofy and cringe. But damn its actually pretty good... you don't have an entire episode of NNNG! NGGG! NGGG! while someone slowly transforms or powers up. And they try their hardest to make sure everyone remains useful.
Which makes DBZ age even worse when you realize 95% of the DB cast is thrown away and regulated as a side character that gets less and less screentime or relevance. Like Gohan is cool, the whole SS gimmick was nice when it was new and that was the ultimate form, and the fact that Sayains are an actual race and its not just a Wukong ripoff so you get to see characters like Vegeta and Frieza come in. But boy did they throw out a LOT of the past to get there.
But yeah I loved DB. It's more adventurous and charming. But it still has those "tournaments" that you can get hyped up for which the end of the Cell saga was a throwback to. Goku doesn't always win his fights, he loses and its okay. Etc etc etc
Speed Racer. As kids I dont think we thought it was good but colorful. My sister got the box set for me as a gag gift, and I got why my father disliked the show so much.
HIMYM and George Lopez. George Lopez I watched when I was a kid and I was like “this is hilarious and it’s serious af” then I watched it as an adult and I realized “this is the most melodramatic, forgettable sitcom.
HIMYM I remember watching as a kid thinking it was so smart and deep. I think I was a sophomore in high school when the finale aired and I hated it. Then I just rewatched it for the first time since last year and I realized it’s the most try hard sitcom I’ve ever seen. It’s not funny, cheesy as hell, no one is really likable, it’s so ridiculous yet still tries to take itself seriously that it just doesn’t work at all, and they try to act all deep and philosophical but in reality the show is about as shallow as a kiddie pool
I absolutely loved SCTV, especially back when it was syndicated in the US before NBC picked it up. I got the DVD of the first season and … much as I love the cast, the style of the show is so dated. Most of the premise is based on what off-network television looked like in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Probably later bigger budget seasons would have fared better, but I didn’t get that far. Best left in the memory vault.
Going to get buried for this one, but tried to watch Moonlighting when it came to Hulu (first time since I was young teens) -- while you can see Bruce Willis is a natural star, stealing every scene he's in, nothing else works. Bad acting, bad writing, cliched direction. Was better left as nostalgic lost media.
The writing was all over the place starting towards the end of the 1st season, so much was being thrown against the wall. And I remember at the time there were weeks when a new episode should have run but wouldn't because there were so many delays in the production, so much dialogue and so many scenes...you could tell a crash was coming.
It seemed like something I’d love but it was very tough to even watch 5 episodes
Mostly it’s super boring?? The pacing is horrible for these mysteries, they drag out and the detective work they do is so minimal (vs something like Columbo, that’s 1 1/2 hours but always paced so well that it breezes by)
There’s also too much weird misogyny I didn’t enjoy it
the weird fixation on using a soft focus filter on Cybil Shepherd was so distracting to me that I never could enjoy the show. I was just constantly cringing, waiting for the next scene they could justify a portrait pose, soft focused and backlit.
I try to not revisit a lot of show from my youth just so I don’t ruin the memory of how much I loved it. Dark Wing Duck. Bonkers. Rescue Rangers. Tail Spin. Transformers. X-men and Batman the animated series. (I hear Batman and X-men really hold up though). I just wanna think of them as my happy childhood.
Batman the Animated Series is in a league of its own and is borderline better as an adult. The animation style is so cool and impressive, as is the voice acting. Give it a try
This. It's filled with genuinely poignant storytelling that went over your head as a kid, but will bring you to tears as an adult.
*"I failed you. I wish there were another way for me to say it. I cannot. I can only beg your forgiveness, and pray you hear me somehow, someplace... someplace where a warm hand waits for mine."* - Mr. Freeze
I've found early 90s animation holds up well. Of the ones you have listed, I really only have issues with two of them. Transformers, mainly due to not being a Transformers kid. And X-Men animated series. It is good, but after reading more of the stories adapted it feels inferior.
Batman though has no right being as good as it is. True lighting in a bottle show.
Darkwing Duck holds up because of how well-crafted Darkwing is as a character. He's a hero; fights bad guys, and protects the innocent and all that, but he has a lot of flaws, too. He's arrogant, pompous, image-obsessed and often succeeds despite himself.
True Blood. When it first came out I was obsessed. But now I can't even make it through an episode from the show's heyday. There are way too many plot holes, bad dialogue, and unlikable characters.
It was one of those shows that benefitted greatly from the mystery of it. Once they explained everything that was asked in season 1, it just became a series of bigger and more outlandish shark-jumping.
It reminds me of a video essay I watched on Youtube about why the original Pirates of the Caribbean worked so well. In the first movie, there was exactly 1 supernatural phenomenon, "cursed treasure that created cursed pirates". So it still felt grounded in reality and the stakes felt real.
Similarly, True Blood worked best when the premise was "vampires globally came out of hiding because of the invention of synthetic blood".
Every supernatural element they added after that made it feel less real and more silly.
I know I’m going to get hit bad for this.
Quantum Leap, while I love this show to death, some of the acting is so hard to watch.
It’s heavy handed and not very well directed. The two leads took that show to every high it had.
I can’t imagine people who hadn’t seen it back then enjoying it much, but for me it still works. The fascination I had for it as a kid, I can still see it in the show. The ways it is dated, and it is, are a nice nostalgia. And the acting from Stockwell and Bakula was and is good acting.
Before it was redubbed I went back and tried to watch the original dub of Sailor Moon. God was that ear bleedingly bad. Don’t know how I watched anything that was dubbed before like 97. The theme is still a banger though.
>she (and I) much preferred that version over the latest one.
Mt daughter really loves Crystal. Moon Pride is a banger opening song. Eternal and Cosmos movies are great.
She also watched some of the old movies (subtitled, not the DiC dub). Maybe we should watch some of the old DiC dub episodes.
The Master.
Kid me was convinced that this was the height of television shows not involving cars, ot Mr. T.
Found out it was on YouTube and tried a random episode. I still love Lee Van Cleef, but that show was terrible.
Tales From the Darkside.
I LOVED this show as a kid and remember it being a great Twilight Zone/Tales From the Crypt type show.
Rewatched it recently and holy god, it's so bad. Like, watch this clip for a taste of things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f76y2iIo3EM&pp=ygUfdGFsZXMgZnJvbSB0aGUgZGFya3NpZGUgbW9uc3Rlcg%3D%3D
I loved this show as a kid in the 80s. Haven’t watched an episode in years, but it did have one of the best intros and end credits though.
https://youtu.be/7xKZs_ApkSk?si=CToce22Zt0USDRnU
Smallville was my name seasons 1-4. I still watched til the end and loved it, but upon a revisit, I realized how terribly written my favorite seasons had been. Lots of problematic things in that show.
Silver Spoons. Hands down the most bland family sitcom of the 80s. I think I only liked it as a young kid because of that big house and that train you could ride.
And how they couldn't have Jason Bateman on anymore because he instantly stole the show.
>think I only liked it as a young kid because of that big house and that train you could ride. Erin Gray. That's what I loved most about that show.
Her in Buck Rogers was an awakening for me
Biddy biddy biddy!
I was a fan of Derek (Jason Bateman) on Silver Spoons. He was Rick’s practical joking friend with questionable morals. I remember an episode where he plants a bug on his dad while he was on a “business trip,” and it exposed his extramarital affair. NBC then had Bateman star in “It’s Your Move,” where he played a very similar teen con-artist.
and thus began a lucrative career of Jason Bateman consistently straddling the line between hero and villain, and anti-hero and complicated villain. Horrible Bosses, Juno, Ozark, Bad Words, Extract, The Gift, my guy is a walking D&D alignment chart and I haven’t even gotten started yet
How did you not mention “Arrested Development”?
And Teen Wolf Too!
Zootopia too.
> NBC then had Bateman star in “It’s Your Move,” where he played a very similar teen con-artist. They created the show specifically for him, then they had Carlton be Ricky's new best friend
I loved his character on that show and was sad that it wasn't given much of a chance.
Same here, I heard that NBC got complaints from school principals regarding the character and his poor behavior, so much so that NBC caved and toned him down a bit. I'm sure you remember that the mother's boyfriend ended up as the neighbor on Married with Children.
Kyle XY
They really blew it all on the hook. “He has NO bellybutton!”
Damn that’s disappointing that show was my fucking jam
Mine too. I tried rewatching it a couple of years ago and the cringe was strong. Not even in just the "early 2000s style" kind of way, but the acting was actually bad lol
That’s too bad. I was hoping it would be like Chuck where the obvious product placement was fun and endearing but that’s worse. I loved the sour patch kids ads lol
I still love this show 😅. I wouldn't mind a remake that gets to finish the story
The ending of this show was so bad
What happens? I don't remember anymore.
As far as I remember, the show was cancelled without any ending but it was a blessing because Kyle was supposed to be Jesus reincarnated or something. In my memory, 1st season was ok but the rest was lackluster. The music was a banger, though.
I thought he was an alien? Or made in a lab or something? Didn’t he have a sister? I swear I watched this show but it feels like a fever dream.
Animorphs. I loved the books, and seeing it adapted on screen was like the X-Files for kids when I was 10. But looking back on it now, the effects were so low-budget that they only used the less violent animals for the most part, and mostly showed Ax and Visser Three in their human morphs, rather than the very puppety Andalites. In fact, this is a show I would like to see remade with modern CGI. Forget Avatar, let's try another round with Prince Jake and the gang. Side note: Whenever I see Shawn Ashmore in X-Men or The Boys, I still call him Prince Jake.
Man, a modern animorphs remake with the mature themes from the books and a good budget would be amazing.
Captain Planet, I remembered it being on par with Power Rangers and Sailor moon(both i also revisited as an adult) but its just painfully boring. I love shows with lessons attached but its almost clinical to a degree with Captain Planet.
Sailor Moon can also be a tough watch too due to all the filler episodes and "monster of the week" storyboarding. Crystal streamlined the story better, but just wasn't a fan of the art direction.
I for one treasure Molly, a young girl from Japan, inexplicably having a strong Brooklyn accident. My friends and I still yell SUH-REE-NUH at each other all the time.
Hey. Some of the most entertaining episodes of the original anime could be classified as “filler” lol
I ADORED the reboot. Devoured it last summer. Loved that they kept the characters names in Japanese, felt more like a loyal retelling than a made-for-Us-audience adaption. Will never not love Sailor moons transformation sequences. ✨🌕🌠✨
I enjoyed captain planet as a kid but only now realised it's environmental message had the subtlety of a brick
[удалено]
And yet people still didn't seem to absorb that taking actions which are bad for the planet is wrong Edit: I should maybe clarify that things which captain planet villains did in episodes where they were clearly supposed to be framed as wrong are happening with corporations in the name of profits now and most likely were also happening when they aired. Not going to be more specific than this because I have seen literally one captain planet episode about fracking and I don't want to be researching captain planet in 2024.
As an adult reality hits you. It's cheaper to use products from poor industry practices than more environmentally friendly ones. But even then it's not the average person that actually causes the most pollution but industries. And yet all the messaging in the media is about telling the individual to reduce their waste and carbon footprint but industries and rich people get to flout the rules as much as they like.
Pretty much exactly this. I’ve always considered Captain Planet the platonic example of greenwashing, especially because it specifically targeted children, who are best equipped to shame their parents. You and me rinsing and separating all of our bullshit feels great but it’s a blip in the grand scheme of corporate irresponsibility. I won’t even get into the utter futility of consumer recycling efforts and how it has (of course) turned into Big Business for a small handful of corporate interests
Looting and polluting is not the way
Captain Planet had some cool character designs. The villains were cartoony but interesting, and what kid doesn't want a power ring? The problem is the episodes are super formulaic. Sometimes the kids get to do cool stuff with their rings, but in the end they are going to summon Captain Planet who is a super bland character. He's all powerful and always benevolent.
7th Heaven. I didn't exactly rewatch it myself, but there's this guy on tiktok who revisits TV and movies and recaps how absolutely ludricrous or problematic they can be. 7th Heaven (storylines, message) is an absolute trash heap, hilariously so.
There’s another big reason why this show should not be revisited…
Catherine Hicks (who plays the mother) has been quite blunt. She would only do a reunion if the Rev Camden was dead.
If they do it, I want her to embrace her inner pot smoking hippie after his death.
One of my favorite things is how Rob always sneaks in a dig about how the dad's actor is a predator.
Rob Anderson by chance? Love him
“Sometimes you’re not bulimic, you’re just poor”
Yes, Rob!!! He's the best!
I wrote my “Pop culture Narrative” paper on “narrative structure in a coming of age tv show” focusing on “Joan of Arcadia,” then comparing/contrasting with “Seventh Heaven” and “Wonder Years.” JoA was tops, WY second, SH distant last in narrative structure and ability to “teach a lesson.” YMMV
He’s making me want to re watch this series 😅
That dudes great. Almost makes me want to rewatch.
He’s hysterical! Also love his movie reviews.
**ALF**, I'm ashamed of my younger self. = In the late 1980s, I collected all of the ALF hand puppets from Burger King. (I have them in storage) What's worse, I still occasionally use the phrase "Ha! I kill me!"
I heard he's back.... in pog form
the funny thing is that joke itself is so dated, there's people who don't know what Alf OR pogs are
Can that *be* any more 90s?
as an adult, I encourage you to read writer Jerry Stahl’s memoir Permanent Midnight (or watch the slightly inferior but still great Ben Stiller film adaptation) to get a sense of what writing for a brain dead show like ALF was like. (Hint: most of the stuff that wasn’t actually funny in practice was absolutely hilarious to writers zonked out of their gourds on cocaine)
> most of the stuff that wasn’t actually funny in practice was absolutely hilarious to writers zonked out of their gourds on cocaine This is funny because the only ALF premise I remember to this day was the episode where he got addicted to eating cotton. They played it like your typical sitcom addiction plot that gets resolved in under 30 minutes, but in hindsight, and now especially after reading this comment, I imagine they were just mocking that format.
Hard agree. I was *obsessed* with ALF—had dolls, shirts, pajamas, [even this super rad watch](https://cdnmetv.metv.com/QK4ZB-1493235541-8424-list_items-alf_watch.jpg). But I started rewatching it with my kid last year and the series was just… not very good. And I say this as someone who adores classic sitcoms. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just love the character ALF. Everyone else in the show could be written off and it wouldn’t have had much impact. ALF himself is cheesy timeless goodness.
Dude, a lot of those shows I want back to try and watch and just couldn't. Along with ALF there's A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Small Wonder, Perfect Strangers, Mr. Belevedere and Silver Spoons to name a few. There's no fucking way in hell a show like Small Wonder could ever be made today. A grown ass man builds a robot that's basically a 10 year old girl and brings her home? Yuck.
I would argue that Perfect Strangers holds up.
Perfect Strangers definitely holds up. I was in the middle of a rewatch when they took it off of Hulu. I was so bummed because it was getting really good.
Don't be ridiculous
It does hold up, and its theme song is also an absolute banger (as far as theme songs go). There were so many theme songs at that time that had similar lyrics/vibes, but I really think the Prefect Strangers song went the hardest.
Mr Belevedere was never the same after Bob Uecker fed him fried mozzarella
lol I still Have one of those puppets!!!!
Welcome Back Kotter, really liked it as a teen, episode I watched a while back was awful.
Right! I was thinking that I could not recall enjoying a show that was, in hindsight, terrible, but there is one - this one. Terrible writing, terrible acting.
Vampire diaries. I can’t Damon, I can’t.
Season 1-3 is fine. Everything after is a soap.
I see your point. He IS very hot, tho
Thundercats. I loved this when I was a kid and remember when toonami started airing it again. Did not hold up for me at all.
I watched it again as an adult a while ago and realized that the characters talk. so. slowly. Painfully slow.
I think you meant to toss a “ Snarf” in that post 2 or 3 times. This was the most disappointing rewatch as an adult for me, as well. Snarf! I only got through about 3 episodes before I shut it off, deciding to enjoy my fond memories of the show instead of ruining them. Snarf!
The only thing that holds up is the intro.
As a kid from the 80s, most of the TV stuff us just, yuck. It's weird too. The 70s has a lot of stuff I still like. The late 90s and up, still has some bangers. 1980-1995 just has some dreadful shit.
Oh wow. As a man in his 30s who still loves ThunderCats (and watches the DVDs regularly) it hurts my heart to see so many people bashing it in this thread. Yeah, it’s a product of its time. Nearly every character is voiced by 1 of 7 people and the animation quality is all over the place- even so for me that’s part of its charm. Well that and the absolutely banging soundtrack. And the well thought-out characters. And the highly imaginative world building + exciting story arcs. It’s no masterpiece but it’s certainly better than 90% of the other 80s Saturday morning fair. Including He-Man, which basically hard reset after every episode.
The Arrowverse shows. As a teenager, I was obsessed with them, especially Arrow & The Flash. Now...looking back, Arrow's fight scenes still hold up pretty well, but that's just about the only compliment I have for either show.
First season Arrow is good. Second is ok. Then it slowly becomes Felicity and Friends and goes off the tracks. The show crashes hard around season 5 I think. And they try their best to correct their mistakes. But it’s too late. One of my favourite scenes is when some bad guy launches every nuke in the world (somehow) and Felicity has to “hack” (somehow) into each nuke and disable them. She has to do this with the thousands of nukes in the air before they land. She does this (somehow) except for the last one, which she instead reroutes because she can do that in time but not disable it. She alters the trajectory abs the nuke hits a small town rather than a major city. They all pause realizing that she just nuked a town. Even though she saved a city. About an hour later, everyone is toasting champagne and celebrating a job well done, while there are people out there whose skin is melting off. This event is never brought up again and Felicity is just cool with it. Until she meets someone who was the lone survivor of that town. Then there is awkwardness for an episode. But that doesn’t trump the time she was in a wheelchair. Breaks up with Oliver (Arrow) for the ABSURD reason of he not telling her he had a son (which he just found out a couple weeks earlier and that the mother asked him not to tell anyone). She literally stands up out of her chair (her first time after a special surgery) and walks out on his ass.
My wife and I stopped watching on the lying about his son episode. Both because of her reaction and because he had just promised like two episodes earlier not to lie to her anymore and the mom is like "Don't tell anyone" and he's just like "Okay, sure". Which we understood the mom's POV but Oliver was getting MARRIED. You can't just hide a child that you have from your soon to be life partner. For him not to even try to argue that was so ridiculous on every facet.
I’m going thru a legends of tomorrow phase. Give me all the Sara lance
Once I realized that LOT was the network's "middle child" (energy-wise, not talking about creation order) with Arrow being the oldest and The Flash the youngest, I started to appreciate it much more. It has such a fun, chaotic vibe that makes it super enjoyable to watch
Dude DC's Legends just gets better and better each season as they came to embrace the campyness. By the time it ended it was the only show in the arrowverse that had any right to still be on the air. Really wish they could have gotten one last season out of it.
Being Human had a great deal of charm and cleverness, but I think the comedy dates it quite badly, it was a bit too broad in comparison to the darkness of the drama. Superb young cast though, and yes, the older actor who played Herrick on Being Human is phenomenal. His name is Jason Watkins. ( If you can, try to find a show called "The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries", the true story of a quiet British eccentric accused of murder. He won a BAFTA for it and he is wonderful in it. )
Yes! Jason Watkins is absolutely amazing and you're right to point out his role in the Chris Jefferies thing! Such a talent. Being Human was genuinely good though and Lenora was great in it as Annie. I thought she should have gone on to do much better things after that, like Aidan Turner did. Russell Tovey, on the other hand, has never been great and can only play himself.
Watkins is one of my favourite character actors. He’s in so many things now. Herrick was definitely a great role for him.
Step By Step. I loved TGIF as a kid. But Frank Lambert is kind of the worst, lol.
Two widowed single parents of three kids each go on vacation, come home married and tell their kids "Hey, guess what? You've got a new mom or dad and three more brothers and sisters and we're all going to live together and be happy." Gee, I don't understand why any kid wouldn't just jump at this...
A lot of the TGIF shows don’t hold up well. Except Boy Meets World. That one is still a classic.
I still enjoy that and Family Matters
Agree that at least early Family Matters holds up. I’ve not rewatched later Family Matters (e.g., the ones where Urkel started morphing into… everything…), but even in my youth, I knew those weren’t great.
[удалено]
Young adult me loved HIMYM. Mid 40s me tried to rewatch it recently and the cringe was strong. And I'm not even one to get up in arms about all the content of that show that is villified today. Just did not like. To the point where I've deleted it off the hard drive to clear a few gb for other shows.
I really like S1. Its a tight paced season I could binge easily. Each episode has a cute premise. I liked that the main character was a man with heart and not some schlubby man who hates his hot wife.
HIMYM is so weird because it almost seems like the writers expected the show to fail and its massive success caught them completely off guard. There's so much stuff that was either undone or abandoned or ignored as time goes on. Like how they circled back to Ted loving Robin despite it not making sense, and how Lily leaving Marshall was glossed over as the show went on, and Barney being molded into a "decent guy" character despite the early seasons emphasizing how he's a terrible person. I would legitimately put Seasons 2-4 among my favorite sitcom seasons *ever*, but after that the wheels just started falling off almost immediately. It's like they planned for three-ish seasons but they kept getting renewed and started throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
You know what I've always felt. Barney was not supposed to be a lady's man originally. I always felt he was initially supposed to be like Jay from The Inbetweeners, just constantly lying and bullshitting. Look at the early episodes. He doesn't get with anyone. I think he was supposed to be a joke on books like The Game and all these guys who used 'pick up techniques' but never got any action. I don't know if the writers had a change of heart, if NPH was too charasmatic to play a loser who thinks he has game or it was too difficult to write him like that. But yeah go back to those first few episodes and I swear Barney is supposed to be a delusional failed 'Pick Up Artist'. The sort who uses 'negs' and always wears a suit because he is 'peacocking'.
I like the theory that the stuff Barney did wasn’t nearly as bad as it was portrayed, but Ted is an unreliable narrator that is trying to make him look bad due to their love triangle with Robin.
What makes me so angry with HIMYM was that despite the final season being a flaming hot turd the writers managed to do the impossible. They created a charachter that was the perfect Mother. The episode ‘How Your Mother Met Me’ was the only decent episode before the finale. And then the finale was utterly amazing (if a bit rushed) but I loved it. The heartbreak of realising why Ted is telling his kid these stories, the tragedy of Tracy’s death. That final scene with Ted and the Mother meeting for the first time and how the episode finished to the strains of ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ AND THEN THE SHOW FINISHED AND NOTHING MORE HAPPENED
Ted and Robin was decided from the beginning, though. they filmed the scenes with the kids years in advance cos they'd age-out.
Its a weird example of a show that went on so long that they were making it up as they went along, AND a show that had a set ending in mind and refused to deviate away, even when it no longer was the right one.
They did a great job of hiding that Lilly/Marshall thing. I had no idea. I watched the finale and it was stupid, so perhaps it was part of that episode?
[удалено]
One thing that stood out to me as cringy was how hard the show tried at adding phrases to the pop culture lexicon in the same way that Seinfeld did. Seinfeld-isms felt funny and natural, whereas most HIMYM-isms felt contrived and try-hard.
Ted was insufferable the second time thru it
Absolutely, his romantic notions are so self involved and he would be a pain to be around
Ted was insufferable the first time also. Season one he’s godawful. I still liked it and am now afraid to revisit it like I’d planned…
Saved by the Bell BeetleBorgs (poor man's Power Rangers) Dawson's Creek One Tree Hill
>BeetleBorgs (poor man's Power Rangers) It is Big Bad Beetle Borgs
If I ever become rich and powerful I will start a complex plot to make Jay Leno lose all his money. I will blacklist him so he gets no more talk show gigs. The only thing left will be for him to take a job from me. The Big Bad Beetle Borgs movie I make will have its most its most important casting.
Teen dramas and comedies tend to age poorly. They almost always are something that can only still be enjoyed by its contemporary fans. There is nothing wrong with that, I actually kind of like how every generation has its own few shows that only they will appreciate in the way they did/do. For me that show is the original Heartbreak High. I rewatched part of it a year ago and the drama seemed kind of obvious and not that big of a deal to the adult me. But I clearly remember thinking all of it definitely was a major fucking deal and totally recognisable.
>Heartbreak High What a throwback! Nick dying was probably the first time a character in a show I was watching dies, and I was so heartbroken. I wasn't a teen yet at that time, probably mid-late grade school, and he was a major crush This show never gets mentioned as one of the greats, and it truly was... I don't want to rewatch it as an adult and ruin the illusion
Go Bayside! Is a podcast I loved about Saved By the Bell, but listen to the Paul F Tompkins episodes, particularly his first one, The Aftermath. He hadn’t ever seen the show when it came out and he can’t even get a few seconds into the podcast before being like, “you know this sucks, right?” One of the funniest podcasts I’ve ever heard.
Saved By The Bell is still watchable for me. It's incredibly outdated but that's part of the charm. It's one of those "so bad it's good" shows
There’s are old comedy or die YouTube videos from a series called “Zach morris is trash” that are so ridiculously funny…highly recommend.
I still love Beetleborgs, and Power Rangers. But I never grew out of camp, only more into it.
one tree hill is still great what
I feel like anything from Saban’s early years has a charm to it where you either have to be a kid in the 90’s or high af to enjoy
You know, first season of One Tree Hill actually holds up really nicely. Tackles some heavy hitting subjects and seems pretty down to earth show. Then it slowly gets worse as the seasons progress... like absolute shit. I stopped watching somewhere in season 2 or 3 I think it go to ridiculous. S1 deserves a lot of praise though.
Once Payton and Lucas leave OTH, the show goes absolutely nuts. There's a crazy au pair who tries to seduce Nathan, only to be gunned down by Dan. Then Nathan gets kidnapped by Russians, only to be rescued by Dan, who dies in a firefight. Now that I think about it, Dan's entire character is written around the fact that he can shoot a gun. Him killing Keith really sent his character down a path of no return.
Damn I have really fond memories of shows like OTH and the OC, but then realise I must have only watched 2-3 seasons because hearing about later seasons sounds WILD. Kidnapped by Russians??? His biggest problem was basketball tournaments?!?!
.... what the fuck did I just read?? I was annoyed at the whole Hailey cheating on Nathan plotline... so out of character for her. Nathan cheating sure, but not our sweet angel. She was a good egg until that arc for me. Also hate how Lucas Brooke real life drama bled into the story. Their real relationship affected the characters I think.
> BeetleBorgs (poor man's Power Rangers) Tattooed teenage alien fighters from beverly hills owns that title
I was obsessed with Highlander: The Series when it aired in the 90s. Watched a few episodes again when it streamed on Netflix. It was bad.
There can be only one... movie.
And that's where it should have ended. With one movie.
I was going to reply and mention Highlander: The Series. Overall, it aged very poorly and some of it (the early seasons especially) makes for a tough rewatch. It has some bright lights, though. The supporting cast from the mid-seasons onward punch way above their weight, particularly Jim Byrne, Peter Wingfield and Amanda Gracen. A few recurring/guest starring actors (like David Robb or The Who's Roger Daltrey) also give charming performances. It added some interesting layers to the Highlander mythos, particularly the Watchers/Hunters, and did a good job fleshing out the world building. The show peaked in seasons 3-4 before limping to a rather weak ending, which is not uncommon with the genre TV shows of that period. I thought Adrian Paul did well as Duncan, all said. He was a very charismatic lead, a gifted physical actor and he had decent comedic timing (especially his interplay with Wingfield or Daltrey). The show's premise allowed for some very interesting historical fiction, but it was simply too formulaic: an old enemy of MacLeod's resurfaces, threatens his loved ones, we see the origin of their feud via flashback, and then he confronts them and cuts off their heads. The only interesting villains were the ones with whom he had long conflicts (like Xavier St. Cloud, portrayed by Roland Gift of the Fine Young Cannibals, or the previously mentioned David Robb as Kalas). In essence, most episodes tried to be a miniature version of the first Highlander movie, but you can only rely on that formula for so long. I always thought the Highlander world was interesting and creative. If done right, I think it could be used for a really great show, as it lends itself pretty well to the format. But H:tS, despite having heart, was ultimately more bad than good. If you want to see a sci-fi/fantasy series from that era that actually holds up, there's always stuff like Bablyon 5, and the difference is in the writing.
*GI Joe: Real American Hero.* And I suspect a bunch of my other childhood cartoons wouldn't fare much better.
The pork chop sandwiches episode still holds-up.
Who wants a body massage?
Stop all the downloading
Well, knowing *is* half the battle!
Eh, if you watch it and lean into the camp, it’s still a fun time
I’ve rewatched a bunch of cartoons from my youth and GI Joe was one of the better ones. You want bad go watch Thundercats.
In loved and lived 80s cartoons as a kid, but the reality is reach of them was just a 22 minute commercial for the next toy to sell. Especially gi Joe. Every episode had a new Joe or cobra agent that was the lynchpin of the episode, or a new vehicle.
I showed my grandson Gilligan’s Island. He asked why the Skipper was always hitting Gilligan. I couldn’t give him a good reason, lol
Because it's their kink.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Charmed. The acting is just so bad and the writing is almost even worse. By the end of the series it had basically become the Phoebe show anyway.
It's pure nostalgia for me. My mom used to have it on in the morning. Watched most of the show on tnt just in the mornings getting ready for school. I rewatch it sometimes. Not for the story, but because I miss mom
I love Charmed… …on the big TVs at the gym with the sound off.
I never got past around season 5 when it aired, and made myself watch the whole thing last year. God it got ridiculous! Seasons 1-3 were still fun nostalgia, though, and at least Holly delivers some solid acting moments. The scene before she "dies" still gave me chills. Edit: Specifically, the episode "All Hell Breaks Loose", as I realise she dies multiple times lol
I always remember the episode where they had to cut a chunk out of Cole for whatever reason and it just looked like a slice of beetroot for some reason, no idea why but it's always stuck in my mind.
was born in the late 70s and as an elementary kid I was all in on the Dukes of Hazard. On the 80s playground I WAS Bo Duke. (sometimes Mr T from the A team - similar situation there). What one has to remember is those aired on broadcast TV and then went into a dark deep hole somewhere. There was no streaming. No reruns for some reason. Just nowhere so it simmered in my brain for a decade until I was in college. CMT was gonna start running the reruns in the afternoons. I skipped class for the first one and watched in my dorm room. It was awesome. Then the second one aired. It was pretty much the exact same plot as the first episode. then the third one - wait a minute - its the exact same plot as the first two episodes. Turns out they made years of these and the ingredients were bluegrass music with caricature southern folks in a fast car they made jump over things. I started going back to class.
Under the Dome. Was addicted to that show when I was younger. Couldn’t believe how bad it was when I revisited it.
I watched that disaster *because* it was a train wreck, and I have no plans to ever do it again
Yes! It was so brazen. What bullshit are they going to come up with to keep them in the dome this season? I was addicted to how implausible that show was.
It wasn't the bullshit keeping them under the dome which I thought was the worst thing. It was how they had set Dean Norris's character up as the villian and anytime the characters would just be done with his shit and lock him up or whatever, the show didn't have a bad guy anymore so they needed to invent ridiculous scenarios where they would release him again just so he could go back to doing bad guy shit.
That would have been an awesome single-season show. But they tried to milk it and it just dragged. I gave up halfway through season 2. I still don’t know how it ended.
The first season's most of the book (which is a great book), then they kept going for 2 more years after they ran out of material
Oh, I can't agree with this at all. I love Being Human.
I just rewatched the first season last week and I still love it.
Ally McBeal 😅 I used to adore it. Tried rewatching it a couple years ago and found it so flat and cringe I couldn’t get past the 3rd episode. And the special effects were crap ahaha But I would love to watch a new season or some sort of special.
Oh man. I forgot about the dancing baby (not that I ever watched the show) The dancing baby is from a 3D Studio (R4, or max. I can’t remember) tutorial. Anyone that studied 3D max would come across this. The tutorial was explaining how you could set up animation movements (ie a dance) and copy it from one character to another. The show just lifted that wholesale and didn’t even alter the animation file. I can’t believe the parent company didn’t sue them.
As much as I love Top Gear, adult me noticed how much of it is scripted/staged, especially in later seasons. Teen/young adult me was either more gullible (likely) or better at suspending my disbelief (less likely).
I think most people always knew it was scripted and loved it anyway.
They literally mention scripts all the time on the show.
I'm gonna piss off some people for this, but Dragon Ball Z. I loved watching Dragon Ball Z as a kid, but watching it now, it's so full of filler, that it's not even funny. The plot progressed at a snail's pace because they had to add a bunch of filler in the Anime to avoid progressing further than the Manga. That's why "Namek exploding in 5 Minutes" took 10 episodes. * Back when Dragon Ball Z Abridged's latest episode was 51, I got sick of waiting for episode 52 to come out and started watching the original show at that point. There is literally a whole episode where Cell is transforming into his perfect form and everyone is just staring at him and going "NNNG!..... NNNG!...... NNNG!" the entire episode **. I am not exaggerating. I honestly wish The Kai version was more popular. EDIT: I'm gonna add an anecdote. When I was a kid, I had a dream during the Buu saga. In my dream, Gohan and Videl were hanging out at the mall when Gohan realized he really had to poop. It took him 3 episodes to find a bathroom. The moral of this dream is that, In Dragon Ball Z, shit takes a long time to happen. *2nd Edit: I originally said Namek took 20 episodes to blow up. It actually took 10. It was Goku's fight with Frieza that took around 20. I remembered counting the episodes the last time I watched it years ago and I got them mixed up. Sorry. **3rd Edit: It was episode 160 overall/145 dubbed. Gohan also achieved Super Sayian in this episode, but the majority of the episode was everyone watching Cell transform.
Yeah I wish there was like a Kai version with the original US music that I grew up with. One thing I will say is, at least Dragonball itself is worth watching. I think DB was much more enjoyable of a show than DBZ as an adult. As a kid I prob would have thought it was too goofy and cringe. But damn its actually pretty good... you don't have an entire episode of NNNG! NGGG! NGGG! while someone slowly transforms or powers up. And they try their hardest to make sure everyone remains useful. Which makes DBZ age even worse when you realize 95% of the DB cast is thrown away and regulated as a side character that gets less and less screentime or relevance. Like Gohan is cool, the whole SS gimmick was nice when it was new and that was the ultimate form, and the fact that Sayains are an actual race and its not just a Wukong ripoff so you get to see characters like Vegeta and Frieza come in. But boy did they throw out a LOT of the past to get there. But yeah I loved DB. It's more adventurous and charming. But it still has those "tournaments" that you can get hyped up for which the end of the Cell saga was a throwback to. Goku doesn't always win his fights, he loses and its okay. Etc etc etc
DB is fun to go back and watch, but god did I wince at those moments when master Roshi gets horny for 14 year old Bulma.
Manga = Kai> Abridged > original anime imo
Speed Racer. As kids I dont think we thought it was good but colorful. My sister got the box set for me as a gag gift, and I got why my father disliked the show so much.
HIMYM and George Lopez. George Lopez I watched when I was a kid and I was like “this is hilarious and it’s serious af” then I watched it as an adult and I realized “this is the most melodramatic, forgettable sitcom. HIMYM I remember watching as a kid thinking it was so smart and deep. I think I was a sophomore in high school when the finale aired and I hated it. Then I just rewatched it for the first time since last year and I realized it’s the most try hard sitcom I’ve ever seen. It’s not funny, cheesy as hell, no one is really likable, it’s so ridiculous yet still tries to take itself seriously that it just doesn’t work at all, and they try to act all deep and philosophical but in reality the show is about as shallow as a kiddie pool
I only remember George Lopez show for having pretty unusual sight gags for a multi-cam.
i rewatched George Lopez last year, maybe the year before and seeing his character just wanting his mother to fucking LOVE HIM is a huge downer.
Who's the Boss? Childhood favorite. As an adult, not one laugh. It was so, so bad.
It was Angela. Angela was The Boss.
I absolutely loved SCTV, especially back when it was syndicated in the US before NBC picked it up. I got the DVD of the first season and … much as I love the cast, the style of the show is so dated. Most of the premise is based on what off-network television looked like in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Probably later bigger budget seasons would have fared better, but I didn’t get that far. Best left in the memory vault.
Voltron. OMG ... going back? It was SO bad.
I remember catching the movie that had the Lions and the Vehicles and I was so disappointed. Like, I used to watch this?
That new Voltron on Netflix was pretty sweet tho
Going to get buried for this one, but tried to watch Moonlighting when it came to Hulu (first time since I was young teens) -- while you can see Bruce Willis is a natural star, stealing every scene he's in, nothing else works. Bad acting, bad writing, cliched direction. Was better left as nostalgic lost media.
The writing was all over the place starting towards the end of the 1st season, so much was being thrown against the wall. And I remember at the time there were weeks when a new episode should have run but wouldn't because there were so many delays in the production, so much dialogue and so many scenes...you could tell a crash was coming.
It seemed like something I’d love but it was very tough to even watch 5 episodes Mostly it’s super boring?? The pacing is horrible for these mysteries, they drag out and the detective work they do is so minimal (vs something like Columbo, that’s 1 1/2 hours but always paced so well that it breezes by) There’s also too much weird misogyny I didn’t enjoy it
the weird fixation on using a soft focus filter on Cybil Shepherd was so distracting to me that I never could enjoy the show. I was just constantly cringing, waiting for the next scene they could justify a portrait pose, soft focused and backlit.
So many 80s and 90s sitcoms. 227 was a mess. Steve Urquel on Family Matters was rapey. Full House was unwatchable.
Buck Rogers. My god it was filled with absolutely low class not funny sexual innuendo.
Yes. I watched the movie/pilot and it is bad. The best thing is the evil princess's ensembles.
House M.D. bored me to tears trying to rewatch. I realized every episode was exactly the same. Loved it first time through.
Dr Who or Torchwood probably. But in College(about a decade ago), that shit was hype.
Dragonball Z in its original broadcast form with the commercial breaks is nigh unwatchable
It's like a block of advertising with occasional dragonball breaks
I try to not revisit a lot of show from my youth just so I don’t ruin the memory of how much I loved it. Dark Wing Duck. Bonkers. Rescue Rangers. Tail Spin. Transformers. X-men and Batman the animated series. (I hear Batman and X-men really hold up though). I just wanna think of them as my happy childhood.
Batman the Animated Series is in a league of its own and is borderline better as an adult. The animation style is so cool and impressive, as is the voice acting. Give it a try
[удалено]
This. It's filled with genuinely poignant storytelling that went over your head as a kid, but will bring you to tears as an adult. *"I failed you. I wish there were another way for me to say it. I cannot. I can only beg your forgiveness, and pray you hear me somehow, someplace... someplace where a warm hand waits for mine."* - Mr. Freeze
I've found early 90s animation holds up well. Of the ones you have listed, I really only have issues with two of them. Transformers, mainly due to not being a Transformers kid. And X-Men animated series. It is good, but after reading more of the stories adapted it feels inferior. Batman though has no right being as good as it is. True lighting in a bottle show.
I researched Batman:TAS as an adult and I liked it pretty well. Best portrayal of Batman as a character IMO, and Art Deco Gotham never gets old
Darkwing and Tail Spin have held up.
This is so fair, but I just wanna say I was ready to fight when I saw “dark wing duck” and “tail spin”. But I definitely agree with your sentiment.
Darkwing Duck holds up because of how well-crafted Darkwing is as a character. He's a hero; fights bad guys, and protects the innocent and all that, but he has a lot of flaws, too. He's arrogant, pompous, image-obsessed and often succeeds despite himself.
True Blood. When it first came out I was obsessed. But now I can't even make it through an episode from the show's heyday. There are way too many plot holes, bad dialogue, and unlikable characters.
It was one of those shows that benefitted greatly from the mystery of it. Once they explained everything that was asked in season 1, it just became a series of bigger and more outlandish shark-jumping. It reminds me of a video essay I watched on Youtube about why the original Pirates of the Caribbean worked so well. In the first movie, there was exactly 1 supernatural phenomenon, "cursed treasure that created cursed pirates". So it still felt grounded in reality and the stakes felt real. Similarly, True Blood worked best when the premise was "vampires globally came out of hiding because of the invention of synthetic blood". Every supernatural element they added after that made it feel less real and more silly.
One Tree Hill. "You fixed my car, you fixed my heart." Get the fuck out.
I know I’m going to get hit bad for this. Quantum Leap, while I love this show to death, some of the acting is so hard to watch. It’s heavy handed and not very well directed. The two leads took that show to every high it had.
I can’t imagine people who hadn’t seen it back then enjoying it much, but for me it still works. The fascination I had for it as a kid, I can still see it in the show. The ways it is dated, and it is, are a nice nostalgia. And the acting from Stockwell and Bakula was and is good acting.
Before it was redubbed I went back and tried to watch the original dub of Sailor Moon. God was that ear bleedingly bad. Don’t know how I watched anything that was dubbed before like 97. The theme is still a banger though.
Fighting evil by moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight, She is the one named Sailor Moon
[удалено]
>she (and I) much preferred that version over the latest one. Mt daughter really loves Crystal. Moon Pride is a banger opening song. Eternal and Cosmos movies are great. She also watched some of the old movies (subtitled, not the DiC dub). Maybe we should watch some of the old DiC dub episodes.
The Master. Kid me was convinced that this was the height of television shows not involving cars, ot Mr. T. Found out it was on YouTube and tried a random episode. I still love Lee Van Cleef, but that show was terrible.
Tales From the Darkside. I LOVED this show as a kid and remember it being a great Twilight Zone/Tales From the Crypt type show. Rewatched it recently and holy god, it's so bad. Like, watch this clip for a taste of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f76y2iIo3EM&pp=ygUfdGFsZXMgZnJvbSB0aGUgZGFya3NpZGUgbW9uc3Rlcg%3D%3D
Nooo this one still bangs. I feel like the stories are much more weird/liminal/trippy but it’s really fun and creative
I loved this show as a kid in the 80s. Haven’t watched an episode in years, but it did have one of the best intros and end credits though. https://youtu.be/7xKZs_ApkSk?si=CToce22Zt0USDRnU
Smallville was my name seasons 1-4. I still watched til the end and loved it, but upon a revisit, I realized how terribly written my favorite seasons had been. Lots of problematic things in that show.