Dear Friends,
I looked at my list of blog topics from last year and for this date in 2022, I wrote about Saturday morning cartoons. Kids today really don't know how good they have it. Not only can they watch just about any cartoon they want at any time, there are tons of comic book stores, too. I had to wait for the new issues of my favorite comics to come out each month and hope that I would be able to snag them before someone else got there.
But whatevs...I didn't come here today to rehash that stuff. It did inspire me, though, to think about the TV shows I was watching as a kid. A year ago tomorrow and the next day I wrote some Happy Days fan fiction about the Fonz dropping acid. I loved Happy Days. The first four or five seasons are highly entertaining and there was something about that world that was easy to get lost in.
The 1970s were not the TV 1950s, that was for sure, and I think I wanted to have a home and family life like I saw at the Cunningham house. This is not a dig at my parents at all, but more of a nod to the fact that a good TV show allows you to get lost in that world for a short period of time. I like getting lost in the Cunningham household, especially with their extended family of friends and such.
I wasn't as big of a fan of Laverne and Shirley, but I did enjoy the show and watched it regularly for years. I also loved Mork & Mindy, too, if we are talking about Happy Days spinoffs. I was a devout Robin Williams fan, so it was easy to love the Mork show. When Jonathan Winters was added, I loved that final season. He was such a funny man. Recently I watched an old Carol Burnett & Friends that he was the guest star on and it was over the top. Sofa king good.
ABC was my go-to sitcom network. While I loved All in the Family on CBS, I was too young to really appreciate the greatness of the early seasons. In retrospect, the first couple of seasons of Maude were great, too, but I hated the show as a kid. Except for Adrienne Barbeau. I had a huge crush on her.
ABC had Soap and Taxi (at first) and Barney Miller. I loved all of those shows as a kid. I kind of think Barney Miller is maybe the greatest American sitcom of all-time. It was just so well written and acted and directed and was almost entirely set in one room, but it never got boring.
I guess CBS had MASH and WKRP in Cincinnati, so I watched a fair amount of those. WKRP is an all-time favorite, too, and reminds me a lot of being a kid. Dr. Johnny Fever was such a great character. I know Steve will agree with me on this. They also had Bob Newhart and Square Pegs and Alice, the latter of which I really enjoyed the first couple of seasons. I was a bit older when Square Pegs started, but I was in high school and it pushed the right buttons.
Between these shows and the myriad of comedy movies I saw, this is a big reason for the sense of humor I have, I suppose. I like the dark comedies, for sure, and remember watching Fawlty Towers on PBS as a kid, too. My grandparents liked the British comedies, so we watched them a lot when I would stay over. I remember when One Day at a Time started and I asked them if I could watch it one night when I was staying at their house. My grandmother was so appalled by it. I guess if I'm being honest, I thought it was a piece of shit, too.
Ah, memories. Back in the days of if you missed an episode, you would have to wait for the summer reruns. I loved getting TV Guide in those days and watching for the shows I missed, as well as reading the little synopsis of the ones coming up. Another thing kids today will miss out on.
We had to walk uphill in the snow to watch The Incredible Hulk, you know.
See you tomorrow.
Stole this off the interwebs. The Doctor himself.
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