Damn, over a month now since the last one.
Fuck it, these come out when they come out.
Same old problem, I keep remembering things, and adding to the list, then I'm scared to do one, because I don't want to leave anything out.
But, screw it, here goes.
TV shows.
Network-
Get a life (1990-1992)
About a 30 year old paper boy, and his wacky and surreal misadventures.
Funniest and weirdest fucking sitcom ever put to air.
Damn, I miss it.
Chris Elliot went on to do "Eagle Heart", on Cartoon Network, and it was all right, but it didn't have the magic of this one.
Red Dwarf (1988-present)
(US got the reruns in the 90's)
Old review here.
"Back To Earth", retroactively counted as season 9, and they've since put out seasons 10-11, with 12 on the way.
So, they're still going.
Think they're gonna do it 'til the cast is dead, like Simpsons.
Well, good on ya, fellas, cuz you're a great little show.
If only Blackadder were still going.
Speaking of....
Blackadder (1983-2000)
(US got the reruns in the 90's)
Series review here.
Christmas special here.
Ahh, if it weren't for the animated shows, and Blackadder, and Red Dwarf, I might have gone up on a water tower with a sniper rifle.
Great show, still holds up.
Ended with the millennium special, they've never been able to get a reunion together since.
Bummer.
Least I've got the DVDs.
I've gotta crack those open someday.
Been too long.
Alexei Sayle's Stuff (1988-1991)
(Again, we got it mid-90's)
Our PBS was cool, they played Blackadder, Red Dwarf, and this back, to back, to back.
Sadly, this didn't last as long, or get rerun as often as the other two.
It was just this weird British sketch show, and the opening catchphrase was "who was that fat bastard?".
Well, yeah, who WAS that fat bastard?
Dark Shadows (1991)
(reboot)
Old review here.
"Williiieee!!!".
The George Carlin Show (1994-1995)
Old review here.
I've watched all these again since the old review, and it's watered down and corny compared to his concerts, but still better than most sitcoms today.
I'd put it somewhere in "Archie Bunker's Place", territory.
More balls than "One Day At A Time", but not quite in the darker episode of "All In The Family", zone.
Again, needs a disc release.
...course, disc is dying, and everything's VOD.
But everything isn't VOD, they leave a lot of shit out.
Disc backup ensures the rare titles see their time in the sun too.
Dammit.
Fucking youngsters and their cellphones.
Rassafrassen.
Mundane-noodle!
Not-a-finger!
TNG seasons 3-7 (1990-1994)
Old review here.
Man, the criticism in the old review keeps being more true.
You look at the effects on the Discovery trailer, and TNG/DS9/Voy/Ent look like Geico ads in comparison.
They tried future-proofing TOS with special edition CG bullshit, but that shit dated 6 months later.
Nevermind the years its been now.
Comes down to story, and again, TNG had a lot of filler.
It ain't holding up so well.
It used to be just TNG's problem, but they're all creaking on rusty hinges now.
In a world with "Game Of Thrones", and "Preacher", and "American Gods", what can Trek bring to the table anymore?
We'll just have to see.
We'll. Just. Have. To. Seeeeee.....
Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)
Ditto most of the above, and the link.
Ages better because of the grittier stories, and the better characters, but even this one is starting to rust up a little.
If I gotta watch one, I'll go with this if I have the choice.
I don't think I hate any Trek.
Not anymore.
Used to be hip to hate on certain ones, but what wasted energy that was/is in a world with war crimes.
That snotty hipster phase seems to be a white boy disease.
Deepest apologies to the universe for indulging it in those days.
Voyager (1995-2001)
This is the one that gets all the shit.
They've been having marathons on H&I, and BBC-America, and....yeah, it's often lackluster, and plodding, and vanilla, and the technobabble is like something out of Axe Cop the older it gets, but it's not detestable.
I can watch it.
I've suffered through so much worse.
Fanboys that hate this act like this thing killed their dad, and raped their mom and sister, and made them watch.
Get a fucking grip.
I'll watch the worst reruns of this over Dr. fucking Phil any fucking day.
I'll watch "Fairhaven", over 5 minutes of a reality show about Jesus freaks with a gross pile of kids.
How many of those shows have been tainted by pedophiles lately?
It ain't zero.
It ain't fucking zero.
And even though the scripts are bland, and the music is a lullaby, I like some of the actors.
The Doctor is good, Seven became a fun character even though she was conceived as T&A, Roxanne Dawson is a cool chick, even though the writers took a poop all over her character most times. And Kate Mulgrew does her goddamned best, even though the writers couldn't decide who she was episode to episode, so she looks like Sybil if you do a marathon.
And there are some genuinely good episodes sprinkled in there.
No, treating this show like a war crime was a hipster pastime, and it needs to end.
It wasn't cute, internet.
Not cute at all.
Dinosaurs (1991-1994)
Speaking of cute, this was a deceptively dark show.
I should have known, the core joke of it was, the dinosaurs died out by living like us.
So, in the finale, they actually had balls, and killed the fucking dinosaurs!
And not nice and quick, they're left to starve to death.
We'll never know if there was cannibalism, and if so, who ate who first.
My fan-fiction-y guess, dad ate the baby, the teenagers turned on the dad, and killed him for eating the baby, and ate him.
The mom gave herself willingly to keep the teens alive.
The teens wandered the Earth for scraps, but the daughter succumbed, and gave herself willingly to the son.
The son sooner or later got an injury that slowed him down, and ran afoul of cannibal gangs.
I'm picturing him being beaten to mush by Dinosaur-Negan.
Roseanne (1988-1997)
Speaking of fucked up finales!!!!
Dan's dead! The lesbian mother is straight! The straight sister is a lesbian!
The daughters husbands are swapped!
The whole show was a novel written by Roseanne after Dan died!
Since they didn't really win the lottery, we have no fucking idea how they financially survived the loss of the key bread-winner!
WT-actual-F?!?!?!
Oh, sorry, spoilers?
Tough.
You had 20 fucking years.
A reunion special is coming, and it seems like it's erasing at least some of that ending as an alternate timeline, or dream, or something, because Dan is back to life.
Stay tuned, this show ain't over yet after all!
Frasier (1993-2004)
Yep, between this and Cheers, Kelsey Grammer was Frasier for 20 goddamned years!
Talk about job security!
Alien Nation (1989-1990)
(Revival movies, 1994, 1996, 1996 (again), 1997)
Original review here.
Like I said there...
I must have loved the shit out of it, because I watched every episode of the TV series .... and all the reunion movies.
Produced by Kenneth Johnson who did Hulk, and V.
No wonder I dug it, I dig his style.
Some have called his style "shrill bonk you on the head moralizing", but those people can eat my dick in a hot dog bun with mustard and relish.
For 1000 years, in a "Groundhog Day", loop.
Chicago Hope (1994-2000)
Everyone else on Earth was into "ER", but I watched "Chicago Hope".
Why?
Because Mandy Patinkin, bitch!!
Inigo Montoya, muthfucka!!
Yeah, it jumped the shark after he left, but I hung on for Adam Arkin, and the dude from "Shocker".
I should have bailed when Eric Stoltz joined.
Bleauurgh.
Oh, he's good enough in other stuff, but his character in this was an insufferable nitwit.
They had Patinkin come back in the final season, and fire all the shitty new characters, including Stoltz, but the damage was done.
The show bled out and died on the table.
The aorta was torn, there was no stopping the blood.
*Sob*
Grand (1990)
It had Bonnie Hunt, Joel Murray, John Neville, and Michael McKean, and was a spoof on soap operas.
I thought it was cute.
Deserved a longer life than it got.
Here's the theme song.
There, now you can have that earworm for the next 27 years like I have.
Herman's Head (1991-1994)
"Inside Out", totally stole this.
Except, instead of a little girl, it's the good-guy from "Fright Night".
The girlfriend from "Fright Night", became Marcy from "Married With Children".
Jerry Dandridge from "Fright Night", became Prince Humperdink from "Princess Bride".
Also Yeardly Smith (Lisa Simpson) was one of his co-workers.
Won't lie, kinda had a little crush on her.
Anyway, I vaguely remember what the head-people represented, but I most clearly remember the fat guy wanted Herman to fuck everybody, and eat everything.
You can tell just by looking at him.
The Flash (1990)
Old review of the DVDs here.
Course, now the new CW show is on, and part of a larger DC-TV universe, and all of the main cast of the '90 show has been on it, including Mark Hamill as Trickster, so I count it as this show is retroactively still on.
Seinfeld (1989-1998)
If you existed in the 90's, you watched this.
It was mandatory.
News Radio (1995-1999)
Old review here.
The best show no one watched.
Way to go, America.
This was better than Seinfeld, its held up way better in reruns, it deserved so much better.
704 Hauser (1994)
The lost sequel to the Archie-Bunker-verse.
A black family moves into Archie's old house, and have political arguments like the old days.
The son is a black conservative.
The mom and dad are liberal.
The dad is the dude who played James from "Good Times".
The white girlfriend of the son is the chick from "News Radio".
She didn't even change her hairdo!
We need to be bombarded with these fucking shows as a culture.
It's not enough to make them, rerun them, and forget about it, there needs to be another batch of people in that house right now.
Rotating casts every decade.
Get a fucking Trump voter in that Archie chair, and have his son be a Bernie voter, the daughter-in-law be a Hillary person, and have the neighbors be Mexican.
Grow some balls, America.
Anyhoo, you can watch all these on Youtube.
I think there's only like, 4 of 'em.
The pilot is a little bit cringe-y but it gets better quick, and it really could have been something.
Quantum Leap (1989-1993)
Old review here.
Every few years, I hear mumblings of a reunion, or a reboot, but I ain't holding my breath.
They're bringing back stuff like "Full House", and the aforementioned "Roseanne", for reunions, but "Quantum Leap", was way more of a cult show than those.
Closest we'll ever get to a reunion for a long time, is the episode of "Enterprise", where Dean Stockwell popped up.
Jeez, if they're ever gonna do a straight up reunion movie, they'd better hurry the Hell up, Dean's in his 80's.
I wouldn't dig a reboot, because the core premise is the leaper travels along his/her lifetime.
Sam was a baby-boomer, and they got to see some real history.
Put an x-er or millennial in there, it just won't be the same.
But, what do I know?
They might find a clever twist on it.
Sliders (1995-2000)
Original review here, nested within the "My Secret Identity", review.
Said most of it there.
This one needs a reunion to repair the damage of its last few seasons.
They really had something there starting out.
The dopey network fucking blew it.
Way to go, Fox.
Brilliant decision makers you've got over there.
As for Jerry O'Connell, he was last seen playing Herman Munster.
Speaking of that, they're about to reboot Munsters again already.
Sheesh.
That 70's Show (1998-2006)
Ahhh, Laura Prepon (cartoon hearts float over head).
*Googles* she's a fuckin' Scientologist!?!?
Goddammit!
*Loses boner*
Muppets Tonight (1996-1998)
I don't remember much about this, except that it wasn't as magical as the original, but still better than the recent reboot they did that tried to be like "The Office".
Anyway, this existed.
Tales From The Far Side (1994)
Damn, 1994? It was that long ago?? It feels like a couple years ago!!
Damn!
I still remember it like it was new.
They never played it again either.
I think you can watch it on Youtube, or Dailymotion.
Part II???
*Googles* oh, only England got it.
Lucky bastids.
The Machine That Changed The World (1992)
Goddamn!! 1992!?!?
Anyway, this was a documentary on the rise of computers from WWII to '92.
I thought it was the most awesome science-y thing ever, but now the computers in that would look like total dogshit now.
Hell, the internet hadn't even become itself yet.
I had no idea what I was going to live to see.
Even their most boldest predictions were weak sauce.
This needs an update.
Although, you could probably find better histories of computers on Youtube.
In fact, I'm sure you could.
Late Night With Conan O'Brien (1993-2009)
Old review here.
So, unless you've been under a rock, you know he got upgraded to "The Tonight Show", then NBC and Jay screwed him, then he went on "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour", which he turned into the documentary "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop".
If you want to see him be candid about his anger at his screwing, that's where he vents it.
Andy Richter is downright profane about it.
It's beautiful.
Dig up that doc, and check it out.
Now he's on "Conan", for TBS, and it's pretty much a time warp back to '93.
Shit, I should watch it more.
I'm guilty as hell.
I just don't watch much TV period anymore.
I've got my handful of appointment shows, then everything else is YouTube and podcasts.
Hmm, I ought to do a list of my favorite podcasts sometime.
It keeps changing.
I had to slaughter a bunch of 'em over Ghostbusters, and then Trump.
I said it before, but there ended up being a Venn diagram of Ghostbusters haters and Trumpsters, including Trump himself.
Ghostbusters was the canary in the coal mine.
I saw the signs.
No one would listen.
Now we've got Tiki torch Nazis.
Good job, America.
I bet they were Jay fans.
See how I brought it all together?
In Living Color (1990-1994)
No way, it was only on 4 seasons?
That's depressing.
Could've sworn it hung on almost a decade.
It launched Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans, but everyone else kinda vanished.
David Alan Grier keeps popping up every now and then.
MadTV (1995-2009)
(Revival, 2016)
When SNL was dogshit after Will Farrell left, I totally switched to MadTV.
Then I missed Kristen Wiig's whole damned career rise, and had to play catch up when she became a Ghostbuster.
Michael McDonald from MadTV is in Ghostbusters ATC, so it all balances out.
Somehow.
Because reasons.
Shut up!
Even if you loathed this show, it launched Nichole Sullivan, Alex Borstein, Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key, Frank Caliendo, Andy Daley, and Phil LaMarr.
No MadTV, no "Get Out".
Kiss MadTV on the mouth.
Do it.
*Pulls gun*
I said do it.
Saturday Night Special (1996)
Roseanne tried to make a sketch comedy show.
It lasted a month.
I hated it.
I can't find images from it.
Why is it on this list?
To make you appreciate MadTV.
And to be completist about how many SNL clones the 90's had running around.
The Ben Stiller Show
(1989-1990 (MTV))
(1992-1993 (Fox))
Gave us Ben Stiller, Janine Garofolo, Andy Dick, and Judd Apatow.
Judd Apatow gave Paul Feig's career a shot in the arm, and then he directed Ghostbusters ATC.
No Ben Stiller, no Ghostbusters revival.
Kiss Ben Stiller on the mouth.
Don't make me get the gun again.
Anyhoo, this was genuinely funny, then Ben Stiller's career after this was rom-coms and kiddie shit, and he wasn't his true self again until "Zoolander".
Then he recently did "Zoolander 2", and ruined everything.
Yeah, you wanna see a bad followup to an original film with Kristen Wiig, this is the one you should cry about, not Ghostbusters.
Watch "Zoolander 2", and then come back, and kiss Ghostbusters ATC on the mouth.
With tongues.
Hard.
Really get in there.
Syndication-
Space Precinct (1994-1995)
Hmm, how to describe?
Imagine a G-rated "Red Dwarf", that took itself seriously, was written like a Saturday morning cartoon, but imagined it was "Babylon 5", level good.
I admired its pluck and ambition.
It wasn't cringe-y, it was actually pretty watchable.
The lead aliens were done with actors in puppet heads instead of regular makeup.
They looked pretty good for the budget.
"Farscape", would go on to use puppet characters, but this gets no credit for starting that trend.
I actually kinda wish someone would buy the rights to this, and give the reruns a couple spins.
Wasn't the best thing in the world, but it wasn't bad either.
Island City (1994)
A TV movie that was a failed series pilot.
So, wrap your head around this, the good guys were into eugenics in this.
Yeah.
The backstory to this universe is, humans came up with a formula for eternal youth and health, and gave it to everyone who wanted it, which is almost everyone, but a not insignificant chunk of the population had a bad reaction to it, and de-evolved into violent rapey cavemen.
The cavemen are sealed outside of a force-field domed city called Island City where all the pretty people live.
The pretty people figured out that regressive cavemen could still be born among them from the wrong mix of genes, so they tighten control on mating and breeding by giving everyone mood ring sternum implants that change a certain color for certain DNA types, and only people of the same implant color can date and fuck.
One of the good guys is a child of caveman rape, so he's got caveman features, but is intelligent, and fights for the good guy's team.
His implant is black, so he's not allowed to fuck anyone.
All of this is the backdrop and setup, the main plot is the good guys go out in armored transports to rescue normal people out in the wastelands from caveman rape.
There seems to have been some environmental apocalypse on top of everything else, because only the dome cities are safe.
It's....interesting.
You can watch it on Youtube.
You can decide whether to laugh or be horrified.
Giving it the MST3K treatment would help you through either.
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999)
-And-
Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001)
Old reviews here.
These are still in rerun circulation.
Kevin Sorbo got his spine cracked by a chiropractor, and somehow, this made him see Jesus, and now he does horrible Christian movies that hate-monger against atheists.
So, stay the fuck away from chiropractors, kids.
Lucy Lawless retained her marbles, and is in Ash vs Evil Dead, and is still a goddess.
Robocop (1994-1995)
Old review here.
Hmm, think I said it all there.
Yep.
Babylon 5 (1994-1998)
Old review here.
There's no doubt now that Deep Space Nine ripped this off.
I don't know WHY they did, they didn't need it, there was no pressing need for them to steal someone else's idea when they already had a rich universe of their own to build ideas off of.
Did they see this show, even in unborn form, as a morbid threat to Trek's ratings?
I dunno. We'll never know.
The parties involved will take the thought process involved to their graves.
But, whatever, each show ended up having its own identity, its own arc, its own message, so they stand apart.
Just wish I could find this in reruns somewhere.
I said in the old review that I wondered if this holds up, but...fuck it, I still watch old TNG with its crummy CGI, so this must be okay to revisit.
The Outer limits (1995-2002)
Eh, it's all right.
There's some good ones in there.
My favorite is "abduction", which is about school shootings, but with a sci-fi twist.
Liked the song at the end too.
Fans have sifted it out, here's that.
Very 90's.
No one knows the band, the singer, there's no single for it, it's just one of those lost orphaned songs that float away and pop like a bubble and vanish unless you catch them.
Hulu has the whole episode, but I dunno if they're free anymore.
Holy fuck, I'm finally done!!!
I dunno why this one was so hard.
I pecked away at it two shows at a time, couldn't work up the will on some days, but it's finally finished.
Hopefully the next one will fly by easier.
It's part 2 of TV, cable TV.
Crazier shit on cable, so it was more fun, so the memories should be more fun and flow easier.
So, yeah, up next, 90's cable TV!!
15 comments:
D'oh!! forgot to toss in mention that Idris Elba was a pizza man in Space Precinct.
"Get A Life": Never saw this, knew R. E. M.'s "Stand" was the theme song, knew Michael Stipe had a cameo as the "bona fide Sludgesicle man"--wait, no, that was Pete & Pete. I know Chris Elliot was really happy with this show and with his Letterman stuff and then was promptly miserable when he ended up on SNL two years later.
"Everything's VOD now" - I just know when disc is finally dead I'll miss it and cling to my slowly-attained DVD collection the way some poor bastard out there clings to his Betamax collection...I've seen you do that "Mundane noodle" thing before. What's that from?
DS9 - I'll get to this but only after I'm sure I like TNG enough to try it.
"Voyager" - I read through about 200 AV Club comments on every episode review of TOS and I couldn't tell if they complained about this, or season 3 of TOS, more.
"Dinosaurs": I've read about that dark series finale but does it make up for what an obvious Simpsons ripoff this thing was?
"Roseanne": $$$$$$$$ is probably the motive behind bringing it back (I've also read rumors that Roseanne is going blind in real life), though in keeping with these dark times, Becky will be working at Wal-Mart and Mark is dead because Glenn Quinn hung out with Xander from BTVS in real life and drank himself to death. I still maintain that every time they had to bring in a cheap "villain" on the original show to make the Conners look good by comparison, we got some of the worst performances in TV history.
I've seen a lot of that much hated final season and I for one got a kick out of Jim Varney playing an Eastern European prince, I know that much. I don't like the idea that Becky and Darlene's husbands were swapped in the "actual" story (does that mean anything?) but I thought it took some balls to kill of John Goodman even though IRL he and Roseanne probably wanted to kill each other by the time it was over. Goodman still gives good performances in the movies ("10 Cloverfield Lane" was a career highlight), so it's nice they got him back, but it remains to be seen what they'll do. Hopefully they'll just brush off that series finale in the most crass and obvious way possible.
"Frasier": I remembered thinking this show was actually really "thoughtful" and "cultured" when I was a kid and I bet I wouldn't think that anymore if I tried to watch it. I've considered marathonning "Cheers" actually, wonder how long that'd take. Did you give a shit for "Cheers"? Remember that huge ass series finale? Note also that everyone Kelsey Grammer has known in real life has turned out dead.
"Herman's Head": I knew about the Simpsons reference. Yeardley Smith is also in "The Legend Of Billie Jean," which I'm pretty sure is still not on DVD, but you can always go relive Pat Benatar's "Invincible" in all its 80s glory.
"Seinfeld": Does it bug you that this show is now the official 90s mascot? I'm not sure if it does me. I'm sure it would hold up if I tried to rewatch it though.
"Newsradio": I watched some of it and remember it as being good, and I do remember the critical acclaim it got.
"704 Hauser": I'd never even heard of this! John Amos got a show as the new Archie Bunker? I may actually watch this if it's short!
"Sliders": $Legion$ was a huge fan of this and his reasoning had something to do with it being "actual sci fi" as opposed to most shows. I can't remember what he said. Last I saw of Jerry O'Connell was him cohosting Live With Kelly. My mom saw him interviewed for some TV movie once and said he was the dumbest idiot she'd ever seen on a television screen and I've seen him take beatdowns elsewhere. What'd he do?
"That 70s Show": Danny Masterson (Hyde) is an even BIGGER $cientologist....in fact he's one of the biggest defenders they've got. Sigh. He said in some interview, "all $cientology does is go through your past and take out your negative experiences so they can't hurt you anymore, what's wrong with that?" AAAUUUGGGHHHH....as for Laura Prepon she's about to get married to the dude from "Hell Or High Water," that dude'd better watch out.
"The Machine That Changed The World": I'm reminded that Neal Stephenson's smash hit breakthrough novel "Snow Crash" came out the same year (1992) and it was this "Matrix" style thing about a computer virus that can infect people and it's set in a world where corporations own neighborhoods and the world is sort of a gigantic mall, and it's RIGHT on the cusp of the Internet breakthrough, and the whole mid-90s Virtual Reality fad and ALL of that....so it's interesting to see what came true and what didn't.
Conan: He was really hitting his stride about 1997-98. I did see the documentary--it was really good and really detailed who the guy is, and why he's that way, and what he has to do. I check out interviews from time to time on TBS, but even on the old NBC show I usually just watched the first 30 minutes. I really love his old TV Channel surfing bits--the best he ever did was that "Clyde Clemons' Inappropriate Responses Channel." I haven't seen much footage of the shaky years when he was just starting (how many late night shows are hosted by a guy who's primarily a writer and just turned 30 anyway) but I have seen when Letterman guested on his early show. The same year Letterman moved to TBS. Note also what you said about all the shows you're missing: you're probably correct not to watch most of it. There's a freakin' GLUT of TV like never before now.
MadTV: I'll cop to liking Marvin Tikvah a bit. The one where he went to the doctor was hilarious. Most of the rest I saw of this was hit or miss just like SNL. However: I have kept true to my post-Sarah-Palin-appearance promise to never watch SNL all the way through ever again.
"Saturday Night Special": I remember it. It was bad, and Roseanne only did it because she was angry about SNL being a "boys' club." She was probably right at the time (1996). Janeane Garofalo took them to task over it too and was openly hating on the show while she was ON IT. That was the year where there was way too much Adam Sandler and Chris Farley crap and in retrospect I don't like either of those guys nearly as much as I used to. Sandler's consistently trashed movies don't help.
"Ben Stiller Show": I know a couple funny sketches from this and I know a lot of people have tried to retroactively classify it as a massive classic...but it probably isn't. Don't forget Stiller DIRECTED "The Cable Guy" and "Reality Bites" (isn't it weird that he did that?) before he became a mainstream star! You hated "There's Something About Mary" then? That one seems to have kind of disappeared, it was a huge hit when it came out in 1998, that was before "Zoolander," but I don't think people talk about it much anymore. Don't forget Feig, not Apatow, was the creator of "Freaks & Geeks," which wasn't a hit.
"Island City": I'd never heard of this but it sounds fascinating.
"Outer Limits": I did not care for that song!!!
"Mundane noodle", is one of the father's G-rated swears from "A Christmas Story".
Along with "darn Norton", and "muscle Feiffer".
"Chris Elliot- Oh, shit, I forgot he did a stint on SNL!! They had him be such a mediocre background player, and wasted him the memory didn't stick at all.
DS9- You'll like it.
Voyager- I once went through, and rated every episode, and the breakdown was actually the same good "meh", and bad ratio as TOS.
Dinosaurs- "but does it make up for what an obvious Simpsons ripoff this thing was?".
Eh, probably not.
Roseanne- "Hopefully they'll just brush off that series finale in the most crass and obvious way possible".
Agreed. In "Married With Children", they tried to inject new life by adding a little kid to the family, but everyone hated the little prick (cast and fans alike), so next season, the kid was just gone, and no one mentioned why, but the kid's picture was on a milk carton in the kitchen. Maybe for Roseanne, everything should be back to normal, no one addreses the finale, but then someone uses Roseanne's novel to prop up a table leg.
Cheers- It's good. Better than Frasier. Watch it. Shit, I considered doing the Cheers finale on this list too. My only reason was, I thought the bulk of the show rested more in the 80's. So it was just a math thing. Now I kick myself.
Seinfeld- Hmmm, it's either this or Friends for 90's mascot, so I guess I'll take Seinfeld.
Friends isn't horrible in principle, but it jumped a lot of sharks at the end.
Millenials remember Freinds more fondly.
Doesn't hold up for me at all.
But that's just me.
As for Seinfeld, I loved it when it was new, but I've never felt compelled to watch reruns.
Don't know why.
Maybe it's just the whole "I watch more internet than TV now", thing.
If I bother with TV, I want sci-fi, or new shit.
Newsradio- They were always consistently good. It maintained a quality throughout with no dips on the graph. Toward the end, they even did weird episodes (the joke being, they knew no one was watching, so fuck it) like a future sci-fi episode, and a Titanic parody episode, and even those didn't ruin it. That would be a shark-jump for any other show (see Roseanne), but News Radio was immune. Well, technically not, they still got cancelled, but they were living on borrowed time anyway.
90's internet- Indeed.
Got a whole thing on my internet days coming if I can just chew through these other ones.
SNL- Their Trump stuff for the openings is still good. Also, if they let Kate McKinnon be good and weird, you'll get a good skit or two, but mostly it's worth missing.
Just catch the Trump/Spicer stuff on Youtube.
Ben Stiller- Yes, I hate "Reality Bites". No, I don't hate "There's something About Mary".
I just like "Kingpin", way better.
There's still a big cartoon question mark over my head for why "Mary", was embraced by the masses over "Kingpin".
"Freaks and Geeks", bombed in the ratings, but its one of those ones with a retroactive cult following.
Outer Limits song- Heh, somehow, I knew you'd probably hate it.
Not why I posted it though. I promise.
Chris Elliot - He has said in that one SNL book that I keep going back to that his SNL year was the worst year of his life, that he knew he had to leave when they let Joey Buttafucko be on the show and he had to talk to the guy. Something like that. I can't remember a single sketch he did, but I almost never watch SNL from that year. The thing of it is, SNL was riding pretty high two or three years earlier, stuff like Wayne's World and Church Lady and the like.
"Dinosaurs" - I guess you could mention it to anyone who thinks "Family Guy" was the first thing to ripoff "Simpsons."
90s Internet - Have you read any of Neal Stephenson? After "Snow Crash" he ended up ditching cyberpunk almost completely (it's the second best well known cyberpunk book after "Neuromancer") in favor of techno historical speculative fiction and his books all ended up being like 900 pages long. He's definitely better than Michael Crichton or William Gibson anyway (Gibson is a GOD AWFUL storyteller, and Crichton's formula got a little obvious.)
"Kingpin" - I know it has enough of a cult that it's probably not going to die off completely. Thing of it was, that hair gel scene in "There's Something About Mary" kicked off that short lived wave of super-grossout movies in the late 90s, that ended up dying off when everyone in the world flung shit at "Freddy Got Fingered" three years later, a film I still like, believe it or not. I wonder how well THAT little wave of comedies will be remembered since it didn't last near as long as the Apatow wave.
"Freaks & Geeks" - I picked up the DVD set for $5 and went back through all 18 episodes of it. You'd have never guessed that Seth Rogen and James Franco would have ended up the big stars--their characters on the show are both dislikeable assholes!! The fan base remains enormous, I guess there was never any attempt to revisit it because fortunately Apatow and everyone in the cast went on to the big time anyway.
SNL - Yeah, just watching the Trump/Spicer stuff online. Weird to think of a pre-Internet era when I wouldn't have had such an easy way of watching it, that's the kind of thing I can't miss!! I tried to watch some other sketches and sure enough they're still pandering to 12 year olds in some of their stuff. WHY?!?
"Friends" - I used to watch it religiously as a kid--totally caught up in that phenomenon--but stopped for a long time after the godawful "serious" episode about Ross and Rachel cheating on each other or whatever it was. Watching bits and pieces of it these days, I don't know what the hell to think of it--the characters all need to be dunked headfirst into a portable toilet and it takes place in some kind of quasi yuppie coffeehouse eternal collegiate la la land, so I should hate it...but the jokes are funny! Arrrgghhh!
Shit, sorry for the lateness.
Chris Elliot year of SNL-
Yeah, it must have been one of the forgotten years, like when Julia Louis Dreyfuss was on.
90's internet-
Nope, no Stephenson. I'll have to check out "Snow Crash".
THANK YOU for bashing William Gibson!! There was a fucking cult of him in the 90's, and if I ever brought up in a forum what a dud I thought he was, both as a writer, and as a person, I became a pariah real fucking quick.
They're still trying to get "Neuromancer", going as a movie.
If it bombs, it'll be because "it wasn't as good as the book", and if it's a hit, I'll have to put up with sequels, and the fanbase being arrogant and insufferable.
Lose-lose situation.
Gross-out comedies- I think they'll hold up. Fans will pass 'em on to their kids, and so on.
Once they hit the big anniversaries, like 25, 30, 35, that'll cause re-releases and such.
Hell, they made a big deal about stupid fucking "Dirty Dancing", so why not?
Freak & Geeks- Never seen a single frame of it. All my knowledge comes second hand.
18 episodes you say? Yeah, I could burn through that.
Friends- Yep, the Ross & Rachel breakup was the shark jump moment.
They kept making a running gag out of Ross saying "we were on a break!", and it just wasn't funny, and made you hate him more and more.
They gave Joey and Chandler a duck and a chicken to try to give you something cute to distract you from the awkward ugliness.
I think they were also replacements for the monkey.
The show never recovered.
Chris Elliot - It was 1994, I think that was for the big 90s cast the year like 1979 was for the original 70s cast, with a couple key members leaving and the whole thing getting plunged into juvenalia. They rehauled it with Will Ferrell & co. in 1995 the same way they did in 1980 and 1985, but that first Will Ferrell year couldn't have been as disastrous as what those other two years were, which I keep meaning to watch through on Hulu or something as some sort of history experiment. Just to see if they're really that bad. I've seen bits and pieces, like the legendary Replacements disaster in 1986, or that 1980 sketch where Bill Murray came on to teach the new cast to get it together, or Al Franken showing up to do a rant literally telling the audience to send letters asking NBC to cancel the show (I'm NOT making this up!!!)
90s Internet - I don't know what Gibson did as a person (all I know is that he's admitted to not really knowing that much about computers) but even in "Neuromancer"--which I like mostly because of how well it draws a picture of the world it's set in--the storytelling is obnoxiously hard to follow and ultimately ends up feeling meaningless.
"The Matrix" hit so many of the notes present in "Neuromancer" that that's probably why the movie hasn't happened by now--people who don't know that the book was written in 1983 will probably think it's a "Matrix" knockoff.
The book had two sequels, but I didn't care for them and felt that Gibson was hitting diminishing returns.
In the 90s he did a new trilogy--"Virtual Light," "Idoru" and "All Tomorrow's Parties"--and only the middle book was any good. "Virtual Light" came out in 1993 right after "Snow Crash" and seems to be taking its cues from SC, and since I didn't really like SC near as much as Stephenson's other stuff, reading an SC knockoff with the master imitating his own descendant, really put me off, so I'm listing that one as the worst Gibson book.
F&G - Some of it is very funny but I have come to the conclusion that fans love it too much. For all the idea that it was some wince-inducing humor-type show that was an antidote to "Dawson's Creek"-type beautiful-kids-whining-about-sex dreck, F&G itself could delve into crowd pleasing stuff, which its fans don't like to admit to. I'm not that curious about what a second season would have been like--just look at any Apatow comedy and it's no secret what his style of humor is like, and pretty much ALL F&G people turned up in his later hit movies.
"Friends" - I seem to remember there being way too many zillion-dollar guest-star appearances.
SNL- Lol, okay, that Franken rant is something I wanna see!!
90's internet- Gibson didn't commit a crime or anything, he just strikes me as a Josh Martin level snot. He came on Ain't It Cool News back when I still liked it, and still posted there, and he tore apart Star Wars (this was before the prequels, mind), and in turn sucked Star Trek TNG's dick, and acted like we all should have sucked his dick for the priveledge of being anointed with his wisdom.
Dude just rubs me the wrong way.
F&G- Well....until then, and after then, no one nailed retro-80's until "Stranger Things", and that's SF/horror-thriller. You've got "The Goldmans", which is sugary shmaltz for babies. F&G is the closest we've ever gotten to a proper "That 80's Show". Hey, why can't we have one? Fucking baby-boomers got "Happy Days", and "The Wonder Years". So, desperate x-ers will latch on to what they can get.
Friends celebrity guests- Oh, yeah! I forgot about the whole arc where Monica dated Tom Selleck, and they had the chemistry of Anna nicole and her Cryptkeeper sugar-daddy. Blecchhh!
Some creepy weirdo dug up my old TV dinner brownie rant, didn't get the joke, and gave me this finger waving Republican daddy-lecture on being spoiled and entitled.
Yeah, that's the gag, dum-dum.
I deleted the douche.
I'll do it again if he comes back.
People that don't like humor need to eat rat poison.
....euuurrrh....uh....which old TV dinner brownie rant? One of the ones I saved? Wow.
F&G is set in 1980, so it's more like late-disco-era 80s, where the 70s hangover was still there. Has anyone tried a show set in Vanilla Ice/MC Hammer/Guns n' Roses/"Skate Or Die"/Ninja Turtles/Nickelodeon-era 1990-91 before the grunge thing took over? There WAS a "That 80s Show," from the "That 70s Show" people, and it was cancelled after like four episodes. Main character was an Asian dude, jokes were like "yes, I'm talking on a cellular telephone!" and it's one of those gigantic Zack Morris/Gordon Gekko cell phones from 1987 that was the size of a brick.
The Al Franken rant can be found here:
http://www.avclub.com/how-bad-can-it-be-case-file-23-saturday-night-live-s-1798233191
It's towards the bottom. The Bill Murray "pep talk" sketch given to the new cast was a cringe inducer too, that's in there.
That 1980-81 season is best known for Charles Rocket (he was the bad guy in "Dumb & Dumber," killed himself in 2005), who was hyped up to be the new Chevy Chase, saying "I'd like to know who the fuck did it" on the air in some bit about who shot J. R. Here, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CFIMaZVPIk
"Friends" - Weren't Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis on there at one point? Gehhh. I can stand reruns of that but a binge rewatch will probably never ever happen.
I think "Fresh Off The Boat", is early 90's.
Murray sketch- Ouch! Ssss!!
Franken rant- Beautiful!
Friends celeb cameos- Shit, you're right. I had totally checked out at that point.
Brownie rant here.
https://dickynoo.blogspot.com/2011/08/brownie-in-tv-dinners.html
Brownie rant: I haven't eaten ramen OR frozen dinners since roughly 2005 which was when I got my first apartment. That was a funny rant though I'd have to guess about what the brownie actually tastes like. Corn brownies sound very disgusting, in fact just the CORN in those frozen dinners looks like puke.
SNL just uploaded the Franken rant to their official Youtube!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBYKq-UGvA
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