Show you felt were lightning in a bottle

[Lance Uppercut]

I mean shows that

1. you liked growing up that were clearly “problematic” that “wouldn’t make it today”, or

2. just the formula didn’t work when others tried to copy it.

Maybe this example most clearly demonstrates what I’m talking about

1. Married with children

It’s sleazy, it’s mean, it’s misogynistic/sexist, it’s very dark, pandering, lost of big breasted women, lowest common denominator stuff.

But I loved it. Something about it, could feel that there was some weird care put into it. And the main character kind of deserved the bad things happening to them sometimes. Compared to its clones like unhappily ever after and all the stuff from the 90s that could be considered the attitude era of network tv, it still felt like a good show.
.,
2. Saved by the bell original

Yeah the new cast was better looking, they updated a lot of the look and speech for 90s, the video quality is better. But they, nor all their TNBC shows had the staying power in syndication.

And looking back the stories and writing were ridiculous, but can’t beat that original 6. Even tori is more fondly remembered.

[Push R Truth]

The Man Show hit the tail end of when that kind of show could have flourished. So much happened in the Early 2000's culturally/politically that it was very out of place when it finally died.

[carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army)]

Jan 28, 2020 14:26:08 GMT -5 Lance Uppercut said:

1. Married with children

It’s sleazy, it’s mean, it’s misogynistic/sexist, it’s very dark, pandering, lost of big breasted women, lowest common denominator stuff.

But I loved it. Something about it, could feel that there was some weird care put into it. And the main character kind of deserved the bad things happening to them sometimes. Compared to its clones like unhappily ever after and all the stuff from the 90s that could be considered the attitude era of network tv, it still felt like a good show.

This show is so weird, because I think 75% of the audience was people enjoying it entirely straight (represented by the fact that the fake studio audience screamed and yelled every five seconds) and 25% was, like, literature PhDs enjoying it behind ten layers of irony, and both groups were watching the show correctly. It's the kind of thing that also happened with Beavis and Butthead, or Sex and the City, or... well, a lot of pro wrestling.
A huuuuuuge part of it was Ed O'Neil and Katey Segal, who both managed the impossible task of getting people to come back to this world week after week.

[cjh]

Jan 28, 2020 15:04:41 GMT -5 carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) said:

Jan 28, 2020 14:26:08 GMT -5 Lance Uppercut said:

1. Married with children

It’s sleazy, it’s mean, it’s misogynistic/sexist, it’s very dark, pandering, lost of big breasted women, lowest common denominator stuff.

But I loved it. Something about it, could feel that there was some weird care put into it. And the main character kind of deserved the bad things happening to them sometimes. Compared to its clones like unhappily ever after and all the stuff from the 90s that could be considered the attitude era of network tv, it still felt like a good show.

This show is so weird, because I think 75% of the audience was people enjoying it entirely straight (represented by the fact that the fake studio audience screamed and yelled every five seconds) and 25% was, like, literature PhDs enjoying it behind ten layers of irony, and both groups were watching the show correctly. It's the kind of thing that also happened with Beavis and Butthead, or Sex and the City, or... well, a lot of pro wrestling.
A huuuuuuge part of it was Ed O'Neil and Katey Segal, who both managed the impossible task of getting people to come back to this world week after week.

What do you mean by "fake?"  It was real in the literal sense as there was a studio audience.  Do you mean they were told to react like that?

[Cyno]

I think the studio audience was real, but there's always an element of coaching for studio audiences that the producers want in terms of it making it on television. So the audiences on MWC were almost definitely encouraged to be that obnoxious and it wasn't just something that they did organically.

[James Fabiano]

Match Game: the Gene Rayburn-hosted version that ran on CBS and syndication between 1973-1982.

When you had Gene, Brett and Charles together (and moreso Richard too), it was genius.

Note how any subsequent version with not all or none of those people didn't work.

[BorneAgain]

Star Trek DS9 is a show that could have only come out at the exact time it did. Not just in regard to its prescient commentary on terrorism, religious extremism, racism, or freedom vs security, but also in regards to its status as a Trek production. Unlike TNG it was not following a wholly iconic show/films so it didn't have the same growing pains in being too much like its older series like Next Gen was. It also was not the centerpiece of UPN like Voyager and Enterprise and thus escaped strong pressure by the network and strict oversight by Rick Berman. It was permitted to be its own thing and ironically by not ever really being the centerpiece of Trek (with the fall of 1994 being being the only time it was the one ST show on the air), it was allowed to be more relevant and timely than much of the franchise was before and after it.

[Cyno]

Jan 28, 2020 15:39:06 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Star Trek DS9 is a show that could have only come out at the exact time it did. Not just in regard to its prescient commentary on terrorism, religious extremism, racism, or freedom vs security, but also in regards to its status as a Trek production. Unlike TNG it was not following a wholly iconic show/films so it didn't have the same growing pains in being too much like its older series like Next Gen was. It also was not the centerpiece of UPN like Voyager and Enterprise and thus escaped strong pressure by the network and strict oversight by Rick Berman. It was permitted to be its own thing and ironically by not ever really being the centerpiece of Trek (with the fall of 1994 being being the only time it was the one ST show on the air), it was allowed to be more relevant and timely than much of the franchise was before and after it.

I dunno. Looking at Discovery and Picard, I think DS9 could've easily fit in 2020's pop culture zeitgeist. If anything, they could've done even more today than they did back then but still had to tap dance around because of pressure from the networks that carried it.

Like it was Andrew Robinson's headcanon that his character, Garak, was pansexual. But they couldn't really show him having a thing with male characters because of 90's standards towards portraying same sex romances. Hell, just look at the controversy surrounding "Rejoined" which had a kiss between Jadzia and another Trill woman.

[Hit Girl]

DS9 in the hands of Trek's current creative team would have died a quick death. The need to be subtle in the mid to late 90's was a strength. Today they'd approach it with a sledgehammer. Even the action scenes served a narrative purpose with clear objectives. Today it would designed to simply dazzle and distract.

[BorneAgain]

Jan 28, 2020 15:42:02 GMT -5 Cyno said:

Jan 28, 2020 15:39:06 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Star Trek DS9 is a show that could have only come out at the exact time it did. Not just in regard to its prescient commentary on terrorism, religious extremism, racism, or freedom vs security, but also in regards to its status as a Trek production. Unlike TNG it was not following a wholly iconic show/films so it didn't have the same growing pains in being too much like its older series like Next Gen was. It also was not the centerpiece of UPN like Voyager and Enterprise and thus escaped strong pressure by the network and strict oversight by Rick Berman. It was permitted to be its own thing and ironically by not ever really being the centerpiece of Trek (with the fall of 1994 being being the only time it was the one ST show on the air), it was allowed to be more relevant and timely than much of the franchise was before and after it.

I dunno. Looking at Discovery and Picard, I think DS9 could've easily fit in 2020's pop culture zeitgeist. If anything, they could've done even more today than they did back then but still had to tap dance around because of pressure from the networks that carried it.

Like it was Andrew Robinson's headcanon that his character, Garak, was pansexual. But they couldn't really show him having a thing with male characters because of 90's standards towards portraying same sex romances. Hell, just look at the controversy surrounding "Rejoined" which had a kiss between Jadzia and another Trill woman.

That's true in a sense, but I think the writing sensibilities of it were less inclined to be as overtly contemporary as Discovery or Picard have shown to be. There could be times where it was very overt (Far Beyond the Stars works precisely because its not trying to be subtle), but DS9 always felt like its themes took historical or (at its best) predictive inspiration rather than current relevance. Same with its method of continuity being much more serialized than TNG or Voyager, but not quite to the same level that current Netflix shows are today. Its a show that has its feet in both the TV model of the 90s and a bit in the golden age of television drama that started in the aughts.

[agent817]

Son of the Beach is kind of an example of this. I have the DVD sets and have told myself to revisit this show. However, certain things probably wouldn't fly in today's world with the show's content. I don't just mean the sexual innuendo in some of the names and jokes, but also other things. For example, a parody of Stephen Hawking. Also, there were ethnic stereotypes used. Stereotypes of gay people (Particularly the mayor's son). The two fanservice-y female main characters, while the other one was kind of the butt of jokes as she played her character straight. I know that it was a parody of Baywatch, and believe me, I am sure that Jaime Bergman and Leila Arcieri would have been likely cast on that show had it continued.

But at that time, Baywatch was pretty much already a joke and this show definitely cracked a lot of jokes about it that were true about it.

[carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army)]

Jan 28, 2020 15:39:06 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Star Trek DS9 is a show that could have only come out at the exact time it did. Not just in regard to its prescient commentary on terrorism, religious extremism, racism, or freedom vs security, but also in regards to its status as a Trek production. Unlike TNG it was not following a wholly iconic show/films so it didn't have the same growing pains in being too much like its older series like Next Gen was. It also was not the centerpiece of UPN like Voyager and Enterprise and thus escaped strong pressure by the network and strict oversight by Rick Berman. It was permitted to be its own thing and ironically by not ever really being the centerpiece of Trek (with the fall of 1994 being being the only time it was the one ST show on the air), it was allowed to be more relevant and timely than much of the franchise was before and after it.

I mean, there kinda WAS a Deep Space 9 that did well later, it was just called Battlestar Galactica.

[Dr. T is an alien]

Jan 28, 2020 16:25:50 GMT -5 carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) said:

Jan 28, 2020 15:39:06 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Star Trek DS9 is a show that could have only come out at the exact time it did. Not just in regard to its prescient commentary on terrorism, religious extremism, racism, or freedom vs security, but also in regards to its status as a Trek production. Unlike TNG it was not following a wholly iconic show/films so it didn't have the same growing pains in being too much like its older series like Next Gen was. It also was not the centerpiece of UPN like Voyager and Enterprise and thus escaped strong pressure by the network and strict oversight by Rick Berman. It was permitted to be its own thing and ironically by not ever really being the centerpiece of Trek (with the fall of 1994 being being the only time it was the one ST show on the air), it was allowed to be more relevant and timely than much of the franchise was before and after it.

I mean, there kinda WAS a Deep Space 9 that did well later, it was just called Battlestar Galactica.

I don't think DS9 ever got as dark as BSG did. Maybe DS9 would have been a very different show post 9/11. At least that show wasn't shy about there being LGBT relationships among the main cast. They even had a threesome relationship between Caprica, D'Anna, and Baltar that lasted in one form or another for a stretch across 2 seasons.

[fw91]

Came here to say The Man Show. No way it would work today.

[wildojinx]

SCTV, but not that much for content (though it did have some stereotype characters), but because it was about a small, local tv station. Such things dont really exist anymore. Same thing with the movie UHF.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

GhostWatch. So many little bits and pieces of that show worked so well together that people thought it might have been real.

[thirteen3]

Baywatch appropriately ended in 2001, the year when many homes in the western world got access to broadband internet.

[Tenshigure]

First off the top of my head: Power Rangers. The release couldn't be more perfectly timed, with the key demo (preteen boys) coming off the resurgence of the dino craze from Jurassic Park planting the right seed to get them to tune in (at least I know that's why I checked it out), making it explode into the stratosphere at the time. Plenty of others tried to copy the formula (Big Bad Beetleborgs, Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad) or were spinoffs of existing Toei properties brought in by Saban themselves (VR Troopers, Masked Rider), but none could capture the magic the original series had.

[zrowsdower]

Jan 28, 2020 15:26:15 GMT -5 Cyno said:

I think the studio audience was real, but there's always an element of coaching for studio audiences that the producers want in terms of it making it on television. So the audiences on MWC were almost definitely encouraged to be that obnoxious and it wasn't just something that they did organically.

It seemed like they stopped doing that towards the final two seasons. Having been so used to hearing it, it kind of made the last season a bit underwhelming.

[Alyce: Old Media Enthusiast]

Ren & Stimpy on both counts. Mostly for obvious, John K. related reasons.