Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
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Let’s talk about television in the 1970s – sitcoms in particular – and the impact they had in shaping our views on the social and political issues of the day. Before cable TV and streaming, everyone pretty much watched the same shows, but even before that, the content and tone of sitcoms changed dramatically in the 1970s.
But don’t take my word for it, here’s Dennis Tredy, a professor of American Literature at the Sorbonne, explaining it in very academic-sounding language:
When looking back at the popular American situation comedies of the 1970’s, one notices a vast network of programs aimed at framing social discourse and at helping America come to term with its own, changing image. This was done through a restaging of the political and social ills of the generation as comedic teleplays, thereby using laughter as a vehicle towards social awareness and unwitting change or personal growth, and by recycling popular (and unpopular) clichés and stereotypes (the bigot, the racist, the bleeding-heart liberal, the closed-minded conservative, the touchy feminist, etc.) so as to undermine them while appearing to reinforce them.
So many examples instantly come to mind!
Anti-war? MASH.
Race and class? Jeffersons, Good Times. Welcome Back Kotter.
Feminism? Mary Tyler Moore Show. Maude – in one episode Maude had an abortion.
How about The Bob Newhart Show, which helped lessen the stigma surrounding mental health and therapy. Not to mention race, the line with “Whitey, sit!” is funniest episodes of the show! (Hmm, not sure whether that was the first show or the later one.)
Single parenting? Alice, The Courtship of Eddy’s Father.
Homophobia? The record isn’t so good here. But episodes from shows of the era addressed the issue, including All in the Family, (several times), Soap.
In retrospect, All in the Family may have failed in its mission of lampooning bigotry by making the anti-hero too relatable to certain viewers. But still, the show engendered an awareness and a lot of conversations that might not have taken place otherwise.
And now for a little television history. These changes didn’t occur in a vacuum. In the early 1970s the networks, particularly CBS, cancelled a series of still-popular rural-themed shows whose demographics skewed rural and white. Think Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show.
This was known as the RURAL PURGE. Goodbye, Mayberry!
They recognized the changing demographics, and the networks moved towards show with more appeal to urban and suburban audiences. It’s a fascinating story.
From the METV blog
While the rural purge spelled the end for some of the most iconic shows of all time, it also cleared room for shows like M*A*S*H, All in the Family, Maude, and Good Times. These new shows all had one thing in common: They fearlessly dealt with topical material, never shying away from controversial subjects. By contrast, shows like Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. were intentionally naive, as that show in particular never even mentioned the War in Vietnam.
Pat Buttram, who played Mr. Haney on Green Acres described the Rural Purge as the year that “CBS killed everything with a tree in it.” (That made me laugh out loud.)
I am pretty sure that TV influenced all of us. I wanted to be Perry Mason! Did any of these shows influence your younger self? Do you think they impacted society as a whole? Did they change public opinion? Did they help advance progressive causes? Did they pave the way for Will & Grace? Which I would argue absolutely had a positive impact on how people viewed gay people.
One last question. What other shows belong in this discussion, either rural shows that were purged or shows that were more edgy and urban?
P.S. I hope you guys don’t all end up cursing me; just from putting the post together, the Green Acres song keeps running through my head.
Baud
Balloon Juice is the place to be…
sab
I didn’t have a tv in the 70s and 80s. I feel like I missed a generation of my country’s culture.
BubbaDave
I continue to believe America would be better off if prospective police officers had to watch every episode of The Andy Griffith Show instead of their current media diet of Dirty Harry and Judge Dredd.
Baud
I’ve heard it said that Barney Miller was one of the most realistic cop shows.
Scout211
While I really enjoyed many sitcoms in the 70s, Saturday Night Live had the greatest impact on me during that period of time. I was in my 20s and it felt like it was the only comedy show on television that spoke to my generation with humor, satire and silliness.
frosty
@Baud: Perfect! You bastard!!!
Craig
Growing up in rural Virginia where my school had exactly 0 black people, watching Good Times and The Jeffersons as well as Welcome Back Kotter was how I saw Black folks. I sure didn’t see any in real life. Watching George Jefferson navigate White TV people was a revelation.
Craig
WKRP was probably my favorite sitcom. So many great characters and actors bouncing off each other.
Wileybud
Don’t recall it addressing social issues but Taxi was one of the funniest sitcoms of all time.
frosty
I didn’t own a TV until 1975, so I don’t remember most of the 70s sitcoms, but somehow I remember all the ones you mention. All of MASH, a lot of MTM, some All In The Family, f’rinstance.
None of them affected my political or otherwise worldview. Nixon and his cabal of crooks, along with a draft lottery #34 pretty much nailed that for me. Not to mention Kent State.
Baud
@Craig:
@Wileybud:
Weren’t those 80s?
BeautifulPlumage
Here Come the Brides & Petticoat Junction were rural shows that went away.
The short-lived Honey West was my young obsession. I got a trench coat around age 5 & played her to one brother as her sidekick Sam and the other brother as the bad guy.
I remember that All In The Family occasionally had punch-in-the-gut episodes (MASH also).
painedumonde
While not a sitcom and just before the 70’s, Star Trek certainly blazed a trail in places.
Baud
Regarding rural shows, I believe Hee Haw was big in the 70s.
And Marie Osmond was a little bit country.
dexwood
What!? No Gong Show? I rarely watched TV between 70 and 76. Too much going on in my life. I’ve caught up on many shows mentioned here since then. Will follow the comments as they come in. Good topic.
frosty
@Craig: @Wileybud: OMG, you’re right. I watched every epicode of WKRP and Taxi. Bailey for the win!
SiubhanDuinne
I watched, and enjoyed, a few but by no means all of these. MTM and M*A*S*H? Newhart? Absolutely, and many times again in syndication.
All in the Family? Maude? I think I probably saw most episodes once during their initial run, but was never compelled to go back and re-watch. When I had a cable subscription maybe 20-25 years ago, I would sometimes deal with my insomnia by turning on Nick at Nite (I think that was the old sitcom channel) but rarely warmed to the shows in reruns.
Baud
Sanford and Son. That is all.
raven
“Alice” was based on the Scorcese film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” starring Ellen Burstyn ,Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Vic Tayback and Diane Ladd. Tayback and Ladd were also in the TV series. Jodie Foster was incredible as the “tomboyish” girl.
raven
Having been in Korea I found nothing funny about it or Mash.
Odie Hugh Manatee
One sitcom I remember fondly was the very short-lived Hot l Baltimore that was released in 1975. It was Norman Lear’s first failure but I thought it was hilarious. From Wikipedia:
It lasted one season but it was a memorable one to this young guy. It was ahead of its time.
Ruckus
I was in the navy 1970-1973. And watched TV growing up as I did, we had a B&W 9 inch in the very early 1950s – we moved on and to bigger. and I have had a TV ever since – other than those 3 yrs in the navy. 1950s sitcoms were, were, were, I really have no words. This country has had some serious issues about growing up, adulthood, religious dogma, sex, in my lifetime. Some days I wonder how we got here, and why we haven’t gotten any further along in human development. And then I remember – conservatives are afraid. Of the dark, the light, knowledge, social interaction, to name some.
Ruckus
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Agree 100%
bbleh
Definitely not a focus of the show, but I recall Nichelle Nichols talking about leaving Star Trek and having both Gene Roddenberry and MLK (!!) push back HARD, Roddenberry saying “don’t you realize what I’m trying to do here?” and MLK saying “you cannot. You cannot.”
There’s a reason right-wingers say they hate “Hollywood.” Talk about encouraging Wrong Behavior!
@painedumonde: ah, beat me to it.
hueyplong
@Baud: Me too on Sanford and Son.
Ruckus
@raven:
I feel the same way about navy movies and gray paint and shitty food, and – OK I’ll stop.
Another Scott
Not even a mention of Julia? Pre-teen me was madly in love with her. The show only ran for 3 years, but was ground-breaking in lots of ways.
There were lots of attempts to find something new and different in the ’60s and ’70s. Most of them didn’t last very long, but they were trying. I do remember cringing even as a child when we watched “The Honeymooners” – like, Why is his threatened violence funny? Why is it funny that they are usually so miserable together?? Moving away from that “humor” was a very good thing.
I don’t know if any of the ’70s shows shaped my views more than any other. My present view-shaping probably came later (after grad-school).
Cheers,
Scott.
Glidwrith
I watched most of those shows starting from age 6-17. Maybe one black person in my entire high school. The shows were a window into a world that simply wasn’t in my everyday life.
My parents never realized that all those browner folks on TV meant that I never understood why there was prejudice and bigotry. They were just people.
One day my father was extremely upset about blacks going to school with whites and wasn’t I upset/afraid? My 13 year old self, who had already had a bellyful of rich entitled white brats in school replied that it depended on how they were raised.
It actually stopped him mid-rant and admitted I was right.
geg6
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was everything. I graduated high school in 1977 and I spent my teenage/young adult years just yearning to be just like her. She was smart, beautiful, intelligent, stylish, funny, single and perfectly happy to stay that way, apparently had an active sex life, a great job, entertaining co-workers and two great friends who always had her back. She was also a little naive, clumsy and silly. She was perfect.
Dangerman
A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.
MagdaInBlack
@Another Scott: I remember “Julia.” Loved the show, had the doll.
Eta: I remember watching “The Honeymooners” and thinking what an asshole Ralph was.
dm
@painedumonde: I think the occasional Star Trek rerun was the only TV I saw in the seventies. I was cured of TV by reading collections-in-book-form of Harlan Ellison’s The Glass Teat TV criticism column from the LA Free Press.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Teat
prostratedragon
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I remember that one. Saw it a few times and thought it looked promising. I also liked Soap, Mary Hartman^2, and MTM especially, but as I was either in or just out of college, appointment tv wasn’t a thing. Most shows I just saw here and there.
Almost Retired
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I had completely forgot about that awesome show! I remember watching that and asking my parents to explain some of the jokes. They chose instead to take me out for ice cream during its time slot.
geg6
@MagdaInBlack:
Me too. Hated that show and have no idea why anyone thought Gleason was funny. Now Art Carney? Hilarious.
bbleh
Fuzzy here, but weren’t there at least a few shows aimed at middle/high school — Kotter, Room 222, probably others — that ostensibly were set in “urban”-ish schools but more importantly had both major characters and bit players of all races … almost like that was normal or something!! 😱
West of the Rockies
To a lot of folks, Archie Bunker was the protagonist. Anyone recall the “Archie Bunker for President” merch?
kalakal
A bit out of it here as I didn’t see that much US TV .
As imports I loved Barney Miller, Taxi, and espescially WKRP
I remember and loved the British original to Sanford and Son which was Steptoe and Son
interestingly the original of All in the family, Till death us do part, had the same problem that someone mentioned above, in that many people took the bigoted idiot seriously and even supported his views *
* Tony Blair’s FIL was one of the stars of the show as the lefty SIL
Torrey
Not quite the 70’s (like Star Trek, which was referenced above, but Julia‘s central character, played by Diahann Carroll, was an African-American nurse who was a single mother. It ran from 1968-71.
It seems to me that the ’70’s shows walked through the openings created by shows in the 1960’s like Star Trek, I Spy, and Julia, not to mention Ironside (wheelchair user).
ETA: I see Another Scott mentioned Julia first.
WaterGirl
@Baud: This is Balloon Juice. 70s, 80s, it’s all good.
WaterGirl
@BeautifulPlumage: I had forgotten all about Petticoat Junction!
Seonachan
I was very much shaped by this era of tv – I watched most of the shows mentioned as a kid, with my parents in their bedroom (they had the color tv; the living room one was black & white). MTM was my mother’s favorite, mine was MASH, though now I rate Taxi and Barney Miller at the top. I love how class-related issues were centered in so many of these shows. Aside from those who made it, or at least have good professional jobs (The Jeffersons, MTM, Bob Newhart), most folks live in modest (at best) homes and plotlines often centered on worries about making ends meet. Most of the characters are shlubs, or even failures (most of the cabbies on Taxi were failures at other careers, and those failures were part of the storylines – and humor).
Enter the mid-to-late 80s and onward, with the Huxtables and Keatons and Friends, where no one on screen worries where their next paycheck or meal is coming from. (Roseanne being the exception that proves the rule). Unsurprisingly, tv reflected the national mood. Carter talked about malaise and told us to turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater; Reagan told us greed is good and poor people are losers who don’t deserve anything. So it’s no surprise the tv execs decided we didn’t want to bond with them during primetime.
Almost Retired
@kalakal: A lot of those early edgy 70s TV shows had British antecedents. It didn’t start with “The Office.”
PSQ
@Baud: There was an interesting survey of police on police shows at the time that rated the most realistic as Hill Street Blues, with Barney Miller second, in the USA. But in Canada policemen rated Barney Miller first and Hill Street second, which I always found interesting.
laura
Shout Out to Karen Valentine (who has a street named after her in Sebastopol CA). We loved roomed 222 when we were wee. Top notch cast. https://news.amomama.com/255404-meet-room-222-cast-members-five-decades.html
WaterGirl
@Baud: Oh my god, I had forgotten about Hee Haw!
What was the show with all the girls with the really short shorts? I never watched that one, and it may have been in a different decade. Oh wait, Dukes of Hazzard. (two Zs or one, I don’t know and I don’t care enough to google.)
Seonachan
@Baud: Both shows straddled the 70s & 80s.
WaterGirl
@raven: Wow, all those stars! I watched that show but had no idea.
zhena gogolia
@Craig: My school was 95% Black. I didn’t recognize real life on those shows, except the one with Rog. (What’s Happening!!)
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Baud: What I remember about Barney Miller that made the biggest impression on my views: it had recurring gay characters and treated them with a reasonable degree of sympathy. It was an under the radar pioneer in that respect.
Kent
Been watching some of these old shows with my 17 year old daughter who is something of a modern social justice warrior.
Seinfeld: She likes it but doesn’t really identify that much.
MASH: Doesn’t get the humor, finds the misogyny palpable.
Will and Grace (yes it’s 25 years old): She likes
The Office: Absolutely loves
Friends: Meh
Sex and the City: Meh
Arrested Development: Loves
Parks and Recreation: Loves
Gillmore Girls: Loves
That is about has far as we have gotten.
WaterGirl
@Glidwrith: Good for you!
WaterGirl
@Dangerman: Mr. Ed, of course. How could I have forgotten?
ThresherK
SCTV was the delivery system for my adolescent humor. TV shows, news, and the industry itself roasted, 20-minute whole parodies, and the worst local commercials this side of Tom Carvel, all coming to you Thursday at 9!
My appetite for the long-form sketches can be traced to watching Carol Burnett with my parents.
Spanish Moss
@Another Scott: I watched Julia in early elementary school, and even had a Julia barbie doll in a nurse uniform. I think the groundbreaking aspects were over my head, but I obviously loved the show.
JaySinWA
I don’t know if the shows modeled or molded the times. I do think they lagged a lot of where things really were, but I tend to think they helped drag much of the rest of the community watching along. So a bit of both.
Just checked my memory and Barney Miller predated Hill Street Blues. The evolution of police procedurals went from Dragnet and Highway Patrol reruns, through Law and Order and NCIS in my viewing history. Barney Miller kind of broke the mold a bit, not the first cop humor (Car 54 Where are you is only a vague memory for me and Mayberry was earlier) but one of the best. They mostly were rigid morality plays like the old code movies. Other genres may have moved or reflected society more accurately.
frosty
@Kent: My 20-something binge watches The Office. Me, I can’t stand Steve Carrell.
We both watched every episode of Big Bang Theory while it ran, though. It reminded me so much of the guys I went to a STEM college with.
WaterGirl
@bbleh: You guys are bringing up all these great shows that I had forgotten about!
laura
Cant Not shout out this gem, this jewel, this transgressive silly show: https://archive.org/details/ferbwood2night
WaterGirl
@kalakal:
All great shows. Maybe they only imported the best?
Almost Retired
@laura: I had an enormous crush on Karen Valentine when I was 10 or 11. Not sure why her career didn’t take off , but I’ll go google her now. IIRC Hollywood didn’t know what to do with her. She was a serious actress on Room 222, but cast as an airline bimbo in a movie about “stewardesses.” It was so hard for female actors then.
WaterGirl
@Torrey: I LOVED I Spy.
Baud
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
There was also Three’s Company, where Jack Ritter pretended to be gay so Mr. Roper would let him live with Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers.
eclare
I was too young at the time for a lot of the early 1970’s shows, but I loved Laverne and Shirley, which started in 1976. I haven’t seen it in a long time, and I’m sure it’s dated, but that diner scene killed me. “Betty please, pick up your hash browns.”
Nothing political that I can remember, besides I was eight, silly slapstick was perfect entertainment.
frosty
@JaySinWA: I loved that show:
There’s a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s broken out in fights.
There’s a traffic jam in Harlem that’s backed up to Jackson Heights.
There’s a Scout troop short a child, Kruschev’s due at Idlewild …
Car 54 where are you?????
frosty
@WaterGirl: I watched every single episode of I Spy when it came out. Great show.
WaterGirl
@PSQ: Oh, gosh, police shows and Canada.
What was the show with the mounted policeman and his sidekick that was a cop from Chicago? Or maybe the mountie was working in Chicago with his sidekick.
Great show, great buddy show.
zhena gogolia
@laura: I loved Room 222. The whole cast was great.
WaterGirl
@Kent:
I love that. That was me at 17, too.
Miss Bianca
@kalakal: I remember reading a book of scripts of British TV series and Steptoe and Son’s pilot script being in the mix. Some writer or other – I forget who, but someone I admired at the time – said that that script was one of the most perfect ever written for TV, and I have to say that having read it, I really wish I could see it!
And I totally saw how it had inspired Sanford and Son, and I *loved* it! Sanford and Son having been one of my favorites growing up.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: True North?
ETA: Looks like it’s Due South. I never watched it, so sue me.
frosty
@zhena gogolia: One of my college classmates was an extra in Room 222. He was conflicted about career choices because the acting money was way more than he could get as a STEM graduate. He eventually decided to concentrate on graduating and going into that line of work. More stable employment! (unless you went to work for North American Rockwell).
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: I might not be representative, but the threats were played as more woof tickets — idle bluster from a basically feckless character. Combined with Alice(the stories’ hero, frequently)’s knowing disregard, that made them kind funny.
And I forgot, Sanford & Son, speaking of idle bluster, was another favorite. I think during those years the programmers figured on catching the young urban audience in the couple of hours on Saturday before they went out. That’s certainly when I was likliest to catch them, and when I think the biggest hits ran for several years.
Soprano2
I’m surprised no one mentioned “One Day at a Time”, which was one of the first positive shows with a divorced woman on it. People on TV who were single with kids were always widowed before. Made it more normal for kids whose parents were getting divorced in the ’70’s and early ’80’s.
zhena gogolia
@frosty: So not one of the named characters?
Baud
I think the original Columbo was in the 70s. That and Barnaby Jones piqued my interest in detective shows.
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA: I don’t know if anyone has mentioned CHIPS, but I’m betting that it doesn’t hold up well. Not sure it held up even back then. :-)
Baud
@Soprano2:
Good call. Plus Valerie Bertinelli.
Baud
Six Million Dollar and Wonder Woman.
When superheroes were super.
ThresherK
@WaterGirl:
That was Due South. I have both soundtracks. Very stylized when it came to what little violence the episodes have, and lots of humor, but the characterizations were on track.
Paul Gross is a Canadian legend for this and other works.
Almost Retired
@Soprano2: Oh excellent! One Day at a Time was way ahead of its time. And an awesome theme song.
Miss Bianca
@JaySinWA: No love for Adam-12? That was the first “police procedural” I remember seeing (along with Dragnet).
I liked Barney Miller way better than either of those. Fun fact: Max Gail, who played Wojo, was from Detroit and he was my one of my older sisters’ English teacher! This would have been back in the very late 60s (my sister graduated in 1970), and I remember there being talk about him being a wild (read, antiestablishment) young guy. Kids loved him, parents hated him – that sort of thing,
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: CHIPS seemed out of step with the times. I think 1 Adam 12 predated it, and I think it was an attempt to update the theme a bit.
CliosFanBoy
@geg6:
Jackie Gleason could be really, really funny. But not in this case. I hated The Honeymooners.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Which one? He mentioned, like, 8 of them! :-)
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Due South! Which I just finished, and loved.
Another fun “brush with TV greatness” fact: I went to college and did college drama classes with Katayoun Amini, who’s in a couple of episodes of that show, maybe because she was married to David Marciano, who played Mountie Paul Gross’s Chicago cop sidekick the first two seasons.
Funny, I was *in* Chicago when that series was being filmed there, and I had friends who worked in the industry, and I don’t remember this one from back in the day at all. I only stumbled on it because I loved Paul Gross so much in Slings and Arrows and wondered what else he had done.
RedDirtGirl
When I was in college in NYC in the early 80s one of the local channels had a late night line-up of 3 MTMs followed by 2 Bob Newharts. We called it MaryMaryMaryBobBob.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Yes! Due South! A few years ago I looked to see if it was available anywhere, but it was not. So sad.
TriassicSands
@sab:
In 1971, after a particularly offensive commercial, I had had enough. I had a small BW portable TV. I took it out to the yard behind my apartment, and reduced it to the subatomic level with a 16 pound sledge hammer. It was fun. Much better than television. Sadly, I was in college and couldn’t afford to buy a new TV to smash once a week
ETA: I can’t offer an opinion on sit-coms of the 70s, because I’ve never been able to watch sit-coms.
laura
Man, there was a lot of television that you’ve all reminded me of, and my take away was that there was work for character actors, and there was space for new concepts- and we ate it up! Great or good enough writers, producers and directors, actors, ancillary workers- an industry. I liked watching television, there were shows that even as a young, I understood to be intended as more than just entertainment. People brought their A Game and with fewer channels, there was more common cultural references in the social sphere- or that’s how I remember it.
Wyatt Salamanca
So many great tv sitcoms from the 1970’s
Ones that I especially love and still stand the test of time for me:
The Odd Couple, Taxi, Sanford and Son
Green Acres and My World and Welcome To It just barely made it into the 70’s, but I loved both of them.
Not a sitcom, but the Flip Wilson Show is one of my favorite sketch comedy shows.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: I found it on DVD through the state library system, for what it’s worth – there may be DVDs of it available if you can’t find it streaming.
Anyway
@Kent:
No Living Single?
Wyatt Salamanca
@RedDirtGirl:
I remember that fondly.
In the 1970’s one of the local NY local channels used to air You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx and the Burns and Allen Show late night.
TriassicSands
@WaterGirl:
I don’t know what show you are referring to, but was it a sit-com or a procedural?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Almost Retired:
What a nice bribe to make you forget your questions…lol! Another show from the 70’s was Vegas (VEGA$). Who wouldn’t love to park their car in their house? Plus a phone and answering machine in your car? High tech!
TBone
The Electric Co., The Flying Nun, That Girl, Happy Days, Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, I Love Lucy, The Incredible Hulk, The Love Boat, Love, American Style! Hollywood Squares, Laugh In, Flip Wilson, The Gong Show, Merv Griffin, Carol Burnett. Dinah Shore, The Brady Bunch, Donny & Marie, Sonny & Cher, Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, and best of all Sunday night Disney…ah childhood.
phein64
@kalakal:
Coming from Canada, we love those leaders
Who personify the US way to be,
There’s JFK, and LBJ, and WKRP . . .
Moxy Fruvous, The Greatest Man in America
[It’s a good song, even if Jian is an asshole]
WaterGirl
@Baud: Is that why you became a detective?
WaterGirl
@ThresherK: That must be why it’s not available. The music costs money.
CliosFanBoy
Wojciehowicz. It’s spelled like it sounds.
A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants.
With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
Would you believe….
I see nutting, I hear nutting, I know nutting!
“Calling Dr. Bombay! Emergency! Come right away!”
Oh! Robbbbbbbbbbb!
It’s the phone police!
Oh, just one more thing. It’s probably nothing……..
Pigs! In! Spacccceeeeeee!
“What you see is what you get!” ·
“Oo, Oo, Oo! Mr. Kah-ter!”
Never mind….
Say goodnight Dick. Goodnight Dick!
You’ve got spunk. (pause) I hate spunk.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: Wait, what? Just finished? Does that mean it’s available streaming somewhere?
Wileybud
@Baud: Late ’70s to early ’80s.
Wyatt Salamanca
Also, Here’s Lucy and Maude
Trivia Man
@raven: my dad would never allow us to watch hogans heroes because there was nothing funny about a POW camp. It was still too soon for him.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: I loved the sidekick, and Paul.
Wyatt Salamanca
@WaterGirl:
Freaks and Geeks, WKRP in Cincinnati, and American Dreams all had that problem.
brantl
@WaterGirl: True North
geg6
In the 70s, Saturday nights on CBS may have been the greatest prime time lineup of all time: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show. People didn’t want to go out on Saturday nights.
FelonyGovt
Not a sitcom, but I loved Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, with the punchy quick jokes and crazy characters and Nixon saying “sock it… to ME???” And the somewhat more intellectual That Was The Week That Was.
CaseyL
I watched all those shows, and don’t remember being shocked by them in any way, so possibly I had already internalized the liberal values they promoted.
@WaterGirl: In 1975, I spent the summer in Los Angeles, with people in the outer orbit of the film industry. One weekend I spent at a friend-of-a-friend’s place in Topanga Canyon, and we all did acid, me for the first time. It was a great experience, but the reason I bring it up is, at one point we were all inside watching TV. We saw an episode of I, Spy and immediately afterwards, an episode of The Avengers.
Being on acid meant I focused on those shows like nobody’s business, and got into some very heavy analytics of their contrasting styles. I remember going on a disquisition about how Scotty – the woman agent in I, Spy – came across as frivolous and silly, and had to constantly be rescued, in contrast to Emma Peel, who was never anyone’s fool and could not only jolly well rescue herself but also Steed if needed. The two shows regarded their female main characters very differently, and seeing that so clearly had a big impact on me.
Trivia Man
@Glidwrith: Welcome Back Kotter normalized diversity for me. I was in the Bay Area, very much like a Brady bunch neighborhood. I KNEW California wasn’t like “normal” America, clearly Brooklyn (4th largest city in America!) was normal. Diversity normalized
I so wanted an Afro- all but one of the cast had one so it must be cool.
frosty
@zhena gogolia: Nope, not one of the named characters, just a kid in the classroom.
trollhattan
’70s eh? Easy enough to toss 90+% so where does that leave us? (no particular order)
All In the Family
Soap
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Fernwood/America Tonite
Barney Miller
Mary Tyler Moore
WKRP
Carol Burnett
Bob Newhart
Monty Python
May be missing a couple but the important takeaway is the late ’70s groundbreakers paved the way for the tidal wave of excellent teevee sitcoms in the ’80s, a vastly better decade for the format.
Jack Canuck
@Soprano2:
This is what I was going to add, but you beat me to it. I always really liked that show, though I haven’t seen anything from it in many years now.
Lapassionara
Loved WKRP, Taxi, and Bob Newhart. But weren’t there 2 Bob Newhart series. One with a brunette wife, set in a city, and one with a blonde wife, set in rural Vermont. Very funny, both of them.
frosty
@WaterGirl: In my time in SoCal (70s) no one ever called the California Highway Patrol “CHIPS”. They were the CHP, all letters enunciated. That was enough for me to ignore the show.
prostratedragon
@geg6: That’s the line-up I had in mind earlier. But some people (😗) seldome went out before 9 or 10 anyway.
Berkmann
I loved the ‘70s Bob Newhart show as a kid, and I recently binged the entire series on Hulu. It holds up! It’s indescribably great and smart and absurdist. The “whitey, sit” moment was indeed on this series, and there was a significant episode about homophobia as well, when Howard Hesseman (later best known as Johnny Fever on WKRP) guest-starred as a gay patient who made Bob and the other patients uncomfortable until they all realized he was just a regular old neurotic like the rest of them. Great episode, sensitively handled, especially for the era.
Not to mention the brilliant supporting ensemble, especially the staggeringly beautiful Suzanne Pleshette, with whom Bob portrayed a funny, loving, modern marriage that didn’t fall back onto the dumb TV tropes we all have rolled our eyes at on so many shows. Just a fantastic show.
Ajabu
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Just want to mention that my actual friend Flip Wilson was the FIRST BLACK SUPERSTAR!!! and he seems to be forgotten since his untimely death at 64. Rarely hear his name mentioned.
Maybe one day we can do him as a topic?
Villago Delenda Est
@Lapassionara: There were. The latter one, with the blonde who favored sweaters, finished up dismissed as all a dream by the wife of the former one. “OK, no more Japanese food before you go to bed.”
Miss Bianca
@TriassicSands:
Due South? A creamy and delicious blend of both, imho
WaterGirl
@TriassicSands: A few people have been kind enough to come up with the name – Due South.
zhena gogolia
@Ajabu: Great idea. He was hilarious. “The Devil made me do it!” He had so many catchphrases. I too am surprised how forgotten he is.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: DVDs, baby, DVDs – we kick it old school (ie, mid-oughts) here at the Mountain Hacienda!
WaterGirl
@CliosFanBoy: That was a treat!
zhena gogolia
@Villago Delenda Est: The great Suzanne Pleshette.
prostratedragon
@FelonyGovt:
That Was The Week That Was is the closest any tv comedy came to forming my thinking. Even there, the real groundwork was laid by the Midnight Special radio show, which used to feature acts like Bob Newhart, Nichols & May, Dick Gregory, and many British satirists.
Wyatt Salamanca
@FelonyGovt:
Are you referring to the British or the American version of the show?
I’ve never seen either, but heard both were great.
WaterGirl
@Wyatt Salamanca: So did LIFE.
WaterGirl
@brantl: Due South!
Wyatt Salamanca
@Ajabu:
I’ve always believed that Flip Wilson has not received the proper recognition that he deserves.
Miss Bianca
@Ajabu: You knew Flip Wilson??!! I LOVED him! And can you imagine the uproar nowadays that Miss Geraldine Jones would cause? And yet somehow we all accepted a man in full drag on prime time TV and nobody seemed to bat an eye at all about it.
Almost as if drag didn’t actually damage anybody…
frosty
@Lapassionara: And the last show of the second series was the greatest end in all of television, waking up next to Suzanne Pleshette and saying “I just had the weirdest dream.”
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: You have led an interesting life!
I don’t remember a female agent in I Spy. Pretty sure that Scotty was played by Bill Cosby, and his partner was Robert Culp.
WaterGirl
@frosty: You didn’t miss much, as I recall.
prostratedragon
Flip Wilson was just great, period.
WaterGirl
@Ajabu: not sure, send me some thoughts on that?
Was he fun to hang with?
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: I don’t even have a dvd player.
Ajabu
@Miss Bianca: We met in the early 60s eating breakfast at 2:00 am in a Chock full of Nuts in Harlem when we were both nobodies. Became good friends and remained good friends even after he became world famous. I miss the hell out of him!
prostratedragon
We must pause to savor. Some people never made it as far as the 70s.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: We also got a zillion cop/detective shows Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, Charlie’s Angels… the list is endless. I loved The Rockford Files
Wyatt Salamanca
@WaterGirl:
What about favorite guest cameo appearances on a sitcom?
Such as Howard Cosell on The Odd Couple Henry Fonda on Maude, Sammy Davis Jr. on All in the Family, Walter Cronkite on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, B.B. King and George Foreman on Sanford and Son.
CaseyL
@WaterGirl:
Maybe she was a one-off, but she was definitely in that episode and the two main male characters acted like they’d knionwn her from previous assignments. If her name wasn’t Scotty, then I don’t know what it was.
I had a few years of being nomadic, zigzagging between East and West Coasts, and then up and down the West Coast. All my belongings fit into a suitcase. It was indeed an interesting time. I still get occasional twinges of wanting to go roam around again, and hope to go on some long road trips when I retire.
Princess
Does anyone remember a sitcom that had two young women renting an apartment or rooms from an older couple? It was probably lousy but I loved it as a kid. I suspect it was a rip off of All in the Family as it touched on themes of race and generation gap but in a much milder way. Early to mid 70s. I’d love to know the name (and no, not 3s Company — nothing like it, and earlier too)
JaySinWA
@Miss Bianca: Adam-12 was in afternoon syndication when I watched it. It appeared to be Dragnet remake with less stiff characters. It still seemed stilted. CHIPs seemed like a remake of Adam-12 with a lightly integrated cast and motorcycles.
piratedan
kind of surprised that no one has mentioned Cheers or Night Court.
will happily pile on to the kudos given to WKRP, Mary Tyler Moore Show and Barney Miller
for me, it started with seeing that you could see both sexes, all races and character driven humor and a willingness to take on topics with care and humor.
Craig
@Baud: Yes
El Muneco
@Baud:
@Baud: “I’ve heard it said that Barney Miller was one of the most realistic cop shows.”
Evergreen. In So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993), Anthony LaPaglia’s police officer character laments that he thought his life would be like Serpico, but instead he was Fish from Barney Miller.
El Muneco
@Wyatt Salamanca: ”
“Freaks and Geeks, WKRP in Cincinnati, and American Dreams all had that problem.”
A number of British TV productions do as well, as they only buy the image and music reproduction rights for the UK, thinking that the US audience for QI and Only Connect is too small to be monetized. So you can’t even see these shows later on YouTube as there are copyright hawk agencies watching for pirated content in order to protect the original copyrights.
WaterGirl
@piratedan: Cheers and Night Court, both great shows! Surprised also the they haven’t been mentioned.
kalakal
@Miss Bianca: Steptoe and Son was superb. It was both very funny and very tragic and had real teeth. The writers, Galton & Simpson had been the writers for Tony Hancock who was the biggest comedy star of the time, he was huge.
When he self destructed the BBC offered them a commision to write a number of one off short plays called Comedy Playhouse. One of them The Offer knocked everybodys socks off and the Beeb asked them to make more. here you are ( warning. poor quality)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x74jbx0
Here’s one of my favourite episodes from the series with the great Leonard Rossiter as guest star
The desperate hours
dexwood
@Ajabu:
You’ve brought me out again. I responded to a Flip Wilson story of yours a few years ago with my own story. Late 80s, Flip Wilson spent time in Albuquerque learning to fly hot air balloons, getting his pilot’s license. My wIfe and I were long time participants in the annual Balloon Fiesta. I was crew chief for an old friend that year. At the pilot’s briefing we were asked to take Flip Wilson up on the last morning so he could add some time to his qualifying hours. My friend was an instructor. He was great, charming, attentive, serious about what he was doing. Back at the field he hung out with my pilot and our crew. I have a valued picture of him standing with my wife and son, his hand on my son’s shoulder.
CliosFanboy
@Princess:
The Ozzie and Harriet reboot. It was syndicated not network.
columbusqueen
Am I the only one who still loves WKRP’s Thanksgiving episode “Turkeys Away”?
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
CliosFanboy
@WaterGirl:
they’re late 80s, and 1990s. Wrong date range.
TriassicSands
If you insist, I will be filing a lawsuit against you as soon as I get out of the hospital. How much do you think I can get? Would asking for $10 million be too much?
@ThresherK:
I’ve never watched sit-coms, but I’m wondering from the brief description I saw earlier if Due South was a sit-com or a procedural (typical of cop shows — it’s about a Mountie, right?) I’ve never seen it and don’t know anything about it. Just curious.
ThresherK
Never mind, I just saw Miss Bianca’s answer.
CliosFanboy
@zhena gogolia:
I had such a crush on her. Actually, I still do. ;)
zhena gogolia
@prostratedragon: Fantastic! “Don’t make me have to overthrow your government!”
CliosFanboy
@Miss Bianca:
The Church of What’s Happening Now….
I used clips of his show in my African American history class when talking about that Era and the increase in good roles for Black entertainers .
zhena gogolia
@CliosFanboy:
Have you seen Rome Adventure? If not, get to it ASAP.
Almost Retired
@Wyatt Salamanca: Sammy Davis on All in the Family is the mother of all guest appearances. I remember watching that with my grandparents and they cracked up at the cheek kiss. And Archie’s face. Carroll O’Connor was a genius.
Percysowner
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: One of my favorite YouTube channels is Matt Baume. He examines gay content in TV and movies. He talks about shows that had individual episodes portraying gay characters. He did an entire episode on Barney Miller, how the producer, Danny Arnold, managed to get a gay character on the show and then made him recurring, later adding his partner. Eventually the show did an arc about one of the policemen coming out as gay and the ramifications that had. That episode is here
WaterGirl
@TriassicSands: The Mountie is the star of the show. I don’t exactly recall why the Mountie is working in Chicago, but he and his Chicago cop partner have great chemistry.
It’s serious, it’s humorous. Tough to pull that off but the whole show was a delight!
Some folks above say it’s available on DVD and available through their libraries. If you have a DVD player, you should watch it .
So great
edit:
piratedan
@El Muneco: which is sad because they are both great shows.
I would also suggest that Pointless and Impossible! could work here with US centric questions. Overall, I’m quite impressed with how well versed most Brits and Scots are with US knowledge…. maybe that’s our cultural footprint exerting itself.
CliosFanboy
@zhena gogolia:
thank you. I’m still pissed at those birds for killing her in the Hitchcock movie
Odie Hugh Manatee
One I have not seen mentioned yet is The Waltons. Who can forget good ol’ John-Boy? Nice, wholesome imaginary Southern life suitable for TV…lol! Another one was Little House on the Prairie. My Mom absolutely loved Michael Landon.
Princess
@CliosFanboy: wow, you’re good! That’s it!
columbusqueen
I grew up with most of these shows, with Laugh In as a special treat after my Sunday bath when I was a toddler.
But my all time favorite sitcom is Frasier-I got to attend a couple of episode filmings during the eighth & ninth seasons. So my giggling is now part of its laugh track.
Lapassionara
@frosty: Yes! Brilliant!
zhena gogolia
@CliosFanboy: She has some good scenes first, though!
zhena gogolia
@Princess: So an Ozzie and Harriet reboot dealt with race and drugs?
prostratedragon
@CliosFanboy: Speaking of which, Richard Pryor! He joined Flip Wilsin in a funny CofWHN bit as another preacher, and his own short-lived show could have been one of the best.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Almost Retired:
I also loved Sammy Davis on All in the Family, but my favorite one is Henry Fonda because I loved the storyline behind it: Maude launches a Fonda for President campaign without his consent and then he visits her to decline her request to run.
SFBayAreaGal
@Craig: Mine too
CliosFanboy
@Princess:
I remember my parents watching it. :)
Princess
@zhena gogolia: race definitely. They rent to a Black young woman and a white hippie chick (so drugs maybe too but implicitly?) The episode I remember best is O and H trying to be cool when they meet the Black woman’s boyfriend. It was a sweet show.
Chris
@Glidwrith:
A later and more upscale example of this – I’ll always believe that Obama’s election owed a sizable debt to movies and TVs for normalizing the idea of a non-white president. For people my age, the “President of the United States” role was just as likely to be played by Morgan Freeman or Denis Haysbert or Jimmy Smits as by Harrison Ford or Martin Sheen. We just took it for granted that a black president in real life was a matter of when not if.
Chris
@WaterGirl:
Oh, Due South.
It has my absolute favorite Introductory Character Moment of all time: the first few minutes of the pilot episode are intercut between shots of a guy driving a dogsled through a horrific blizzard, and his colleagues at the Mountie post talking about how crazy he was for having gone out after that criminal in such dangerous weather. But just what crime is that criminal guilty of, anyway?
Cue the main character bursting into the Mountie station, tossing the unconscious criminal’s body off his shoulders, and triumphantly proclaiming: “That’s the last time HE’LL fish over the limit!”
Rusty
The Odd Couple addressed divorce, not a common subject before this time.
Citizen Dave
@Almost Retired: Agree! Was thinking about the Sammy Davis Jr episode the other day.
This thread 1000% in my wheelhouse. We watched Barney Miller reruns every night for a year in college, 1980-81 or so.
Well-known that Gleason hated rehearsing for The Honeymooners. Recently read an interview with the lone cast survivor and she said the other 3 rehearsed like crazy before each episode. What an asshole Gleason was.
Fernwood Tonight–Yes!!!
StringOnAStick
@WaterGirl: I loved I Spy because of all the exotic international settings; it made me want to travel the world.
NotMax
Late late late to the thread.
One 70s show which was gone all too soon was Hot l Baltimore. Prostitution and homosexuality were a hard sell. To the point the network included a disclaimer.
Norman Lear speaks.
DavidG
To me, I was about 15, Carol Burnett Show was groundbreaking. Not so much for social commentary but for its quality. One little thing. It was obvious even to 15 year old me that Harvey Korman was gay. And yet no one seemed to notice or care. It is the things that you’re supposed to not notice that sometimes matter on sitcoms, things that are treated as normal when IRL no one does so, that really chang society in subtle ways.
cain
@MagdaInBlack:
But when Eddie Murphy lampooned the two of them as two gay men. I must admit I laughed .. a lot. Even though looking back it wasn’t great and Eddie had to apologize for the all the gay slurs.
cain
@Ajabu:
Heck yeah! I loved Flip Wilson !
cain
Bewitched was interesting given how straight laced christians were and having a show about witches would be pretty risky I would think.
Then again having a good looking blonde and blue eyed woman makes people forget.
Peale
The Beverly Hillbillies probably would have run for another decade if it hadn’t been cancelled. But Green Acres was the real loss. Its not like Maud would ever have had an episode where the chicken started laying square eggs.
billcinsd
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Those were OK shows, but are not situation comedies
sab
@cain: I hated Bewitched. Everything about it. Why did Samantha even like her asshole husband? Her mother was intolerable. Samantha was annoying.
My husband watches it because he lusts after Elizabeth Montgomery. Only blonde he ever liked.
sab
@Kent: That is so interesting. Also too I am an almost 70 woman and agree with her on a lot.
scav
Didn’t watch sit-coms: couldn’t. We got one hour of chosen evening tv a week and that was, inevitably and without question, Emergency!
Miss Bianca
@columbusqueen: We have that chunk of the turkey episode as a Youtube clip and we watch it every year about this time – just rewatched it a day or two ago, in fact – and, as Beetlejuice said about The Exorcist, “it just gets funnier every time!”
The whole cast was superb, but the guy who played Les Nesman was an absolute genius. I don’t know how he kept a straight face.
@Chris: Yep. I’m actually thinking about purchasing a set of Due South DVDs, if I can find them, precisely because of moments like that one!
Nancy
I am coming late to the party. I was (re)watching my current favorite old show, Major Crimes, on dvd last night.
Seeing this conversation made me think. I have to share that I occasionally watched 70s shows with my father in that time when I still lived at home but was old enough to have a part-time job and go to the local branch campus of the state college.
My father was a WWII vet. One night a MASH episode hit him hard. He began to cry and he told 18-year-old me that it brought back things were hard (he didn’t say painful, but that’s what I think) to remember.
He’d presented his time in the military to his children as no big deal and said he wasn’t in combat.
I later heard from a cousin that he’d been in the Battle of the Bulge.
I think maybe it was good for us both to realize that he was a human being who felt pain and sorrow.
70s shows were a different kind of television.
Paul in KY
@sab: You might have.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Julia was so hot!
Paul in KY
@MagdaInBlack: I did love Art Carney’s character, though.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: Soap was a great show. Sorta a 70s sitcom in same way Rick & Morty are a 2020s cartoon show.
Paul in KY
@Seonachan: The Newharts lived in a pretty fancy apt in Chicago. Was alright as he was a medical MD.
Paul in KY
@FelonyGovt: I tried watching a rerun of it about 15 years ago and found that it was so topical that I didn’t get many of the jokes. I had forgotten the politics that the jokes were for.
Paul in KY
@Ajabu: Flip was soooooo great. I loved his show. My parents also really loved him. Gone too soon.
Paul in KY
@columbusqueen: I doubt you are…
WaterGirl
@Nancy: I’m glad you had that moment with your dad, even though it was surely hard for you.
Easier to say he never saw combat. That’s what my dad told me, too.
Nancy
@WaterGirl:
Thank you. Sad for you, too.
The experience gave me a whole new way of seeing him, very helpful as he continued to smoke and drink himself into oblivion. He decided he was old in his mid 50’s and died of complications from emphysema just before his 59th birthday.