FTA-TV TV Shows That Have Aged Poorly

[Shell]

Or was it "Read my lips"

 

[Elmer_Judd]

If I remember correctly Chances had bizarre and outlandish storylines such as science fiction, ghosts and supernatural creatures from the start; while E Street started off as a soap opera firmly grounded in the real world like Home and Away, Neighbours or A Country Practice, but its plots became unrealistic and ventured into fantasy/supernatural/sci-fi in the last 18 months or so of its run. Didn't an E Street character turn into a werewolf at one stage?

Think so, and gangsters as well..
The episode where Reverend Bob dies was rough, cannot remember if was him or Edward Scissorhands that which was the first on-screen fictional character that I openly cried over.

 

[Elmer_Judd]

Or was it "Read my lips"

Yeah that is the one.

Fellow E Street hottie, Toni Pearen also had a mildly successful musical career. I had the biggest puppy dog crush on her in E Street. She was gorgeous.

 

[JackNah_8]

All i recall from E-Street is Bruce Samazan and Melissa Tauktz (sp?) and her single "Sexy is the word"?


I can't remember an actual episode, i think i may have been a tad young.

Omg that song! Lol


Or read my lips

 

[STFU Donnie]

TV Shows come and go. Some are around for a long time, others a short time, some are memorable, some forgotten, some good, some bad, others indifferent.

With more digital channels and DVD releases in recent years, there are more opportunities to watch favorite TV shows from the past. Some look as good as they did when they were made, others look dated but are still good, with the fact that some shows are dated part of their appeal.

On other occasions though, shows age badly for one reason or another. Which shows from yesteryear have you found to have aged poorly? Some I found were:

FRIENDS - I loved this show in the 1990s & early 2000s, but having watched it in syndication, there just seems to be something very dated about Friends, and not in a feel-good, 1990s nostalgia kind of way. Friends was a very good show, with lots of well-written comedy and a great cast, but for some reason that is hard to pinpoint I found it just doesn't hold up well today, and this even applies to the early 2000s episodes rather than just those from the 1990s. Other popular American sitcoms from this era - Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, Frasier, Becker - do have some things that date them, but overall hold up well and are still enjoyable to watch although all have been gone for the better part of a decade.

SEACHANGE - This Australian TV show was very popular in the late 1990s, and I was among the many people who loved it. It boosted the acting careers of many of its stars, and caused the expressions 'sea-change' and tree-change' to enter our vocabulary, for people who leave the city for a simpler life near the ocean or in the bush respectively. It also inspired a number of similar shows around this era, some of which were notorious flops. However, when I watched Seachange in syndication recently, I found it terrible, and cannot believe how differently I perceived it now compared to 15 years ago.

BLUE HEELERS - It is hard to believe that more than 20 years have gone by since Blue Heelers made its debut with a pretty young future star from Perth named Lisa McCune. However, if you look at the early Blue Heelers episodes from 1993-94, they look more like they are from 1983-84. I cannot say the same for the series in its later years, as I have not seen these episodes for some time.

FRIENDS - Utter crap when it debuted. Utter crap during its run. Utter crap when it finished. Utter crap today. I would say it has followed an entirely predictable aging process.

 

[STFU Donnie]

My Dawsons Creek box set still holding up nicely.

Time for a remake though as I do wonder if Joey ever went back to Dawson after some sweet Pacey action. And WTF happened on that yacht

As coasters?

 

[swingdog]

FRIENDS - Utter crap when it debuted. Utter crap during its run. Utter crap when it finished. Utter crap today. I would say it has followed an entirely predictable aging process.

I doubt that last part. Otherwise, why does it have such a following amongst teenagers today?

 

[Elmer_Judd]

I wonder how Game of Thrones will hold up in 10/20 years time ? I liked the final season btw, most satisfying.

 

[STFU Donnie]

I doubt that last part. Otherwise, why does it have such a following amongst teenagers today?

As if more evidence were needed about the state of society, and its future...

 

[swingdog]

As if more evidence were needed about the state of society, and its future...

Not really.

 

[sherbrook]

The Young Ones - product of its times...
Cheers
MASH
Miami Vice - mainly due to the dated look and design (although I like Michael Mann stuff)

 

[Bomberboyokay]

I doubt that last part. Otherwise, why does it have such a following amongst teenagers today?

Internet + idiocy

 

[Bomberboyokay]

I wonder how Game of Thrones will hold up in 10/20 years time ? I liked the final season btw, most satisfying.

Game of Thrones is already "If You Were There 2011-2019". Underwhelming, unpopular final season has turned it into True Blood, Dexter, Heroes, Lost etc. Not many advocating a start to finish viewing.

 

[Firestarter]

Leave it to Beaver

Has aged terribly but, for a ‘50’s show, has one of the dirtiest lines ever said on commercial TV:

“ weren’t you a little hard on the beaver last night Ward?”

I thought Eminem just made up that line for 8 Mile. Whoops.

 

[emuboy]

Glee was very popular at the time and wasn't on that long ago (2009-2015) but didn't age well.

Certainly the show's unhappy legacy doesn't help. The drug-related death of Corey Monteith, the suicide of Mark Salling (and the circumstances that led to him taking his own life) and the death by drowning of Naya Rivera have cast a shadow over the show's memory, and further damage was caused when serious allegations were raised about the alleged unpleasant behavior of star Lea Michele on the set of Glee, but a major problem with Glee very obvious in hindsight was that it was trying to be both a parody and a teen drama at the same time.

As just one example, the character of Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) was presented as an overly ambitious, teacher's pet, theater kid stereotype, which is fine if she is played for laughs and parody. But when viewers then have to emphasize with Rachel in a more serious plotline , then it isn't so easy. True, a lot of shows successfully combine comedy and drama, but the Glee characters were such parodies this doesn't come off well, and looks even worse years on.

However, the character that would raise more eyebrows than most nowadays would be the Glee Club teacher Mr. Schue. At best he appears to be a man reliving his own high school experiences and living vicariously through his students years later, but some of his conduct both at the school and out of it are beyond belief, and would be considered a problem even if the show came from 1989-1995 rather than 20 years later. I think a young woman's comments about Glee on a clip of the show from Youtube sum it up best:

ME WATCHING GLEE AS A TEENAGER IN 2010: Mr. Schue is a great teacher and so cool, why can't I have a teacher at my high school like Mr. Schue?
ME RE-WATCHING GLEE AS AN ADULT IN 2020: Why isn't Mr. Schue in prison?

 

[DEVO]

Drop the Dead Donkey.

But every show ages after about 5-10 years, even Justified and the Walking Dead are starting to show their age.

 

[Poetic Justice]

 

[emuboy]

Paradise Beach even when on the air in 1993 and 1994 was always 'so bad it's good' and many years later has a sort of nostalgia about it. Who knows, if on the air longer it may have been Australia's answer to the UK soap 'Hollyoaks'. It wasn't a soap of reasonable quality that nobody watched like 'Echo Point', nor was it just plain bad like 'Headland', probably Australia's last attempt at a new soap opera when it screened in 2005-2006.

 

[Shell]

Glee was very popular at the time and wasn't on that long ago (2009-2015) but didn't age well.

Certainly the show's unhappy legacy doesn't help. The drug-related death of Corey Monteith, the suicide of Mark Salling (and the circumstances that led to him taking his own life) and the death by drowning of Naya Rivera have cast a shadow over the show's memory, and further damage was caused when serious allegations were raised about the alleged unpleasant behavior of star Lea Michele on the set of Glee, but a major problem with Glee very obvious in hindsight was that it was trying to be both a parody and a teen drama at the same time.

As just one example, the character of Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) was presented as an overly ambitious, teacher's pet, theater kid stereotype, which is fine if she is played for laughs and parody. But when viewers then have to emphasize with Rachel in a more serious plotline , then it isn't so easy. True, a lot of shows successfully combine comedy and drama, but the Glee characters were such parodies this doesn't come off well, and looks even worse years on.

However, the character that would raise more eyebrows than most nowadays would be the Glee Club teacher Mr. Schue. At best he appears to be a man reliving his own high school experiences and living vicariously through his students years later, but some of his conduct both at the school and out of it are beyond belief, and would be considered a problem even if the show came from 1989-1995 rather than 20 years later. I think a young woman's comments about Glee on a clip of the show from Youtube sum it up best:

ME WATCHING GLEE AS A TEENAGER IN 2010: Mr. Schue is a great teacher and so cool, why can't I have a teacher at my high school like Mr. Schue?
ME RE-WATCHING GLEE AS AN ADULT IN 2020: Why isn't Mr. Schue in prison?

I watched maybe 10-15 minutes of Glee in total, i just knew i would loathe that type of show.

What did the teacher do??

 

[Cruyff14]

I enjoyed Friends and still do now, but it's very homophobic.

 

[emuboy]

I watched maybe 10-15 minutes of Glee in total, i just knew i would loathe that type of show.

What did the teacher do??

In some ways the teacher Will Schuester - usually known as Mr. Schue - was somewhat of a parody, like Mr. G from Summer Heights High or the drama teacher played by Martin Short in the 2001 teen comedy Get Over It, but he was given more of a human side and we were shown into his personal life, which was a bit of a mess with an unhappy marriage.

The character was creepy in that he was clearly reliving his own high school days and living vicariously through his students, but went further than this. In one scene he was sneaking around the boys' locker rooms watching one boy in the shower singing, blackmailing another into joining the singing group, he would have the Glee Club perform song and dance routines not appropriate for minors attending high school, he would put himself into the shows being the starring attraction, he dealt with one of the girls having a crush on him by singing the songs 'Young Girl' and 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' to her, showed little interest in his academic classes, and he would lose his temper during rehearsals and once suspended a girl from the club for refusing to wear a costume she thought too revealing.

His marriage was a mess (as much his fault as his wife's) and ended in divorce, but even before that he made little secret of the fact that he lusted after the school guidance officer Emma, meddling in one relationship so she and her boyfriend broke up. And when he did succeed in his aim and married Emma, he asked a male student aged 18 to be his best man.

So while Mr. Schue wasn't a Humbert Humbert, he was most definitely creepy and crossed many personal and professional lines.

 

[Pistol Night]

The Cosby Show

 

[RedmanWasHere]

The Cosby Show

Hey Dad.

 

[emuboy]

Hey Dad.

Hey Dad.

In the very early episodes of Hey Dad, the father would break the fourth wall and address the audience directly. However, it was not considered a success by the show and disbanded after six or so episodes. Imagine this now in hindsight, Mr. Kelly looking into your living room and addressing your kids directly through your TV screen!

 

[FrankGrimes]

My first thought was friends, think it had about 2 or really quality seasons., looking back on Foxtel don’t find it funny at all, also Big Bang theory.. was never a fan but don’t think it will age well..,
I could watch Frasier and Seinfeld anytime and find it funny..