Old TV shows that make you cringe - or worse

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Zeus-cat

Zeus-cat

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I flipped on the TV and Full House came on. UGH!!! You know, that old show with the Olsen twins. It seems like they cast that show with every horrible actor that was walking down the street one day. The only decent thing about that show is Lori Loughlin, but three seconds of anyone else on that show induces projectile vomitting for me.

Three's Company is another barf-inducing torture. There was another one I had thought about mentioning, but praise the Lord I seem to have forgotten it. :grin:

What makes you cringe when you accidentally come across something on the old idiot box?
 
Any 1980s sitcom with smart teens - where the teens are clever and the adults are made to look like idiots.
Too many sitcoms start on a high note and progressively get worse.

I turn off the set when any celebrity (who thinks they are funny) tries to tell a joke or deliver a clever line.
Kathy Lee Gifford is a channel changer.
Where's my rubber brick?
 
hcmbanjo said:
Any 1980s sitcom with smart teens - where the teens are clever and the adults are made to look like idiots.
Too many sitcoms start on a high note and progressively get worse.

I turn off the set when any celebrity (who thinks they are funny) tries to tell a joke or deliver a clever line.
Kathy Lee Gifford is a channel changer.
Where's my rubber brick?
Click to expand...

Rubber brick?

I'd use a cinder block on Kathy Lee Gifford! Better yet, a brick wall.
 
I never watch crap I don't like, so I have no real beefs about viewing. On the other hand, when I was a kid, we had a local show on Sat mornings that featured a singing cowboy named Fred Kirby that sang songs with just an acoustic guitar and aired the Little Rascals episodes. Cool show when you're 5-6 y/o kid. My mom used to cringe when he'd do a commercial spot during the show...."Now don't forget to tell your mom to get, blah blah blah"...

I really tried to enjoy sitcoms at one point back in the 80's but they were all so lame. If it weren't for the inserted audio laughter, it wouldn't have been funny at all.
 
Lost In Space. In one episode a passing comet became a heat source. In another, the monsters on a space station appeared to be golf carts covered in cheese cloth or burlap with cattle prods to create sparks.

Came across an old 1950s show called the Adventures of Corliss Archer IIRC. Who would name their daughter Corliss? She's a cheerleader, and the cheers consist of "Fight Team Fight!"

Then I re-discovered a forgotten show from the 1960's: The Ugliest Girl In Town. Like Busom Buddies, only there's one of them, and it's not Tom Hanks.
 
Zeus-cat said:
...Three's Company is another barf-inducing torture...
Click to expand...

If you want barf-inducing torture you don't need old TV shows, just watch any of the current reality shows:
- Keeping Up with The Kardashians
- Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
- Real Housewives of Orange County
 
Land of the Lost-when I was young and didn't know any better, it was ok....now it is hideous.
 
dlazarus6660 said:
Just about any T.V. show from 1990's to today sucks.
Click to expand...

Amen to that :clap: The shows I watched as a kid, was Combat, 12 O'Clock High, Mission Impossible, Man from U.N.C.L.E., & Lost in Space :grin: I can still watch the 1st three and be entertained/interested. My high school years is when the sitcom became popular. Sanford & Son, All in the Family. Never was much for Happy Days and Welcome back Carter, but the last sitcoms I enjoyed was Taxi & Barney Miller. It was with 3s Company that was begining of the sitcoms getting lousy. Substituting T&A :dark: for content and creativeness :mad: Most TV shows potray the American male as a bumbling incompetent fool:dark: The onlysitcom I watched in the last 35 years and still do is Everybody Loves Raymond. Being from NY I can relate to it. :)
 
Im always struck at how different shows are in my memory as a kid to how they look now. Someone already mentioned Lost in Space. Another is the original Star Trek series. When I was a kid, those were some of the coolest shows I watched. Now I still like them, but look carefully at the props in the background. The bridge is just laughable - the "computer screens" at the top are of course only pictures, but if you look carefully you can see the wrinkles in pieces of paper they are on. That whole set must have cost $10 to make. But I still watch when it comes on....
 
I have always hated the laugh tracks on sitcoms shows because none of the lines were funny. I want a good laugh. A Red Skelton belly-hurting, floor rolling laugh. :roll: Oh well, I guess I'm just old and fixed in my ways.
 
TALON said:
Amen to that :clap: The shows I watched as a kid, was Combat, 12 O'Clock High, Mission Impossible, Man from U.N.C.L.E., & Lost in Space :grin: I can still watch the 1st three and be entertained/interested. My high school years is when the sitcom became popular. Sanford & Son, All in the Family. Never was much for Happy Days and Welcome back Carter, but the last sitcoms I enjoyed was Taxi & Barney Miller. It was with 3s Company that was begining of the sitcoms getting lousy. Substituting T&A :dark: for content and creativeness :mad: Most TV shows potray the American male as a bumbling incompetent fool:dark: The onlysitcom I watched in the last 35 years and still do is Everybody Loves Raymond. Being from NY I can relate to it. :)
Click to expand...

I only found those channels recently and hooked. Watched Combat (Vic Morrow w/ his Thompson machine gun, Oh Yeah) the other nite, still good. MI (Perter Graves, Leonard Nimoy), Barny Miller (Fish, Hojowowitz (sp.) which didnt seem as funny as remembered.
McHales Navy, that darn PT boat always running into things. Tim Conway is a riot. Good Times, JJ Walker, DII-NOO-MITE
Watched Kojak last nite, forgot how incredibly witty Telly Savalas was in the show. Hip language-"Hey baby", "Can you dig ?", wide ties, polyester suits and those huge American cars-Plymouth, Buicks, Mercurys.
Charlies Angels, the show sucked but it was about Farrah and maybe Jaclyn Smith. That was the start of T&A.
Waiting for Rat Patrol to air.
 
hcmbanjo said:
Any (.....) sitcom with smart teens - where the teens are clever and the adults are made to look like idiots.
Click to expand...

That would be every single show on The Disney Channel.

Nathan said:
- Keeping Up with The Kardashians
- Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
- Real Housewives of Orange County
Click to expand...

I have never watched any of these shows. Sadly, I remove TLC from my channel lineup because of that stoopid Honey Boo Boo...they lost my respect.

Barf TV to me is anything Entertainment related...why people have a fascination with what celebrities are doing...I just don't get it. All these celebrity gossip shows, and coverage of that....really sad IMHO....I could not care less what those people are doing in their lives....as if it's any of my business anyway....do you job and entertain me in a movie or song or whatever....outside that I don't want to hear about it. There are people really obsessed with this stuff too. I just don't get it.

Happy Anniversary Curiosity!
 
I don't watch TV shows. We have cable for some unknown reason. Hey, I don't pay for it. I guess my wife watches a few shows here and there. I remember back in the good old days when MTV had the latest cool videos and the closest thing to a reality show was a live newscast!
-Ken
 
I went on a binge about 3 weeks ago and found Rocky Jones, Captain Video (not too man CV's episodes survived), and Men Into Space on the internet. I even found a short clip of the Honeymooners where Ed Norton puts on his space helmet to watch Captain Video. A lot of these shows can be watched on the internet for free.
 
Happy Days, Lavern and Shirley, Maude, Cheers, Oprah, anything with Valerie Harper are sure to make me lose my lunch
 
I gave up TV a long time ago, now it's only netflix.

How bout Sigmund the sea monster, Batman, and as mentioned before, lost in space. The one sit-com I did like back in the day was Home Improvement, in the very first episode they had a shot of a 454 big block with a blower on an engine stand, the moment I saw that I knew in was going to be good. Although it did portray Tim (father, husband) as a buffoon, but still it was funny.
 
The original Batman? No way...that's good stuff man.....still......

Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.....
 
dlazarus6660 said:
Just about any T.V. show from 1990's to today sucks.
Click to expand...

Agree TOTALLY!!!

I quit watching network broadcast TV YEARS ago... the last series I watched with any regularity was Star Trek, the Next Generation, and that's been off the air for a decade or so already... I liked the first couple seasons of DS9 okay, and then they got weird and I quit watching them. I basically just quit watching TV altogether-- I'd rather rewatch a Bond movie or Star Wars for the millionth time than any stupid crap that the networks could come up with...

Then we got DirecTV about 3-4 years ago, and that started out pretty cool... thing is, basically I only watch NASA TV, History Channel, H2, some of the Discovery-type channels (science channel, natgeo, etc) and don't watch a whole lot on those, because they air a LOT of crap... SyFy has become a declared disaster area and the ONLY time I'll watch it is if they're replaying Trek episodes or something from the 70's... their "original productions" are laughably stupid and a COMPLETE waste of time IMHO...

Kinda ticks me off, that there's like 200 channels and NOTHING ON... about like the old days... always have the fallback-- DVD's or Blu-ray and of course the internet...

I'd drop DirecTV and just go all DVD/Blu-ray except I want to watch NASA TV and RFD-TV now and then...

I DO like "Deadliest Catch" and some of those reality shows... Keira and Betty liked "Gold Rush" but this past season kinda sucked-- too much "drama". I used to really like "Swamp Loggers" but they're not on anymore-- I think the producers probably wanted to make it "more dramatic" and the loggers said "no" and so they nixed it... I used to like Ax Men, but that show really went bonkers this year-- utter crap. I see now why all but like one of the companies they started with have dumped them, forcing the producers to find new companies willing to do the BS they want to do to make it "dramatic". I do like Swamp People... thing is, when they DO get a good idea for a show, and start making it, if it's successful, two things happen-- 1) the next season the producers want to "make it more dramatic" or "pump up the volume" and start introducing a lot of fake crap into it trying to 'soup it up', and 2) about 2 dozen imitators of it comes out trying to get a piece of the pie, most of which are absolute crap. For instance, "Pawn Stars" started off pretty interesting and I've watched it off and on for a good while, but now it's getting sillier and sillier, and now there's about at least a half-dozen imitators of it... from the fairly interesting "Cajun Pawn Stars" (another show which isn't around anymore for some reason) to the simply awful "Hardcore Pawn", to spinoff ideas like "American Pickers" (which is pretty lame IMHO) to the new one, "Beverly Hills Pawn", which at least is pretty funny and has some very attractive shop girls in it that are easy on the eyes...

One things for sure-- if there IS a good show on, the execs will figure out a way to RUIN IT given time...

As for the housewife shows, honey doo-doo or Kardassians or whatever, you have to be brain dead to watch that trash anyway IMHO...

Later! OL JR :)
 
rocketsaway said:
I only found those channels recently and hooked. Watched Combat (Vic Morrow w/ his Thompson machine gun, Oh Yeah) the other nite, still good. MI (Perter Graves, Leonard Nimoy), Barny Miller (Fish, Hojowowitz (sp.) which didnt seem as funny as remembered.
McHales Navy, that darn PT boat always running into things. Tim Conway is a riot. Good Times, JJ Walker, DII-NOO-MITE
Watched Kojak last nite, forgot how incredibly witty Telly Savalas was in the show. Hip language-"Hey baby", "Can you dig ?", wide ties, polyester suits and those huge American cars-Plymouth, Buicks, Mercurys.
Charlies Angels, the show sucked but it was about Farrah and maybe Jaclyn Smith. That was the start of T&A.
Waiting for Rat Patrol to air.
Click to expand...

Got "Rat Patrol" on DVD fairly cheap... I remember watching it as a kid...

Watched it a couple years ago with my then-6 year old daughter... She HATED the Germans!!! LOL:)

"Keira, look, look! The GERMANS! The GERMANS!"

"DADDY!!! I *HATE* the GERMANS!!!" LOL:)

Later! OL JR :)
 
Fred Garvin said:
That would be every single show on The Disney Channel.



I have never watched any of these shows. Sadly, I remove TLC from my channel lineup because of that stoopid Honey Boo Boo...they lost my respect.

Barf TV to me is anything Entertainment related...why people have a fascination with what celebrities are doing...I just don't get it. All these celebrity gossip shows, and coverage of that....really sad IMHO....I could not care less what those people are doing in their lives....as if it's any of my business anyway....do you job and entertain me in a movie or song or whatever....outside that I don't want to hear about it. There are people really obsessed with this stuff too. I just don't get it.

Happy Anniversary Curiosity!
Click to expand...

Me neither... it's idiotic...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Bad TV results from idiot viewers. "Why do they...", the answer is money. Sponsors pay for the shows. They need viewers who believe commercials. "Wrap this plastic sheet around you and loose fifty pounds!" "Buy this car and the girls (guys) will be all over you!" "This drill will turn you into a master carpenter, or modeler, with no practice, study or talent!" Etc, etc ad nauseam. Pitiful.

Mike
 
I lost my free cable 2 months ago. Sure, there were a couple of shows I liked, but I don't miss it anymore. TV went to hell in a hand basket years ago and I'm glad to be rid of it. I HATE commercials anyway!
 
MeTV airs Perry Mason every morning, it was a good show but I find it quite boring. MASH was good until it became the Alan Alda show. One show I liked and I am watching now on DVD is the original Get Smart.
 
There are actually a couple of pretty decent shows on regular TV now.... As far as sitcoms, The Big Bang Theory is hilarious and if you can call it a sitcom, Family Guy is great. The best drama on TV is " Person of Interest" and part of what makes it so good is that some of the premise of the show is not beyond the possibility of being true in real life.
 
As far as I'm concerned, the only sitcoms that were worth watching were M*A*S*H, Night Court and WKRP in Cincinatti. Pretty much all the rest were built around the star doing something really stupid at the beginning of the episode and everyone laughing a the "hillarious shenanegans" that ensue - a formula that was perfected by "I Love Lucy" and perpetuated through today.

Lost in Space, Voyage to the bottom of the Sea, Space 1999, and the rest of that ilk were and are just embarrassing. Sure, by today's standards Star Trek TOS and Doctor Who look cheap, but the scriptwriting was good and the stories and acting fun.

I agree that much of the current stuff isn't worth watching - I haven't watched network TV in years. I do like Mythbusters, American Restoration and Fast and Loud on Discovery/History and the rest.

As for older shows that are, IMHO, golden - check out "Search", "The Magician", "Ellery Queen" or "Time Tunnel". I can watch those shows over and over again.
 
RocketMike said:
There are actually a couple of pretty decent shows on regular TV now.... As far as sitcoms, The Big Bang Theory is hilarious and if you can call it a sitcom, Family Guy is great. The best drama on TV is " Person of Interest" and part of what makes it so good is that some of the premise of the show is not beyond the possibility of being true in real life.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've seen a few Big Bang Theory shows at the inlaws in Indiana... been watching a few episodes here and there when I can-- it's pretty good. My dad raves about Person of Interest but I haven't seen it... guess I should check it out sometime...

Later! OL JR :)
 

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