SILVER SPOONS
SILVER SPOONS
I recently found my diary from 4th grade. In it, I found page after page after page of "I Love Ricky Schroeder," "I Love Ricky Stratton," etc. Good lord.
The Strattons were Ricky and his wealthy father. I can't remember exactly what happened to the mother. But there was a pretty woman named "Kate" around. Was she the father's "assistant?" Maybe that was it. Ricky had THE COOLEST house a kid could ever want. They had videogames - arcade ones! They had a miniature train! Ricky had cool friends played by Alfonso Ribiero (later of Fresh Prince of Bel Air) and Jason Bateman (HOGAN FAMILY / IT'S YOUR MOVE). And for some reason, my other big memory of this show is the wooden duck-phone on the father's desk. SILVER SPOONS ROCKED MY WORLD WHEN I WAS NINE! :o)
I have 2 words for you: Alfonso Ribiero Breakin' Board. Good night and God bless.
SOLID GOLD
Andy Gibb...Marilyn McCoo, Dionne Warwick...just who was your favorite SOLID GOLD host? SOLID GOLD counted down the weeks hits both live and just with dancers. I wanted to be a dancer. If I couldn't be on Dance Fever, then by god I wanted to be a SOLID GOLD dancer! There was one girl my parents referred to as "Miss Piggy" because she danced so slutty! Ya know, I really miss this show!
I only watched this show when I knew some band that I liked would be performing (or lip syncing) on the show. I have a couple of strange Solid Gold performances on tape including Quiet Riot (pictured above) and KISS from the early 80s.
SQUARE PEGS
"Square Pegs! Sq Sq Sq Square Pegs!"
Ok, so like, I totally, like, LOVED, like, this show. TOTALLY, it was totally way awesome. Haha. This show was on when I was in elementary school, and it wasn't on very long. But boy did it make an impact! I swear, I think every girl my age remembers this show. At the height of the "Valley Girl" era, SQUARE PEGS came along and gave us a look at high school life. The triumphs and tribulations of being female. SQUARE PEGS star Sarah Jessica Parker is still giving us the older perspective on this on her hit show Sex In The City!
THREE'S A CROWD
Honestly, I think this is the one show I can't remember a thing about - other than I know it existed! Brian???
That's my name, don't wear it out. You know how it is, rockin' and rollin' and whatnot. Oh, sorry, wrong decade. Well, other than that it was a pretty awful spinoff of Three's Company, I don't remember much about the show either. You'd think they would've learned from the failure of the first Three's Company spinoff, The Ropers.
TRACEY ULLMAN SHOW
"Oh, GO HOME! GO HOME!"
Tracey would come out at the end of every episode in her pink bathrobe and yell that to the audience. The Tracey Ullman Show was another early FOX Network hit. A variety show, it featured Tracey and some other actors in various skits - all of them very funny. Anyone remember the bus stop skit where it was raining and everyone ended up singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight?" Or how about the skits with Tracey as the teenage girl with braces. Or as the older lady with bad hair and pants? Fabulously funny. Also, around commercial breaks there was a brand spanking new cartoon. Yep, this is where it began: THE SIMPSONS!
21 JUMP STREET
"JUMP! Down on Jump Street!"
Apparantly, I was extremely addicted to the fledgling FOX Network and it's local affiliate in the 80s, because this is yet another show I adored from that network. JOHNNY DEPP. Need I say more? A bunch of twenty-somethings go back to high school as undercover cops in this bit 'o' TV history. This show was extremely succesful and even spawned the less-succesful spinoff BOOKER.
V
This was way popular with those youngsters posessing x and y chromosomes. I am sure there are some chicks that dug it, too. I don't think I ever watched it!
"Who will get the V for Victory?" That phrase ended the commercials for the first V miniseries in 1983. I was riveted to my seat for both nights of the series. V started of as a group of human looking aliens who came to earth and claimed they only needed a supply of water for their dying planet. In return they would give the earth secrets to cure many diseases. As we would find out via our hero Donovan (Marc Singer) the aliens were really lizard-like creatures covered in human skin who really wanted to overthrow earth and use humans to feed their planet. I remember being disgusted when Donovan secretly discovered the aliens eating habits by watching one of them eat a live mouse. At the time I wondered why they bothered wearing their "human" skin when they were among their own kind on their ship. Maybe it was too hard to take off, I don't know. The first series was so popular that "V:The Final Battle" mini-series aired about a year later to be followed by a weekly series (cast pictured above...I can't believe they all posed for that photo without killing each other!). I enjoyed The Final Battle series, but the weekly series started to get very stale after awhile. It was cancelled before the final episode could air, leaving us to wonder the fate of our heroes. Also of note is a character with my favorite name, Ham, was in The Final Battle and the weekly series.
WEBSTER
My most vivid memory of Webster involves Webster in the dumbwaiter. I don't know why, I don't know how. There was also one episode where he hid in his closet or something.
I thought it was pretty silly, and sad, that after the success of Arnold in Diff'rent Strokes we saw Webster appear on television.
WHO'S THE BOSS?
"I found the trail...and at the end was you..."
"There's a path you take and a path not taken, the choice is up to you my friend. The nights are long but you might awaken to a brand new life around the bend..."
Tony and Samantha ("Sam") Micelli moves in with Angela Bauer and her son Jonathan (and her firey redheaded mom) so Tony can be her housekeeper. Passionate tension abounds and a succesful show is born. Helped along by the beautiful Alyssa Milano as "Sam" and her endless parade of 80s teen star boyfriends. This show I remember being only marginally funny - with Tony Danza as "Tony Micelli" having a tendency to get annoying. I think the real appeal of this show was that it was on before GROWING PAINS. Well, at least for me. :o)
THE YOUNG ONES
I have only seen this show from England once, and that was because of Brian. It was very, very funny. Hilarious! But, I think it will best described by YOUNG ONES fanatic Brian............
I discovered The Young Ones because my brother and I heard that the band Motorhead was going to be appearing on this show on Sunday night on MTV. Of course that show was The Young Ones and I've been hooked ever since. Originally aired in the early 80s in England, MTV ran the show every Sunday night for a couple years. Even though there are only 12 episodes, it still remains my favorite comedy program. With college students Rick (the "people's poet"), Neil (the hippie), Vyvyan (the punk), and Mike (the self proclaimed ladies man) and their landlord Mr. Balowski it was a perfect comedic mix. The actors would play off of each other brilliantly. While the USA were showing nice family shows, The Young Ones contained more obnoxious, "dark" humor. Nearly every show had a musical guest and strange segments that, seemingly, had nothing to do with the show. My brother and I still can't help but quote various scenes from this show all the time.
THE YOUNG RIDERS
With the mania surrounding the succesful film Young Guns, television of course had to come up with something similar. Enter THE YOUNG RIDERS. My friends and I enjoyed this show. For those who remember: recall your shock a few episodes in when it was revealed that one of the guys was actually a woman in disguise? Very cool. This was the show (I think) where Stephen Baldwin, of the famous Baldwin actor brothers (the blonde one) made his first appearance, and for reasons I cannot now explain, I thought he was the "cute" Baldwin. Josh Brolin (also in 80s film extraordinaire The Goonies) was another star of this show. If you liked Young Guns, you probably liked THE YOUNG RIDERS as well. Yeeha!
Comments by Kelly and Brian
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