Unfortunately, the show amounts to little more than a single gag.
Its literally one of the most well known facts about Family Matters and sitcoms in general that Urkel literally took over the entire thing and the network basically turned a standard "black family" sitcom into Urkel's Wacky Adventure Show. Its why people shit on it to this day.
Scrubs objectifies women in virtually every scene, which is impressive considering how few female characters exist on the show
Literally one of the most defining traits about Scrubs is that every female character, except Elliot sometimes, is fucking perfect and cannot be criticized for anything other than "cute" flaws. Carla never has a storyline or character arc that doesn't end with her getting her way in almost all sense, while treating literally everyone like shit (including her husband). JD's baby momma fakes a fucking miscarriage to run away from him, and when everyone finds out she still has the baby he gets guilted by everyone to "forgive her" and step up. Heck the "female Cox" Turk was supposed to have in surgery was such an unlikeable cunt that even the writers realized it and removed her from the show.
Its also incredibly noticeable that they focus in on the objectification of women, when Keith literally exists to be a himbo that never gets much character beyond "hot but dumb" after his introduction. He is used, mistreated, and literally abused constantly and its treat like a total joke because he isn't smart enough to get it.
And its hilarious that try to toss DBZ in there, as if anyone new to the series is going to watch it over Kai which fixed the one single flaw they put it in this list for. DBZ is at this point reserved solely for those of us with good tastes for the superior Faulconer soundtrack and fun pure filler episodes while Kai exists for "I just want the canon story!" fags.
Married With Children was basically a reaction to Family Matters and the Jeffersons by people who said that the real black family in America looked nothing like that, and looked more like what they presented. Even back then, Fox knew they'd never be able to air it with a black cast that had a over-glamorized bitch wife, an angry failed husband who's best years existed in a single foot ball game, with a dufus and criminal son, with a whore of a daughter. The producers white-washed the family to see if the show could run, and it did, and became wildly popular... particularly among Black Americans.
Really? I watched Doug a lot as a kid. Maybe it was over my head that the colors were supposed to represent real races. No maybe, I’m sure it was over my head
It was a big controversy at the time the show was being made even, the creators said the show was intended to promote a racially diverse environment. Nickleodeon had some fairly ineffective protests against it.
Exactly! Cracked towards the end before I stopped visiting it altogether served as a great recommendation site.
Anything they'd say was problematic, I knew was must-view entertainment. They're the ones who by telling me how "awful and toxic" Entourage was, led me to watching it and it becoming one of my favorite shows of all time.
My personal ratings for each as that and anyone's ratings matter MORE than these ideologues:
Baywatch: Too young for at time
Just shoot me: Never heard of it
Lost: got bored, too convoluted
Family Matters: think too young for, don't remember
Walker Texas ranger: think too young, don't remember
Friends: just feels mediocre looking back
Home improvement: A GOAT, will not hear anything bad about it, got better with time.
How I met your mother: became mediocre watching it, at least it happened slower than big bang
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: my childhood along with Xena so shut the fuck up!
Blossom: no recollection of
Beavis And Butt-Head: just meh
Heroes: see Lost rating
Scrubs: it just went on for too long
Dragon Ball Z: I mean I don't even have to argue this but the author just pissed off cartels!
Doug: it's hazy but remember good things.
This did remind me, had a bit of a nostalgia binge with a friend from the UK, he showed me what he described 'weaponised nostalgia for 90s Brit kids', there does seem to be more people looking back nowadays since modern media is so bad.
Interesting that you remember Home Improvement very fondly, but don't recall series like Baywatch, Family Matters & Blossom that was roughly the same vintage.
Same with David Spade's Just Shoot Me which came after Home Improvement's debut/ run IIRC.
Depends on where you grew up, but I can imagine that some channels wouldn't carry the entire lineup. My local ABC affiliate carried Home Improvement, Family Matters and a couple of other shows as a "family night" lineup, but didn't carry Blossom at all, and Baywatch was on... UPN (Fox?) for us.
If normies, particularly 15-30 age bracket, are watching Friends reruns, they aren't watching the Current Day Slop that laces wokeness into every plot and character.
Yea these lists are made to piss people off by those who can’t handle anything. I’d lock him in a room and make him watch the clip of them singing Springtime for Hitler from the Producers.
"Shows that were funny are also politically incorrect. We are baffled by this apparent contradiction."
Saw some reruns of Just Shoot Me recently. Holds up just fine. Not like the kind people they make fun of have actually changed in in 20 years, even if fashion magazines are deader than dead.
As a follow-up I'd also suggest Hornblower. Same vintage ('90s) and same period (Napoleonic wars) but about a new officer on a ship. If you like Master & Commander the recommendation is double.
Friends is one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time. However, the mid-'90s to mid-2000s sitcom is also full of gay panic, fat shaming, transphobia, and backwards ideas about gender, among other things.
Why is a contrasting conjunction there?
Dragon Ball Z
Wait, they somehow managed to miss how Muten Roshi sexually harrasses Android 18? Lol
LOL Hercules is on there but not Xena. Same fucking type of show and "fanservice style" (ie attractive feminine women that show a little skin) but one is a Chad white male (problematic) and the other is a grrlboss female so that one is OK.
Hercules has aged pretty well I think. Minus some of the less serious bits, which weren't always as bad as this article tries to claim. And yeah, it was a bit episodic. Could've been handled better on occasion, but "them's the times". Not a big deal.
The goofy parts of Hercules were fine because they were sincere and straightforward, there wasn't any winking at the camera to tell you how stupid you are for laughing at Autolycus's ex-wife being played by Traci Lords or the one with Iolaus in drag.
Oh yeah, I agree. I actually appreciate how it handled goofy things most of the time, and it was handled pretty clearly in episodes dedicated to being less serious.
I just found it a little awkward when trying to introduce the show to people who'd never seen it before.
I'm in the minority, but I prefer TV where the plots are self contained one and dones.
The only exceptions are Breaking Bad (My favorite show of all time) and Entourage (top 5 shows of all time). Even Entourage is sort of like a mix, where there definitely large connecting plot being a huge focus, but self contained misadventures are also a huge part of the shows appeal.
I'm not too into these long epic length plotlines really in 90% of cases.
A good balance is the show Elementary. It has some woke garbage in it, I'm only in Season 3, but it is an entertaining show.
It has longer threads that pop up here and there in moments in the show, but each episode the focus is on the "mystery of the week" as it were, where the long plot gets dripped little by little in scenes.
To me, the short, one and done episode style is more entertaining than an extremely elongated movie.
You have to be really skillfull to pull it off. Breaking Bad, but Vince Gilligan is like the Rod Serling of our time, in terms of the caliber of writer he is, and as a talented director.
I feel like even Better Call Saul wasn't able to keep that addicting pace like Breaking Bad. It was too much spent on certain things, stretched out way too long. I enjoyed it, except for the ending, but I don't think it's as entertaining.
With Breaking Bad, things moved at a break neck speed, so it never felt like things were being artificially stretched.
Particularly shows like Kevin Sorbo's Hercules that had network runs before the advent of streaming. Being episodic & self-contained made a lot more sense in a time before bingewatching entire seasons.
Particularly once classic shows hit syndication & re-runs, there was no guarantee that multiepisode storylines would ever air in the proper sequence ever again.
Iirc, Hercules and Xena also didn't have the most stable network backing either. So there was even more risk of inconsistency with production and release cycles.
Not sure how much of the cast actually lived near the filming locations either. New Zealand and possibly Australia.
Supernatural had a good balance between episodic and persistent plot arcs too. Not that it was terribly complicated, you could sum up most of the season's core plot arc to a single sentence. But it typically worked pretty well, and even if you missed a few episodes it was easy enough to be caught up to speed.
Meh. A sitcom aging well is the exception, not the rule, and I'd say Home Improvement holds up.
Lost did not age poorly. It turned to shit when it was current. A common problem facing US shows is a need to get good ratings for a season, or even half a season. What will often happen is that when it gets dicey, they'll start going a bit crazy, with the writing, and/or revert to formulaic writing so safe that it doesn't use the characters well, and/or stops character growth. Likewise, shows that get too much success may have trouble extending a plot that was only conceived of for 1-3 seasons. Lost was the latter. But, then, it also was going on right as early streaming was getting popular, and ironically, lost direction.
Hercules, and by extension Xena, are still alright. The visual quality of early Herc makes worn VHS look good, though. The author is clearly a leftist, by the big problem here, alone. Making the viewer care, and be engaged, while not making the content serious, was kind of Sam Raimi's thing. I imagine the author would have big problems with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, as well. Now I'll have to go rewatch it, anticipating every Ted Raimi appearance!
Heroes, like Lost, went downhill while it was still current. I loved the show, and was sad to see the way it went down.
I only saw Scrubs as reruns, and liked it. So, there.
Not a big DBZ fan (original Dragon Ball, I've read and watched dozens of times, and love it to death), but the slow pace is a martial arts a manga/anime thing, in general, not anything to do with them vs now.
Beavis and Butthead I'll straight up give them. It was an edgy time capsule of MTV, before modern suits had fully taken over.
A few not mentioned:
Buffy (all) and Angel (S1&2). Rewatching, there's a lot more subtle character development than I recalled when it was current, with consequences, and not all of it for the better. On rewatching, though, Angel starts off strong, but falls flat in the 3rd season.
The Hitchiker. Dark episodic tales. Easy to find for streaming or download, and many are great. But, it seems to have fallen into pop culture obscurity.
The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Ray Bradbury Theater, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. All similar in type and format. The original B&W are better, for tTZ and tOL, but the modern reprisals aren't half bad.
Babylon 5. You're going to need to suspend disbelief for the accidental used future, and anachronisms, as much as humanoid aliens. But, it tried to get the science basics right, it was planned out for all 5 seasons from the start, the writing is generally very good, and quite a few of the actors punched way above their syndicated scifi weight. I also like the little continuity bits, where even characters that are not named, like lower-rank security guards, stay the same, across time. Also, many set pieces have that look of having been broken, fixed, and repainted, like an actual large housing building ends up - a great deal of care went into it. It's also kind of funny to see scenes that were then cutting edge CGI, in 1995, that we would not accept from an indie video game, today.
Stargate SG-1. Like above, in many ways, but mostly episodic, and a bit cheesy. It has a high percentage of very well-written episodes. I did not watch it, when it was current, either.
Farscape. Sadly, it killed Lexx, as Sci-fi didn't want them competing, and this was a runaway success. Everything you could want from a scifi action show, with Muppets.
Kolchak: the Night Stalker. If you like Hammer films, this will be right up your alley.
Dinosaurs. A sitcom from long, long ago. It does do some lampooning if current events, but not to obvious as to horribly date it, usually. Pro-family messaging is probably the most dated part of the writing, really. Gags are timed well. And, it has the best finale episode of any sitcom since prehistory.
Its literally one of the most well known facts about Family Matters and sitcoms in general that Urkel literally took over the entire thing and the network basically turned a standard "black family" sitcom into Urkel's Wacky Adventure Show. Its why people shit on it to this day.
Literally one of the most defining traits about Scrubs is that every female character, except Elliot sometimes, is fucking perfect and cannot be criticized for anything other than "cute" flaws. Carla never has a storyline or character arc that doesn't end with her getting her way in almost all sense, while treating literally everyone like shit (including her husband). JD's baby momma fakes a fucking miscarriage to run away from him, and when everyone finds out she still has the baby he gets guilted by everyone to "forgive her" and step up. Heck the "female Cox" Turk was supposed to have in surgery was such an unlikeable cunt that even the writers realized it and removed her from the show.
Its also incredibly noticeable that they focus in on the objectification of women, when Keith literally exists to be a himbo that never gets much character beyond "hot but dumb" after his introduction. He is used, mistreated, and literally abused constantly and its treat like a total joke because he isn't smart enough to get it.
And its hilarious that try to toss DBZ in there, as if anyone new to the series is going to watch it over Kai which fixed the one single flaw they put it in this list for. DBZ is at this point reserved solely for those of us with good tastes for the superior Faulconer soundtrack and fun pure filler episodes while Kai exists for "I just want the canon story!" fags.
I remember reading that Urkel being so popular was a total surprise
Its really one of those things that you really can't predict, the same character in a slightly different show might be the worst part of it.
Married With Children was basically a reaction to Family Matters and the Jeffersons by people who said that the real black family in America looked nothing like that, and looked more like what they presented. Even back then, Fox knew they'd never be able to air it with a black cast that had a over-glamorized bitch wife, an angry failed husband who's best years existed in a single foot ball game, with a dufus and criminal son, with a whore of a daughter. The producers white-washed the family to see if the show could run, and it did, and became wildly popular... particularly among Black Americans.
Lmao DOUG?!
The show, literally THE show that introduced ridiculous niggerization into children's cartoons and now they're mad at it.
Fuckin liberals man.
Really? I watched Doug a lot as a kid. Maybe it was over my head that the colors were supposed to represent real races. No maybe, I’m sure it was over my head
It was a big controversy at the time the show was being made even, the creators said the show was intended to promote a racially diverse environment. Nickleodeon had some fairly ineffective protests against it.
Kinda like how Spongebob is gay propaganda.
Gonna have to walk me through this one, bud
They featured him in a "pride" month a while back.
To be fair the show had long gone to shit by that point. I don't remember anything awful in the first 6 or 7 years of the show.
Oh. I didn’t think of that. Just saw the weird colors. Overall enjoyed it. Granted I wasn’t thinking of that stuff then
Most kids aren't. That's why they do it.
That's wild because as a kid I never even noticed.
Mr. and Ms. DINK weren't good enough, it seems.
Appreciate the list of shows to watch!
Home Improvement is one of my favorite shows ever. I'm glad it's on here.
I have absolutely no recollection of Tim Allen walking into the bathroom to Jill's sister naked that the listicle focuses so exclusively on.
Exactly! Cracked towards the end before I stopped visiting it altogether served as a great recommendation site.
Anything they'd say was problematic, I knew was must-view entertainment. They're the ones who by telling me how "awful and toxic" Entourage was, led me to watching it and it becoming one of my favorite shows of all time.
I missed old Cracked!
I really enjoyed those Craption Contests.
My personal ratings for each as that and anyone's ratings matter MORE than these ideologues:
Baywatch: Too young for at time
Just shoot me: Never heard of it
Lost: got bored, too convoluted
Family Matters: think too young for, don't remember
Walker Texas ranger: think too young, don't remember
Friends: just feels mediocre looking back
Home improvement: A GOAT, will not hear anything bad about it, got better with time.
How I met your mother: became mediocre watching it, at least it happened slower than big bang
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: my childhood along with Xena so shut the fuck up!
Blossom: no recollection of
Beavis And Butt-Head: just meh
Heroes: see Lost rating
Scrubs: it just went on for too long
Dragon Ball Z: I mean I don't even have to argue this but the author just pissed off cartels!
Doug: it's hazy but remember good things.
This did remind me, had a bit of a nostalgia binge with a friend from the UK, he showed me what he described 'weaponised nostalgia for 90s Brit kids', there does seem to be more people looking back nowadays since modern media is so bad.
Interesting that you remember Home Improvement very fondly, but don't recall series like Baywatch, Family Matters & Blossom that was roughly the same vintage.
Same with David Spade's Just Shoot Me which came after Home Improvement's debut/ run IIRC.
Depends on where you grew up, but I can imagine that some channels wouldn't carry the entire lineup. My local ABC affiliate carried Home Improvement, Family Matters and a couple of other shows as a "family night" lineup, but didn't carry Blossom at all, and Baywatch was on... UPN (Fox?) for us.
Blossom was NBC. Baywatch was syndicated iirc.
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles?
cough Ninja Turtles.
Not in the UK.
Do you have a loicense for that Ninja????
It was a meme in the 70s. An entire (original) pink panther movie was about Crusoe being arrested for various license failures.
Yes in the UK.
Every iteration since the 2003 version has been Teenage Mutant NINJA Turtles.
And that version was considerably more violent and disgusting, I might add.
Really wasn't aware of that. Obliged for the update
You were genuinely unaware?
I'm glad I didn't phrase that more maliciously, then. Carry on.
I was unaware.
Friends and Seinfeld were both middling entertainment at best.
Personal opinion of mine, think I was just not into it.
Massive rage bait article. Has Friends and DBZ on there, both very normy loved and watched to this day.
If normies, particularly 15-30 age bracket, are watching Friends reruns, they aren't watching the Current Day Slop that laces wokeness into every plot and character.
Zack Howe is the one that has aged horribly a whiny fat liberal faggot
Yea these lists are made to piss people off by those who can’t handle anything. I’d lock him in a room and make him watch the clip of them singing Springtime for Hitler from the Producers.
I'd hate to see what they consider "watch-worthy" shows. Let me guess - Velma tops the list?
The only heckin' wholesome chungus show that leftoids seem to actually like is Bluey, and I'm not sure why.
You know why. You just don't want to think about it.
Happy Days was good, until Fonzy jumped the shark
It's probably one of the most iconic failures in the history of television.
“….modern standards of decency”
Oh. Oh no. This article is going to suck isn’t it?
[Yes]
Cornholio is racist apparently?
I swear they do this to piss people off by crapping on beloved shows or maybe some Gen Z shouldn’t watch anything older than 3 years
Too many high school bullies online who miss their glory days.
A few don't have to do with politics, but most on the list do.
Guys, don't watch those shows anymore. They objectify women, they're racist, homophobic, you name it. Do better!
"Shows that were funny are also politically incorrect. We are baffled by this apparent contradiction."
Saw some reruns of Just Shoot Me recently. Holds up just fine. Not like the kind people they make fun of have actually changed in in 20 years, even if fashion magazines are deader than dead.
As a follow-up I'd also suggest Hornblower. Same vintage ('90s) and same period (Napoleonic wars) but about a new officer on a ship. If you like Master & Commander the recommendation is double.
Half this list is degenerate trash you shouldn't be letting your kids watch, and they want to pretend it's too 'far right' to watch in current year.
I can't even.
Why is a contrasting conjunction there?
Wait, they somehow managed to miss how Muten Roshi sexually harrasses Android 18? Lol
18 could always break Roshi's spine if she wanted.
Bulma in dragon ball is worse. She’s also 16 I think in it.
LOL Hercules is on there but not Xena. Same fucking type of show and "fanservice style" (ie attractive feminine women that show a little skin) but one is a Chad white male (problematic) and the other is a grrlboss female so that one is OK.
Hercules has aged pretty well I think. Minus some of the less serious bits, which weren't always as bad as this article tries to claim. And yeah, it was a bit episodic. Could've been handled better on occasion, but "them's the times". Not a big deal.
The goofy parts of Hercules were fine because they were sincere and straightforward, there wasn't any winking at the camera to tell you how stupid you are for laughing at Autolycus's ex-wife being played by Traci Lords or the one with Iolaus in drag.
Oh yeah, I agree. I actually appreciate how it handled goofy things most of the time, and it was handled pretty clearly in episodes dedicated to being less serious.
I just found it a little awkward when trying to introduce the show to people who'd never seen it before.
It's definitely easier to show people in a world where you can pick which episode you're watching.
I'm in the minority, but I prefer TV where the plots are self contained one and dones.
The only exceptions are Breaking Bad (My favorite show of all time) and Entourage (top 5 shows of all time). Even Entourage is sort of like a mix, where there definitely large connecting plot being a huge focus, but self contained misadventures are also a huge part of the shows appeal.
I'm not too into these long epic length plotlines really in 90% of cases.
A good balance is the show Elementary. It has some woke garbage in it, I'm only in Season 3, but it is an entertaining show.
It has longer threads that pop up here and there in moments in the show, but each episode the focus is on the "mystery of the week" as it were, where the long plot gets dripped little by little in scenes.
To me, the short, one and done episode style is more entertaining than an extremely elongated movie.
You have to be really skillfull to pull it off. Breaking Bad, but Vince Gilligan is like the Rod Serling of our time, in terms of the caliber of writer he is, and as a talented director.
I feel like even Better Call Saul wasn't able to keep that addicting pace like Breaking Bad. It was too much spent on certain things, stretched out way too long. I enjoyed it, except for the ending, but I don't think it's as entertaining.
With Breaking Bad, things moved at a break neck speed, so it never felt like things were being artificially stretched.
Particularly shows like Kevin Sorbo's Hercules that had network runs before the advent of streaming. Being episodic & self-contained made a lot more sense in a time before bingewatching entire seasons.
Particularly once classic shows hit syndication & re-runs, there was no guarantee that multiepisode storylines would ever air in the proper sequence ever again.
That sort of stuff was left to afternoon soaps, generally
Iirc, Hercules and Xena also didn't have the most stable network backing either. So there was even more risk of inconsistency with production and release cycles.
Not sure how much of the cast actually lived near the filming locations either. New Zealand and possibly Australia.
Supernatural had a good balance between episodic and persistent plot arcs too. Not that it was terribly complicated, you could sum up most of the season's core plot arc to a single sentence. But it typically worked pretty well, and even if you missed a few episodes it was easy enough to be caught up to speed.
Meh. A sitcom aging well is the exception, not the rule, and I'd say Home Improvement holds up.
Lost did not age poorly. It turned to shit when it was current. A common problem facing US shows is a need to get good ratings for a season, or even half a season. What will often happen is that when it gets dicey, they'll start going a bit crazy, with the writing, and/or revert to formulaic writing so safe that it doesn't use the characters well, and/or stops character growth. Likewise, shows that get too much success may have trouble extending a plot that was only conceived of for 1-3 seasons. Lost was the latter. But, then, it also was going on right as early streaming was getting popular, and ironically, lost direction.
Hercules, and by extension Xena, are still alright. The visual quality of early Herc makes worn VHS look good, though. The author is clearly a leftist, by the big problem here, alone. Making the viewer care, and be engaged, while not making the content serious, was kind of Sam Raimi's thing. I imagine the author would have big problems with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, as well. Now I'll have to go rewatch it, anticipating every Ted Raimi appearance!
Heroes, like Lost, went downhill while it was still current. I loved the show, and was sad to see the way it went down.
I only saw Scrubs as reruns, and liked it. So, there.
Not a big DBZ fan (original Dragon Ball, I've read and watched dozens of times, and love it to death), but the slow pace is a martial arts a manga/anime thing, in general, not anything to do with them vs now.
Beavis and Butthead I'll straight up give them. It was an edgy time capsule of MTV, before modern suits had fully taken over.
A few not mentioned:
Buffy (all) and Angel (S1&2). Rewatching, there's a lot more subtle character development than I recalled when it was current, with consequences, and not all of it for the better. On rewatching, though, Angel starts off strong, but falls flat in the 3rd season.
The Hitchiker. Dark episodic tales. Easy to find for streaming or download, and many are great. But, it seems to have fallen into pop culture obscurity.
The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Ray Bradbury Theater, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. All similar in type and format. The original B&W are better, for tTZ and tOL, but the modern reprisals aren't half bad.
Babylon 5. You're going to need to suspend disbelief for the accidental used future, and anachronisms, as much as humanoid aliens. But, it tried to get the science basics right, it was planned out for all 5 seasons from the start, the writing is generally very good, and quite a few of the actors punched way above their syndicated scifi weight. I also like the little continuity bits, where even characters that are not named, like lower-rank security guards, stay the same, across time. Also, many set pieces have that look of having been broken, fixed, and repainted, like an actual large housing building ends up - a great deal of care went into it. It's also kind of funny to see scenes that were then cutting edge CGI, in 1995, that we would not accept from an indie video game, today.
Stargate SG-1. Like above, in many ways, but mostly episodic, and a bit cheesy. It has a high percentage of very well-written episodes. I did not watch it, when it was current, either.
Farscape. Sadly, it killed Lexx, as Sci-fi didn't want them competing, and this was a runaway success. Everything you could want from a scifi action show, with Muppets.
Kolchak: the Night Stalker. If you like Hammer films, this will be right up your alley.
Dinosaurs. A sitcom from long, long ago. It does do some lampooning if current events, but not to obvious as to horribly date it, usually. Pro-family messaging is probably the most dated part of the writing, really. Gags are timed well. And, it has the best finale episode of any sitcom since prehistory.
Dinosaurs! is honestly Jim Henson's best work, and is one of the best shows on television at the time, and since.
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to see "Doug" on this list, I'll give them that.