Post Yer Favorite 80s TV Shows

Started by BanzaiCat, January 29, 2018, 05:16:49 PM

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BanzaiCat

We've covered more than a few of these in the forums already...but why not a consolidated thread on this very dear subject?

Post themes, best bits, whatever you want. Post it and then say why it's near and dear to you.



^ Knight Rider. Enough said. I mean, this has to be the pinnacle of TV watching for an impressionable young mind in the early 80s. I didn't miss an episode.



^ St. Elsewhere...I don't know why I got into it. Could have been some early encounters with them because of family and cancer (a LOT of visits). They weren't particularly good memories, but there always seemed to be one or two bright points, usually revolving around a doctor or a nurse that were awesome at what they did. This show was, unfortunately, at the very end a total mind-f*ck. Still, excellent show.



^ Hill Street Blues. The theme song and intro, I think, were a big pull for me into this series. It also formed the idea that I wanted to be a cop some day.



^ China Beach. This and the one below were staples of us JROTC nerds back in the day. I watched just so I could be in on the conversations the next day about either of them.



^ I think Tour of Duty was far more popular among said nerds than China Beach was. Still, I liked them both. Tour of Duty was fairly watered down compared to other staples at the time - Platoon (the movie), as well as several books that we read as part of our English curriculum in school. I think America was just then trying to start to come to terms with its involvement in Vietnam and there was a big outpouring of books, including A Rumor of War by Philip Kaputo, which I read in my senior English class.



^ Another show with a theme song that I loved. The show was great, too, but frustrating as hell - I mean, the guy loses the manual to the damn suit.



^ NNtN was easily one of my favorites in the mid-to-late 80s. Featured on HBO, the commentary was often sarcastic, witty as hell, and often at the expense of current events, world leaders, other news, and many, many other things. I remember very few things being off limits for them, including their "Come to Lebanon" musical travel commercial. You definitely will NOT see sh*t like this nowadays:



...anyway, I could go on and on. So many more shows I'd like to post but I'd like to see what y'all think.

trailrunner

I really liked Miami Vice, especially the early seasons. Three's Company was great, although that show started in the 70s.

bob48

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'

'Clip those corners'

Recombobulate the discombobulators!

OJsDad

Magnum PI

There was a sci fi show on when I lived in England. Something 7. It was good.
'Here at NASA we all pee the same color.'  Al Harrison from the movie Hidden Figures.

bob48

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'

'Clip those corners'

Recombobulate the discombobulators!

OJsDad

'Here at NASA we all pee the same color.'  Al Harrison from the movie Hidden Figures.

JasonPratt

#6
Haiku imposement
temporarily off now:

One of the greatest things, to me, about the Greatest American Hero, is that the writers went out of their way to comment respectfully on the tension between conservative and liberal America: the two sides didn't always understand or appreciate each other, but they had to work together to get things done. Sometimes the bleeding heart school teacher Ralph was right (and after all, the aliens explicitly chose him to get the suit due to him being a school teacher and fundamentally a believer in peace), but sometimes he was wrong and the show would poke fun at that. The show tended to poke more fun at gung ho FBI agent Bill (moreso after the pilot movie where he was much more somber, due naturally to the murder of his previous partner -- whom the showrunners explicitly wanted to be Bill Cosby as a salute to Cosby and Culp's teamup on "I Spy", which also featured social tension commentary), but he was also often right. And when he was wrong, he usually bit the bullet -- and then did what it took to pull the win out of the fire. There's an amazing scene in an early first season episode "The Hit Car" where Bill Maxwell has been shot and banged up, just wrecked physically, trying to get a prostitute who says she's afraid of flying across the state to testify against a mob boss, and realizes after she soberly pleads the fifth (after acting like a ditz all episode) that he has been tricked (and tricked Ralph into endangering himself, too, trying to help). The whole thing was a setup to assassinate Bill, not the supposed witness. It's Ralph who figures this out, and Robert Culp plays this incredible sequence where he comes to terms with the uselessness of their week that has almost killed him. Bill in a state of shock is driving Ralph back to school, when this look of disgust and resolve comes over him, and he grumps out that he wants some Italian food for lunch. Ralph doesn't realize what's going on (until later), just thinking that Bill is being peckish about admitting what happened.

Bill heaves himself on crutches (LEAVING HIS CRUTCHES BEHIND!), half-crippled, into the restaurant... because he knows the mob boss will be kind-of holding court in there.



Being Bill, he doesn't bother to tell Ralph what he did -- just that the spaghetti was cold and never mind. That whole sequence was genius, not so much in the writing but in Culp crushing the acting.

Some of the eps could be pretty weak, and not always campy in a good way either (as the seasons and premise wore out). But overall, it deserves its cult status.




Haiku challenge back.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

airboy

My favorite like every decade before or since is COLLEGE BASKETBALL.  All other forms of TV suck in comparison.

mirth

Quote from: airboy on January 29, 2018, 07:18:08 PM
My favorite like every decade before or since is COLLEGE BASKETBALL.  All other forms of TV suck in comparison.

I'd rather watch The A-Team.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

bbmike

^I've never watched an episode of The A-Team.
"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
-Sherlock Holmes

"You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets."
-Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

"There's a horror movie called Alien? That's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you!"
-The Doctor

"Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth."
-Clifford D. Simak

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Sir Slash

Loved Tour of Duty. We are talking 1980's right?
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

mirth

Feel free to tell us your favorite shows from the 1880s
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

DoctorQuest

Quote from: bbmike on January 29, 2018, 07:25:09 PM
^I've never watched an episode of The A-Team.

And you call yourself a sci-fi fan...  :nerd:
"Everything you read on the internet is true." - Benjamin Franklin

"Zero-G and I feel fine....." - John Glenn

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam Savage, inventor of the alternative fact.