80's TV

With the death of Gary Coleman this week, I began thinking about all of the hours I spent watching fabulous television as a kid. What great memories and fantastic TV!! Anything on air today pales in comparison to these awesome shows. The wit, the humor, the one-of-a-kind storylines! Genius! Some of my favorites are:

Be still my heart! What a handsome man this guy was! And he got to watch those kids every day! I wanted a live-in babysitter just like Charles! Oh... love him!

She was the epitome of cool. Spunky. Fashionable. (I mean, who else would think of tying bandanas around your knees?!) Had an awesome dog. And a cool voice.

Ok. Can you think of another show that has a better plotline than this one? Two guys who's apartment building burns in NYC and the only place they can find to rent is a women's only building. So every time they go home, they have to dress in women's clothing. All the women know them as women, but they lead lives of quiet desperation. Love it!

This one is Out of This World. Literally. Evie here can stop time by touching her fingers together and then talk to her dad who is an alien through a crystal that lives on their livingroom coffee table.

To be honest, I loved this show. I'm not sure why, really. And I feel like it wasn't on for very long, to my dismay. Plotline is simple- a dad, who also coaches basketball at the high school, and mom have 10 kids. And the funny-ness ensues. I wished there was more to enjoy.

Ah.... Small Wonder. Where the daughter is really a robot. But not everyone knows it. That's pretty much it. It was wonderful.

This is a classic, obviously. Everyone has seen an episode of Who's the Boss, right? I just loved when Tony and Angela finally fell in love (toward the end of the running...), but man it was good TV.

And Perfect Strangers. Another classic. I'll leave it to wikipedia to explain it's simple premise:The series chronicles the rocky coexistence of Larry Appleton (Mark Linn-Baker) and his distant cousin Balki Bartokomous (Bronson Pinchot). A Wisconsin native, Larry, who comes from a large family with numerous brothers and sisters, has just moved into a new apartment in Chicago, and is experiencing his first joys of newfound privacy when Balki, a hitherto unknown cousin from a Greek-like island in the Mediterranean called Mypos, drops by to live with him. Balki, a shepherd by trade, interprets what little he knows about the United States by relying on his own recollections of American pop culture, which are often out-of-context ("America... Land of my dreams, home of the Whopper").

Of course there are ones I have left out like The Wonder Years, Growing Pains, and the ones I watched sometimes but didn't really care for, like Night Court and (gasp) Cheers. But who doesn't wish all of the CSI and Law & Order shows were replaced for more of this! (Don't flog me for that comment. :)