3 Bedroom Bungalow to Let in Crazytown: Back in the 80's

Monday, January 25, 2010

Back in the 80's

I was talking to by buddy, NFAH, and she mentioned Moonlighting as the first adult show she was allowed to watch despite the sexual innuendo. Then I mentioned that I would sneak into my parents bedroom and try to watch 21 Jump Street on my parents old black and white TV with rabbit ears. Yes, I knew it was wrong to do, but 21 Jump Street was an awesome show, can you really blame me?

Then I got to thinking about my family and our TV watching habits. When I was growing up, cable TV was just coming into it's own. No longer were we restricted to just the big three TV stations. We now had Fox (which wasn't cable), MTV, Nickelodeon, HBO and around 80 other new networks. It was a TV explosion.

When I used to arrive home from school, I would do my homework as my mom would watch Oprah. I would sit at the dining room table and watch the TV from across the back of the sofa that defined the partition between the living room and dining room in our condo; often getting told to get a move on with my homework. My dad would arrive home shortly after 5 and we would have dinner as a family, around the dining room table. After dinner, we would all watch the local and National News together. Always NBC with Dan Rather. At 7:30 we watched Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon as a family, then it was time for bed. Now, I knew I HAD to be asleep by the time I heard the theme song to Roseanne through my bedroom wall (the tell tale harmonica riff was like my mental clock), which was attached to the living room. If I heard the theme song to China Beach, I knew I had better not come out of my bedroom with a lame excuse. That was my Mom's favorite show and she really didn't like to be interrupted. Plus it was on crazy late, like 10pm. If the Tonight Show was on, well, I just better pretend I was sleep walking.

It is weird what you remember from your childhood. What do you remember about TV shows and how they related to your family from when you were a kid?

Comments (29)

Logging you in...

Dashboard | Edit profile | Logout

Logged in as

0 Vote up Vote down

Michelloui · 792 weeks ago

Funny! I was having a similar conversation Saturday night with friends. My English friends were remembering all these American shows they used to watch, like Dukes of Hazzard that I wasn't allowed to watch. My parents thought it was--I dont know actually what they could possibly have thought about the Dukes. My dad didn't like me watching M*A*S*H because as a guy who lost most of his friends in Vietnam he thought the portrayal of war (albiet in Korea) was disrespectful. I was allowed things like Threes Company, Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, Cosby Show, Little Rascals, Beverly Hillbillies, etc. when I was a teenager I was obsessed with Wiseguy. (I am a bit older than u Kat!) Yes, we were Dan Rather fans as well.

We didn't have cable so I never saw half the thing my friends saw.

However, I did see a lot of PBS so I grew up with a lot of British shows--which is kind of nice now that Im in Britain and I can actually join in on conversations about shows my local family and friends grew up watching. Silver linings, I guess!

0 Vote up Vote down

SueAnn · 792 weeks ago

I hate to say this out loud; but when I was a kid, TV was just getting started. I think there were two stations we could get on our black and white TV! With rabbit ears!! Most of the time there was a test circle on the screen if you turned it on. Sometimes, if I was lucky, they would show some cartoons...like the original Mickey Mouse!!! TV wasn't something we did. Nothing was on!! We played outside all day long or we had school and homework. We played jump rope, hop scotch, hide n seek, jacks, etc., etc., etc. So I am coming from a whole other generation!! We were deprived of TV viewing and didn't know it. LOL! I had a blast as a kid and never missed TV at all! I am just saying...!!!
Hugs
SueAnn

1 reply · active 792 weeks ago

0 Vote up Vote down

smittenbybritain · 792 weeks ago

Great post Kat! I won't bore you with a lot of mine because as per usual I watched a lot of British shows. But I did like The Facts of Life, Family Ties, The Cosby Show. The rest of the time it was MTV baby! 24/7 - when MTV ruled!

1 reply · active 792 weeks ago

0 Vote up Vote down

Lucy · 792 weeks ago

Hi Kat! Well I've always been in the UK but the US shows I enjoyed were Degrassi Junior High, The Cosby Show, Roseanne and Thirtysomething (loved Thirtysomething!!!). UK shows were Catweazel and Willo the Wisp!

0 Vote up Vote down

Lucy · 792 weeks ago

How could I forget? Midnight Caller! Loved that!

0 Vote up Vote down

moonspun · 792 weeks ago

China Beach was a great show! Since I am a bit older I actually watched much of it.
For me and my cousins in the late 80's early 90's we were very into LA Law!
But when I was a kid, which was in the 70's, it was all about the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie! That Michael Landon could cry every week on national tv and still look sexy and masculine!

0 Vote up Vote down

Kathy · 792 weeks ago

I remember my Friday line up was what it was all about....weird to think now Fridays are the worst nights for TV!

0 Vote up Vote down

Mom in High Heels · 792 weeks ago

Oh, I loved Moonlighting! It was one of the only shows I was allowed to stay up late to watch (I think I was in 7th or 8th grade). I would crawl over a box of injured puppies to watch 21 Jump Street. And thus began my lifelong relationship with my beloved Johnny Depp. :) I liked that shows were on for years and you could get invested in the characters in the 80's. Now if a show isn't an instant hit, no matter how good it is, it's gone because of low ratings. Boo!

0 Vote up Vote down

Jane · 792 weeks ago

Haha, you'd do better askign me what RADIO shows were my favorite! I was a preteen when we got our first TV and all I truly remember is Amos and Andy which was hilariously funny.

0 Vote up Vote down

Jane · 792 weeks ago

Actually, it would help if I spelled "asking" correctly.

0 Vote up Vote down

Blogging Mama Andrea · 792 weeks ago

I remember those shows! For me it was Dallas on Friday nights. I was allowed to watch it with my mom. The theme song pops into my head just thinking about it. We used to watch MASH too. I remember China Beach!
Now I would never let my kids watch shows like that. Tv has changed so much with what is and isn't allowed anymore to be broadcast. I used to watch the national and local news too but nowadays I never watch in front of my kids. Too much bad stuff happens that I don't want to explain.

0 Vote up Vote down

Tracie · 792 weeks ago

I remember watching Moonlighting with my parents. I was allowed to stay up for Roseanne too. But my favorite part about this post is China Beach. Every time I hear that song on the radio I ask my husband if he remembers that show that used this for a theme song.....I remember watching this with my parents as well (did those people ever make me sleep???) and I loved this show, but for years I haven't been able to remember the name of it, and no one I know remembers it (probably because they were in bed sleeping like normal children!!) I was a kid in the 80s but I watched all shows that showed up on Nick at Nite....my husband is 17 years older than me and he jokes that I grew up in his television decade. It is a little odd. Basically my family were tv-holics and I watched almost everything.

0 Vote up Vote down

Michelle · 792 weeks ago

I'm fairly sure CBS was Rather's station.

1 reply · active 792 weeks ago

0 Vote up Vote down

Aunt Juicebox · 792 weeks ago

Oh man, my parents totally did not restrict tv from us. We watched whatever they were watching. But that usually meant we didn't get to watch anything WE wanted either, except maybe on saturday mornings if my dad was working, we could watch cartoons, because we only had the one tv then. I loved Taxi, and Mash, and Night Court. One of my favorites was the Carol Burnett show, which I look back on as being weird for my age, I guess. We had cable for a little while, but mostly my mom didn't want to pay for it, and when my dad lost his job, she got rid of it. They still don't have it.

0 Vote up Vote down

Amanda · 792 weeks ago

My riff on your post:

http://life-suitcase.blogspot.com/2010/01/sun-wil...

0 Vote up Vote down

Captain Dumbass · 792 weeks ago

Ah, China Beach, how I loved Dana Delaney...

0 Vote up Vote down

Jenni · 792 weeks ago

TV time was family time in my home: we watch the Greatest American Hero, Bosom Buddies, MASH, the A-Team, just to name a few. This is probably why I still love TV so much

0 Vote up Vote down

Dad Who Writes · 792 weeks ago

The 'grown-up' TV show I seem to remember most from the early seventies would be Starsky and Hutch, of all things. Mostly, though, the TV we watched was fairly dire (apart from Westerns). Anything with the vaguest of sexual content would be instantly switched off. Religious parents.

+1 Vote up Vote down

Pippad 123p · 792 weeks ago

Just reading the comments has reminded me of so many shows that I use to love and know that I would never let Top Ender watch them now!

0 Vote up Vote down

Cathy · 792 weeks ago

Oh, I love this topic. I remember watching as a parents Mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, and fridays were for The Partridge and The Brady Bunch. I even remember watching All In The Family and Chico and the Man with my Grandmother. The one show that I was not allowed to watch was Soap, which was pretty funny since my parents never objected to the movies we went to.

0 Vote up Vote down

vodka logic · 792 weeks ago

Again I feel old because I was old enough to watch all those shows. China Beach was a great show. I wish I had watched it more.

Thanks for the flashback

0 Vote up Vote down

otin · 792 weeks ago

In the 80's, I was in high school. I remember more of when I was a kid and most households only had about 10 channels. (We were near NY City, rural areas only had about 6) Then HBO came out and basic cable and it was a major change in lifestyle. I still remember the birth of CNN and ESPN. ESPN used to show ping pong tournaments! LOL!

0 Vote up Vote down

Sprite's Keeper · 792 weeks ago

I don't know why, but my parents inherited a tv that they placed in our room, but we weren't allowed to watch. My sister and I would wait until dark and when we could hear The Cosby Show begin, knowing my parents would be watching in the family room and then try to watch the fuzzy screen while playing with the rabbit ears. We had to keep it on low since the white noise would let my parents know what we were doing, but we couldn't hear the dialogue. We got caught. A lot. They finally took the tv out of our room.

0 Vote up Vote down

Charm City Barfly · 792 weeks ago

My mom LOVED China Beach and there were some rare times when we were allowed to watch it with her (maybe because we were sick and were up anyway due to not being able to sleep). I remember Saturday morning cartoons and how much they rocked. Today's SMC suck. They really do.

0 Vote up Vote down

Granny · 792 weeks ago

I remember watching Ed Sullivan. My greatest memory was seeing "The King" (Elvis, you silly goose) the first time he appeared on TV. The next Sunday's sermon was on his swivelly hips. Of course all us teenage girls were instantly in love with him. Then along came the Beatles. Oh yes, those were the days. Do you remember?????
Yes, granny was a teenager once long ago and I do remember.

XOXO

Your dear old grey haired Granny

Post a new comment

Comment as a Guest, or login:

Submit Comment

Subscribe to

Comments by IntenseDebate

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)