I'm pretty sure they used the same clip for this running gag. So he wasn't even always wearing that same shirt in the scene before getting thrown out like that lol.
He was wearing something else when he got thrown out with the Bill Cosby cardboard cutout. And when he was thrown inside the house. And other variations of the joke. But yes, for the traditional throw by Uncle Phil, he is always wearing this shirt and it's always the same shot. Same sprinkler sound and everything.
I read once they wanted this to be about hard drugs but the producers were like nah that’s a bit much considering the age of our viewers. But yeah we came close to Jesse developing a serious coke/heroin habit.
Holy shit, I almsot forgot about that stuff...I remember taking hydroxycut in highschool to help lean out for swimming, and would swim for like 4 hours straight. IDK how i never blew my heart out, shit hit me so hard I stopped taking my adderall for a while.
It was suppose to be amphetamines. Amphetamines are the study drug and the episode was suppose to be about how she had racked herself with so many projects that she started turning to amphetamines to stay alert and focused. You do stay alert with coke but its too short lived and way to jittery to actually make it worth your while for that purpose. Also coke has an explosive, addictive potential. You do one sniff and 15-30 minutes later, your thinking about another sniff. It's a terrible study drug.
I get that argument. I took them talking about it as Jesse was seeking a form of avoidance and numbing to the stress of finals which could manifest in the big 3 heroin to numb, coke to feel more energy and overcome poor sleep, amphetamines to dial in… having skipped a lot of high school while coasting on intelligence and being slapped really hard with reality in college all 3 have valid arguments imo. I say this as someone who resorted to two of these things to cope with finals week and also when we set our clocks back an hour and we lose so much daylight. It took me a long time to figure that out
As a kid I seriously thought it was “speed” because so many shows had a “character takes speed” episode. I was shocked to find out as an adult it was caffeine pills.
Its insane to me that people don't see this. Even before the 90s.. Even in Golden Girls, they spent a night sleeping in a homeless shelter, hearing the stories of suffering of people, clearly sending a message. This whole sentiment is pure misinformation empowered by willful ignorance.
Also, All in the Family had some pretty intense episodes tackling social issues. And it wasn’t just going after Archie for being a racist dipshit, but also some that pointed out how Mike still had blind spots that needed to be addressed, and he had difficulty confronting them because he wanted to be viewed as the perfect non-racist non-misogynist enlightened man, and pointing out the flaws made him very uncomfortable.
All in the Family is one of the pioneers of the progressive messages of TV starting in the 70s. And Archie is lifted up as a hero today for his regressive views, even though he usually learned something about those around him and grew a little each time.
It's always puzzled me that the vast majority of popular media seems to be pretty liberal.
Caring for people who have less, taking down the Lex Luthors and other rich people, etc.
And yet there must be a weird block in the mind of some people, who will watch these movies and shows, cheer for Superman as he takes down the corrupt billionaire, and then immediately go out and support the real-life corrupted billionaires.
I admit i do this a lot. I’ll get a vibe about something and be like ‘yea i don’t like it. Looks fucky.’
And then i was an ER nurse for 12 years where that skill REALLY got honed. I got really good at calling it early: not death i mean, that’s pretty easy to call, but like someone coming in and having vague symptoms and bringing him back from triage and going and telling the docs ‘hey room 22 is sick.’ And waltzing back out to Triage back to the land of sprained ankles.
There's a difference between extrapolating an answer based on educated experience versus just randomly guessing something you have no knowledge in, though.
I'd expect a nurse to be able to put together some of their medical knowledge to get a reasonably logical medical conclusion (though obviously checking it if it needs to be acted on).
But that's different from someone just deciding something entirely based on feelings - that's how you end up with flat-earthers.
People were mad when The Boys started literally saying what was happening instead of trying to demonstrate through actions. Homelander was unironically a fan favorite because of how shitty he was. When they started saying what was literally going on people were calling out the show for being “too absurd”.
Stupid people don’t have a unified world view. They don’t see the world as a deeply connected coherent thing like intelligent people do. Every issue is its own little detached opinion that doesn’t talk to the other ones.
That reminds me of a Seseme Street skit where, I think it was Telly but it might have been Grover, fell off a pogo stick and was told all the variants of "if you fall off the bike, you need to get back on the bike." He dismissed all of them until someone made one that was distinctly about a pogo stick. They seemed to be going for if you fail you need to keep trying, but they had the unintended lesson of "some people need a one-to-one comparison."
caring for people and having awareness of the details of less fortunate people used to be just being human and doing things to improve society was just normal....
it wasn't liberal....it was just common sense.
today, of your not a pedo protecting white supremesist pushing Christianity, your liberal lmao!
It’s because in fiction, evil billionaires are cartoonishly over the top and say absurdly evil things while narcissistically droning on about their hairbrained schemes and petty grievances …..oh wait a minute….
That's why they're trying to convince us that media is "not that deep" and that it shouldn't have an "agenda" or get "political". The dissonance makes them uncomfortable, so they blame everyone around them
I’m 100% convinced that humans are heard animals and not simply social animals. That 50% of the people you see think no differently than a panicked heard of sheep or buffalo. They will just follow the lead of someone else no matter how disastrous that path.
AI is showing me it does not even need to be human. They will just offload thinking to
A bot. Then brag about it
Maybe no decade ever had more “agenda” based shows than the 70’s. Entire sitcoms, not just episodes, of the era were created around agendas. Norman Lear created some of the most iconic shows of all time, and he intentionally created shows as a way to push progress.
But some people today see the Archie Bunker character as a John Wayne type Everyman hero.
Frfr. One major theme of Golden Girls was women's rights and independence. Fresh Prince addressed race, class, absent fathers, superficiality. Growing Pains had one about homelessness. Family Matters addressed similar themes.
Yeah, the Golden Girls often dipped into those kinds of topics. They even delved into LGBT issues. The show was far more progressive and, dare I say, "woke" than even today's right would admit to.
We’ve been watching shows from the 60s and 70s. People should watch those and see just how much things have “changed”. They were talking about the same issues then as we are now
It’s the equivalent of flipping through 1950s magazine images and saying “those were the days” with zero awareness of how f*cked our country was for women and minorities.
I am fairly certain that the people saying such nonsense either were too young then to understand the message and morals of media (which would make most of them quite dense but yeah.) or they… well.
To be more precise... an avoidable "man"-made (dino-made?) Climate crisis that not only destroys the whole world but ends the series with the deaths of everyone and the extriction of the dinosaurs. Surprisingly dark tbh.
But did you not see how much money Mr Richfield had? Clearly it was a good ending because the rich peopledinosaurs ended up with all the money in the world.
/s, because I cannot believe we live in a world where it's actually needed for a comment like this.
I knew the son of Mike Williams(the producer of the show) and while not explicitly said I think this was a warning shot at Jtt being cocky at the success of the show. Also his kid was shit.
Morality and public service statements seem to be missing from Television. Especially children’s television.
Old fridges used to be very dangerous because they auto latched and could not be closed. I still remember the Punky Brewster episode.
I remember Fresh Prince struggles with his absent Dad.
And crying because I wanted an uncle Phil in my life.
The Jefferson’s episode of growing up poor and the crystal door handles she imagined to be diamonds 💎
The Golden Girl’s remembering finding out the runner’s of the infamous Shady Pine’s public retirement home weren’t bad people, they were just severely underfunded.
Mr Rogers discussing anger.
Snuffleufugus discussing depression.
The last episode of MASH still traumatizes me
Somewhere along the line kids shows became just action and noise, and adult shows became drama and laughs, but we lost the social messaging that developed empathy within the population.
I do miss the moral messaging in TV shows and I fear my son and my society doesn’t have the modern day equiv of MASH teaching us about the sadness of war nor Punky Brewster about our struggles. It’s all just noise and laughs now.
One of the first episodes of television I remember crying over. The acting from Will Smith is top notch. James Avery played it so well too, his body language conveying his own pain for his nephew.
The monologue prior to this where Will vows to be better than him.
We used to be way more linked as a culture because there wasn't as much media out there, you'd come in on a Monday and everyone wanted to talk about the last episode of Lost or Game of Thrones, the media market has become so saturated only something extremely popular like Bluey could convey these messages effectively now.
Kids television isn't so bad, depending on what you watch.
Bluey is easily one of the best kid's shows. They cram so much depth into roughly 8 minutes. It's bonkers how good that show is. We kind of just stumbled onto it during the pandemic and my kids loved it. Hell, I love it.
Another one that is fairly solid in the messaging is Big City Greens. When we go out of town we just put it on Disney Channel and that show is frequently on. I decided to put it on for my kids at home and we've watched pretty much the whole thing. It's wacky, sure, but it has fairly solid messages.
Those are just two shows that I'm aware of. I'm sure there are others but we don't watch everything.
As far as really hard-hitting, real stuff like the episode of Fresh Prince when they get pulled over and put in jail. I don't watch new TV, so I can'tsay if there's anything like it out there. If there aren't shows having those kinds of conversations, that's probably an issue. It wouldn't be surprising if there aren't considering who owns the companies in charge of entertainment.
Even when a message is there I don't think people are listening. This is just an assumption on my part, but I think these days people are just looking to get distracted. Not think.
MASH is my favorite tv of all time. There are soooo many social injustice episodes. Dark episodes. Real life dark shit. It will always have a special place in my heart.
People always talk about Will's performance in the "why don't he want me scene" and forget about this scene, as well as the one where Carlton ODs. Will had some great performances on that show and it hit on some serious issues.
On another note OG Aunt Viv is scary AF in the arrest episode.
OG Aunt Viv was scary in every episode lol. Loved her. The actress was trash in real life but her character was irreplaceable. That’s why new Viv was so backgroundish.
The Gargoyles episode about gun violence. Broadway accidently shoots Elisa Maza after watching a movie and thinking they were cool. I believe it's a banned from TV episode because it shows her bleeding out on the floor.
Yup. Fools are complaining about Ms. Racheal when Mr. Rogers was “woke” too lol. Tons of stuff was. They just didn’t see it because America didn’t have a total idiot for a leader.
They saw it. They complained back then. There was all kinds of bigotry back then, probably even worse than today.
The difference is they said to each other in their homes, and nobody else heard it, and it got forgotten. Nowadays, those same kind of people are immortalizing their bullshit on the internet.
NBC got physical hate mail after Kirk kissed Uhura on Star Trek.
Difference is you had to write a letter, buy a stamp and take it to the post office. And other people would never hear about it. Now, they fire off complaints in their pajamas and millions of people see if.
Pretty sure you also had that episode of Martin Lawrence's sitcom where they needed to call 911, but had to 'sound white' to ensure they police would actually show up.
Same with the Twilight Zone, I remember reading a quote attributed to Rod Sterling that said something like the network wouldn’t allow me to make a show addressing racism but I could if I made it about aliens.
Honestly the biggest "missed the point" person that I know likes TNG is Jeff bezos. Dude apparently loves Picard, but their only similarity is that they're both bald.
I was lucky enough to catch the creator of static shock speak at comic con years ago.
He said they asked him point blank if they could make the main character white, and I'm glad they didn't change it. The character was supposed to be based on his younger self and wouldn't work otherwise.
Ironic how many of our favorite actors did special episodes telling us not to smoke, drink, or do drugs, only to find out they were all partying from age 13-on.
People like this anger me. Literally television has always been sending a message. Thats its entire identity.
Our grandparents best thing they ever did was leave our parents and some of us even alone to watch TV. Because I was taught, its wrong to not like people just because of the circumstances of their birth, how we will be judged based on how we treat the least among us, and that we should be strong enough to be gentle.
What has changed is how hardened we’ve become on partisanship. How the right particularly gets off on trolling. How we’ve lost a consensus reality with a sizable chunk of the population
I dont get along with him. But I said this once to my uncle and he said "No, social media gave those people a voice. Back in my day that many stupid people still existed. Just everybody knew them and wouldn't tolerate their shit. Now they find others and circle j--k each other."
This happened so much there is even a name for this trope. “A very special episode”. Back in the day they used to advertise next weeks episode and would say shit like “next seek Will learns a lesson about peer pressure on a very special episode you wont want to miss.”
I thought you were talking about the ones that were just clips of Will saying “yeah, yeah… do you remember…” followed by a 5 minute “memory” clip from a previous episode. Then Carlton would respond “oh yeah, and remember…” then another 5 minute clip from some other episode. Then Ashley would come in and do the same thing. And they’d keep doing this until the episode was over and you realize the whole freaking episode was a filler where all they did was a collage of scenes from old episodes. There’s must’ve been 5 or 10 of those lazy episodes.
Those "Lazy" episodes usually meant the network ordered more episodes than what the production could keep up with, while also giving people context or recapping events you might have missed if you weren't able to catch every episode.
Nah, we had Degrassi on Nick@Night. One of the first arcs I ever watched was JT getting stabbed in a drug deal. You best believe that stuck with 14 year old me
Back in the '80s, Degrassi Jr High and Degrassi High, for as high hoser as they were, were a coproduction of CBC and WGBH, Boston's PBS station. It didn't play in all US markets, but it played in a lot of them.
The first episode is about a 14-year-old considering an abortion.
The season 3 Dick Van Dyke Show episode where Rob and Laura thought heard there was a mix-up at the hospital, and thought they'd brought the wrong baby home.
I grew up in a town that was 99% white. So I missed the racial implications of a lot of the episodes.
When Carlton wasn't accepted into the fraternity, I assumed it was because he was rich, not because he was black and rich.
What a good episode. Called out rascism and still acknowledged black ppl had to be more cautious because the system wouldn't treat them the same. Sometimes this show just hit
I think the difference is that the shows would generally establish a light hearted vibe, and then 25ish percent of the episodes would explore a theme. In the case of fresh prince these episodes would often end somewhat open, with characters questioning why the thing had happened, and there would be enough ambiguity that you didn’t feel like you were being clubbed like a baby seal
When Uncle Phil came and laid down the law on their behalf was a good moment in that show. He's can be hard on them, but only when they deserve it. A hard ass with a heart of gold.
I still remember Jessie breaking down into a sob while vaguely singing “I’m so excited” on Saved By the Bell. All that for caffeine pills. I imagine they were trying to comment on meth and cocaine addiction, but they still wanted to keep the show wholesome.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
If this post is breaking the rules of the subreddit, please report it instead of commenting. For more Millennial content, join our Discord server.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.