BetterForgotten

CBS had major identity issues for most of the 90's, I guess that's to be expected when it seemed like there was a new network head at CBS every 5 minutes back then. It's funny that Y&R's rise to #1 in daytime for CBS kind of coincided with their primetime fall from grace.

Neither FC or Dallas should have realistically been allowed to make it into the 90’s. By that point, both shows had fallen out of the top 30 and were way past their prime.

If I'm being perfectly honest, I never saw the amazing talent Sydney had anyway. She has a very bland way of delivering her lines. I think the same of Eden McCoy.

I guess The Simpsons is the most obvious example? But I guess only 5 people remember The Tracey Ullman Show these days. Those Miller-Boyette shows always made my teeth itch. Even as a kid I knew what I was being served was generally stupid as hell and fairly light fluff.

Ratings-wise alone, Dallas had one of the most spectacular rises, and also one of the most spectacular FALLS/DECLINES in TV history. Obviously, a lot of this was tied to the actual quality of the series.

It looks like a dollar store imitation of an MCU movie poster. I can't believe this even warrants any type of promotion - does anyone even care? The BBC and this show are out of touch with reality.

These shows definitely won't drive subscription volume - HBO Max won't go out of their way to promote it like they always do with something like Friends () for example, so I do assume remastering long-running shows like Dallas, FC, and KL must be extremely expensive for them to prioritize. They also don't have same cache and historical significance that something like the old MGM film library that WB owns has as well. It sucks that primetime soaps have never really seemed to garner much long-term value or demand when compared to sitcoms or more episodic dramas.

It's hilarious that WB owns the rights to ALL of the Lorimar soaps, and yet none of them are on their own streaming service (HBO Max).

Everything about “Life With Lucy” was so wrong. Someone should have talked some sense into her that it was the 80’s and playing a variation of the same character she had been playing since the 50’s wasn’t going work or do her any favors. It was said she took the failure of this show especially hard and until her death a few years after. That said, the love and admiration she received from the audience at the 1981 Emmy’s always warms my heart.

What do you expect when you responded "wtf" to my post like I kicked your puppy or something?

I also think Primetime is a vastly different experience than Daytime. While I can watch soaps back to back in daytime, I don’t really need that in primetime. If I’m going to commit to a network schedule, there better be a smartly written and funny sitcom or two in there to compliment the 1 hour drama on your lineup (if I’m giving you my night). Again, say what you want about NBC’s Must See TV lineup, but capping the night off with a 1 hour drama after all those sitcoms was strategically brilliant (obviously depending on what the quality and popularity of what those shows on the lineup are). In the era of streaming and DVR, I guess none of this matters though…

Do you want a cookie for that?

Bless REG, but one of the worst characters ever.

Sorry to continue the OT trend, but FC was never originally conceived as a soap, right? Wasn't it originally supposed to be more of a family drama, but Lorimar forced the soap angle on it?

One would have to think FC was ever a good show to begin with. 😛

I could be wrong, but didn't LA Law rank higher in the ratings for most of its run vs. KL when they overlapped? Part of the issue is that these shows lasted too damn long (the same with BH 90210). Every primetime series has a shelf life - some overstay their welcome and some are cut short in their prime. With KL, I'm inclined to say it should have ended long before it did.

Goes back to how grateful CBS was to have even a modest hit on their hands in the late 80's and 90's, lol. If they had anything beyond 60 Minutes and Murder She Wrote that were major hits at the time, I wonder if KL would have made it into the 90's (granted Dallas did with way worse ratings).

It seems like the relative obscurity of ADW (at least compared to other sitcoms that aired on NBC’s Must-See TV lineup) in syndication may have hurt its memory in the long-run as well. There was a long period in the 90s/early 00s where the show wasn’t present even on an niche cable channel. Compare that to how a show like The Golden Girls, for example, found a second life in re-runs on Lifetime, ADW was never able to get that.

It's weird a situation though - because going back to Cheers, had it not been for the breakout success of The Cosby Show, that show would have never found a mass audience. But unlike ADW, its audience seemed to deviate from Cosby at some point and it was never in the shadows of TCS once more people watched it. I guess it also had critical acclaim and Emmy's on its side, but those things can only get you so far at the end of the day. The same with Seinfeld, had NBC not moved it to Thursdays, it would have never found a mass audience. Not only did it manage to become a hit on that night, but THE definitive hit of its era. But again, no one would ever classify it as a "timeslot hit" as it wasn't overshadowed by anything else. That said, ADW did carve out a unique niche from its parent show - namely, it did out-rate TCS in black households and I believe was still the #1 show in black households until the end ( even when its ratings on Saturday were baaaaad).

That first year or so with Tamara was rough - you can tell someone told her she needed to try to imitate SJB (even down to her awful dyed blonde hair), and then they wrote the character extra wimpy for a while. She came into her own when let her play the character based on her own instincts, and of course when they let her wear her natural hair color. 🤣

I also think because the writing on Cheers was mostly character centric, it gave the finale a lot of emotional weight. Even though I was a young kid, I cared about most of those characters so the finale had a lot of resonance.

Thanks! The Cheers finale was the first finale in my lifetime I remember being a big spectacle and cultural moment.

Is it weird that I consider the end of Cheers in May 1993 as the official end of the 80's? 🤣 The highest rated finale of the 90's, and the second highest rated finale of all time (second only to MASH).