Bizarre/Tasteless Sitcom Episodes

[SFK]

DE did an epilepsy ep too, an epileptic mime at that. Arnold and Sam come home slapping their knees about the seizure she had whilst street performing and Pearl the maid scolds them, "Because *I* have epilepsy too!"

BTW, what a great forgotten thread.

[All My Shadows]

OMG yes, I remember that episode of DS! I distinctly remember Pearl getting buck with Arnold and Sam. By the way, DS will be joining Antenna in January!!

[DRW50]

I wouldn't really call it bizarre or tasteless, but I was always oddly depressed by the episode where the overweight girl guest-starred, constantly making jokes about how grotesque she was. Punky and Henry encouraged her to accept herself and admit that she was only encouraging fat jokes because she hated herself.

The coda for the episode had her coming back and showing how much weight she'd lost.

I felt like they were somehow afraid of sending a message that someone overweight needs to accept themselves, because they were afraid of sending a message that it's not that easy to lose weight. So they got the happy ending, with the weight loss. I thought it send out a dubious mixed message, somewhat harmful. Even if you do like yourself, that doesn't mean you suddenly lose weight.

I should also mention that Good Times episode with the cousin who was a closet drunk because her parents had encouraged her to drink during the holidays. Never really got that one.

[All My Shadows]

That's one of those GT episodes that I always watch when I see that it's on. Naomi was such a weird, bizarre character, and I always wondered if the actress was really drunk/buzzing while taping. She was just strange in every way, and I always wanted Thelma to slap her.

[DRW50]

The episode is hilarious, but they were apparently trying to teach us something. I sometimes wonder if the writers just wanted to have a good laugh and passed that under the guise of social issues. That's probably the only social issues episode of Good Times that I didn't really get. Most of the others that I can remember worked (I guess the most frightening was when James went beserk).

[All My Shadows]

Yeah, GT always brought it when it came to social issues. I fully intend to show "Florida Flips" to my students when we get to the feminist movement. The Naomi ep was definitely off-key, though, and it seemed like a lot was crammed into an episode.

Speaking of which, the episode where Keith gets violent is even more WTF for me than James's violent outbursts.

[Khan]

Believe it or not, David Dukes' character's assault on Edith Bunker (in "Edith's 50th Birthday") was originally developed as an idea for "One Day at a Time"'s Ann Romano. I've no idea why Norman Lear switched the story over to AITF.

Thanks to TVLand and WEtv, I'm able to watch the entire, nine-year run of "Roseanne"; and let me just say, they certainly were no stranger to bizarre, outlandish and tasteless episodes. (And that's not even including the abysmal, it-was-all-a-big-dream final season.) Off the top of my head: Roseanne's fantasy about having some peace-and-quiet alone in the bathtub that turns into a murder trial; "Sherwood Schwarz: A Loving Tribute," where she imagined all the regular cast members as castaways from "Gilligan's Island"; the black-and-white "That's Our Rosie!" episode; the one where Roseanne plays the Most Obnoxious Gay Wedding Ever for Leon and his fiancee; the severely disjointed Halloween show where Roseanne gave birth to her youngest child, Jerry; and the one where Roseanne and Jackie attempt to sabotage a new restaurant opening across the street from the Lanford Lunch Box. (Roseanne getting stuck inside an oven vent? That never would have happened under showrunner Bob Myer's watch.)

[DRW50]

I remember cringing at a lot of that. Donald Bogle wrote about the horrible treatment of Thelma and for some reason it reminds of that episode, although she did stand up for herself and had some good material. I think, beyond some of the acting issues with Keith, it just showed how much had changed - if you were going to have Thelma get slapped, you have to have more than just Michael and JJ around to be horrified. At first I wasn't quite sure JJ even noticed.

[SFK]

I always "Pffft!" and roll my eyes/shake my head when Naomi's dad (who would more famously return as Balderman Davis) says, "I thought she was on drugs...". Uhh, okayyy, and yet...? We always used to joke over at IMDb about how GT characters would hilariously rattle off statistics in pure PSA fashion.

Naomi was like the Lynn Milgrim to Henrietta's (Debbie Allen) Claire Bloom.

[DRW50]

Don't forget Debbie Reynolds as Dan's now comic relief psycho mother, completely ruining a touching story from the first season.

I know she did the gay wedding episode as a screw you to ABC for their objections to the lesbian story with Sandra Bernhard and Mariel Hemingway. But spending most of your show in a grudge match with your network is not exactly entertaining. I try to forget the last 3-4 years of that show existed.

[SFK]

Gertie aka Alex Spaulding's maid Vera eating the dog food is perhaps the most, "Wow, they really went there!"/airing dirty ghetto laundry episode.

[SFK]

I was watching an episode of 227 a few weeks ago where they were running a Japanese restaurant complete with traditional garb and plenty of pigeon English jokes. Never would have flown these 20 years later.

[All My Shadows]

YES YES YES YES YES. The first time I saw it, I just assumed they'd misunderstood the whole thing -- she wasn't REALLY eating dog food -- but then girlfriend got up and defended the sh!t out of her choice to eat dog food.

That episode gave us some hilarious moments, though.

[Khan]

Which is why I, like yourself, tend to prefer the seasons of "Roseanne" where people other than Roseanne herself were in charge. (That would include seasons 1 through 5.) Even without Tom Arnold, I felt as if her tastes in comedy ran often to the tasteless and objectionable.

[Khan]

Best part: when Willona was caught in a tug-of-war between James and Michael (or was it James and J.J.) as they were sitting down at the table to eat. I think it was all Ja'Net DuBois could do to keep her wig on (and keep it straight).