A Very Special Episode...

[SFK]

Actually, I was going to title this thread, "A Very Special AIDS episode", but there is only but so far that we can go with that.

I grew up in the eighties and was terrified of AIDS that is so foreign to me now as an educated adult with loved ones who have been immediately affected by it. But as a kid, those episodes really had my stomach sinking and I've never forgotten them...

Mr. Belvedere: Wesley's friend is a hemopheliac who contracts it through a transfusion. The parents all freak when he's on stage with their kids during a performance. Wesley hugs him (HUGE deal at the time!) at episode's end.

Nurses: The redheaded nurse's ladies man old friend swings into town and stops by the hospital for his persistent headaches. Long story short, the senior doctor played by that wonderful gravelly voiced late actress breaks it to her that her friend has AIDS ("But he's not gay!"), and I was beyond paranoid whenever I got a headache.

Designing Women: They're Killing All the Wrong People... The classic episode.

The Golden Girls: Rose may have been exposed to HIV infected blood.

Grace Under Fire: Grace's curmudgeonly neighbor is HIV+, and for a change, is not really on the sympathetic side. At least not at first.

[Khan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxh3SPeRReg

[DRW50]

Facts of Life - the episode where Natalie is almost raped. Ugh, that horrified me as a child.

The Different World episode where Kim is shamed by Freddie's boyfriend, uber-activist Shazza Zulu, for dating a white man, until she finally has enough and tells him that he looks mighty white for someone who is so opposed to interracial relationships.

Elaine Stritch nearly choking to death on The Cosby Show.

Sorry, I know those aren't AIDS-related stories.

[SFK]

Matthew Perry starred in two VSEs that I find memorable... When he was killed in the car wreck on Growing Pains, and a wonderful episode of Empty Nest which followed one of Harry's patients from childhood to young adulthood. In the most touching segment, Harry breaks it to the little boy that he has diabetes. The boy says, "I don't wanna have diabetes", to which Harry replies, "I don't want you to have it either.". Harry then presents the kid with a Pez dispenser, telling him to pop a candy whenever his sugar's acting up. In the final segment, the boy now a Matthew Perry teen, flashes his battered, taped up, yet tried and true Pez to Harry on his way out, like a thumbs up.

[DRW50]

I thought the Golden Girls episode was very hamfistedly written, and felt slightly out of date, even for that time. But the last years of that show were poorly written in general.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

The latter seasons of The Cosby Show will do that to one....

[SFK]

Oh my God! I was more concerned with his wayward eye balls!

[SFK]

Why don't I remember this?? I remember the Eileen Heckardt episode where she stubbornly won't take her pills.

[DRW50]

The Challenger episode of Punky Brewster, which was actually very good, even if it's depressing. For me it's the definition of VSE.

That's it. I thought she was choking at one point. Was there a Heimlich episode? Or am I just having strange fantasies of Elaine Stritch choking? I swear I saw this.

Maybe it was Eileen after all. I was 50/50.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

The Hogan Family....The episode where David's friend Rich died of AIDS!

That was some depressing [!@#$%^&*].

[Khan]

Every season but the first season of "The Cosby Show" is pretty damn awful, IMO.

Here's one: A DIFFERENT WORLD: "No Means No" -- Hillman's star baseball player, Garth Parks, (Taimak, "The Last Dragon") assaults Freddie on the night of the Spring Cabaret dance. As usual, writer Margie Peters' way with structure more than makes up for some cringe-worthy dialogue. But what I really loved about that particular episode occurs around 3:25 in this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy6Q-MCrxis&feature=relmfu

[SFK]

One of my IMDb friends always used to fight me on that, but Marc Cherry GG was funny in a very coy early nineties way. Earlier seasons were more character driven and timelessly funny. I think the final years of the show have aged more than previous seasons, with exceptions like the murder mystery weekend which is just classic sitcom silly fun.

[London]

GREAT Thread... I know growing up one of my favorite episodes from A Different World was, If I Should Die Before I Wake and I loved the performances by Tischa Campbell, Whoopi Goldberg and Lou Myers were just phenomenal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8x9fPYBlhM&feature=endscreen&NR=1

You can start at the 2:15 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=26wBIqs0YXw&NR=1

[SFK]

Does anyone remember the Silver Spoons where Rick's female friend was kidnapped by one of her parents years prior? I forget if the mom or the dad took her. But she revealed it all via Cabbage Patch Kid, having the doll "explain" to Rick what had happened to her as she held it in front of her face and talked through it. So not funny, but I am totally cracking up right now remembering that little girl's doll baby voice performance.

[DRW50]

Freddie was so likeable when she first started on the show. I know the last season was seen as a disaster by many but I was mostly just happy she moved away from that shrill parody of an activist they'd turned her into.

ADW also had the episode where Whitley learned her ancestors had owned slaves, right? I haven't seen that one in a while.