By the way, I'm with the racists... I never liked Dawnn Lewis' singing voice.

LOL, this was the only time I enjoyed her. I liked what she was serving up at the end of that step.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxY9YGFrHQc

I don't remember why it was Very Special, but Family Ties had this one with Tom Hanks as Elyse's brother, and there was something Special about it. Maybe it wasn't billed as Very Special though. Maybe he was on drugs or a drunk, I forget. One Day At A Time was a pioneer in Very Specialness, the entire series was a full on Very Special assault on the senses with random 4-parters detailing traumatic goings on.

This was another of my favorite episodes when I was growing up. I LOVED Roc and the Terrence Got His Gun episode.... they did a GREAT PSA after too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNN4YHGH53w&feature=share&list=PLA2660C4E84C26E52

I remember Roc! I used to watch it on TvOne that show was the king of PSAs. Didn't people complain about getting to preachy?

I remember when they brought in Kim Field's little sister and they had some episode where she got into a phsyical fight with a boy and it became a PSA on guys calling women b-tches and degrading them.

It's funny this starts off with Mr. Belvedere because there's an eppy that would be at the top of my list, and it had nothing to do with what was going on socially at the time.

When Wesley (I loved the kid) called immigration because he was upset with Mr. Belvedere. I was so upset by that, and I don't think I ever recovered because it was so disturbing to me. And for Mr. Belvedere to continue working for them after that was ridiculous to me. I can understand forgiving, but how can you look at that kid and family again after that? It was such a vicious thing to do, and the kid knowing how damaging a call to INS would be, makes it so much worse. He went from being a funny obnoxious little trouble maker to a sociopath (IMHO). I didn't like that eppy, and it soured me to the show after that.

Not sure if this counts as a VSE, but I needed to get that off my chest. Thanks!

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

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

OMG I've NEVER seen that and I used to LOVE watching this show in reruns! I liked their Very Special episode where their house burns down (and then it's miraculously restored by the next episode with no mention of there ever being a fire). I just remember in that episode that we saw elements of their house that we never saw before (the camera showed them going from upstairs (one set) down through the stairs and to the first floor (another set) and thought that was cool. And then they had an actual house on fire.

Edited November 20, 201213 yr by Gray Bunny

My favorite VSE. Is "The Bicycle Man" from Different Strokes.

Dudley almost gets molested!

In the final season (which overall wasn't good because they had grown too old and Dixie Carter had left) there's 2 good VSE where the lil redhead Sam gets kidnapped and is living with another family (it was a 2-part episode) and the other one was where Kimberly had bulimia. She ate a HUGE sheet cake in one sitting! DAMN!

I really liked ADW in the last season, but I would have preferred giving Whitley/Dwayne their own show and leaving the original to the college kids plus Freddie/Ron/Kim, etc. but considering how bad the show tanked after TCS left the air I guess neither would have worked.

Same. It's shameful to think, too, that ADW's success ratings-wise depended largely on the fact that it followed TCS on NBC's Thursday night lineup for most of its run. IMO, ADW not only was more relevant than TCS, but from a pure comedy writing standpoint alone, it was better written.

I never really found ADW to be consistently enjoyable. Very often, the quality would vary by episode, let alone by the different seasons.

And Debbie Allen's static-ass directing and preachy tendencies grate me.

NBC moved ADW to Friday night during its last season I believe, which was one of the reasons it tanked so badly that season in the ratings.

I didn't say ADW was one of the best written sitcoms of all time. I just said it was better than the show it spun off from.

I loved watching that ADW special with the cast one night ages ago -- getting rid of Lisa Bonet was just ... heaven. I could not stand her during Season 1 and the tone and flow of the show was just so much better from S2 until the end.

NBC moved ADW to Friday night during its last season I believe, which was one of the reasons it tanked so badly that season in the ratings.

They moved ADW to The Cosby Show's timeslot in the fall of 92 and then moved back to 8:30 that November, after flopping there they canceled it in January and put it on Fridays.

And I forgot another fave from Season 6 was "Somebody Say Ho!" when Gina put the Digit Ho sign on Charmaine's back and everyone thought Terrence did it.

I could not stand her during Season 1 and the tone and flow of the show was just so much better from S2 until the end.

It also helped to revamp the writing staff. To this day, I don't know why Tom Werner & Marcy Carsey (not to mention, Bill Cosby) would have hired someone like Anne Beatts to be showrunner. What was her track record beyond one cancelled sitcom ("Square Pegs") that allegedly had major problems backstage, and a bunch of "Saturday Night Live" sketches that, in retrospect, are more bizarre than funny? But, starting with S2, you had really good writers in charge, writers like Thad Mumford (the lone holdover, I think, from S1), Margie Peters, Gary H. Miller, Susan Fales, Judi Ann Mason and Jeanette Collins & Mimi Friedman.

Edited November 21, 201213 yr by Khan

I realize all this praise for ADW might seem odd coming from me, but you have to understand: most AA sitcoms that I've watched over the years have been either extremely milquetoast ("The Cosby Show," "Sister, Sister") or exercises in some of the worst racial buffoonery ever committed on American television ("Martin," virtually anything on UPN). ADW (and to a much lesser extent, "Girlfriends") is probably one of the few, if not the only, sitcom about AA's that could be funny and smart without making "us" "safe" for mainstream audiences.

Edited November 21, 201213 yr by Khan

Lawd, have mercy.