TV Shows That Should Not Have Existed, Yet Did

I not only watched the entire clip but I saved it to my hard drive so I can watch it again. That really made me laugh. I'm not sure which was more enjoyable -- the cheesy orchestration, the uninspired singing, or the ridiculous choreography/dancing.

 

I only watched the opening dialogue and that’s it.

 

I made it a minute or two, but I had to pop a couple of Xanax to dull the pain.

Can you imagine the TV execs producing this and saying, "yeah, this is great! The audiences are gonna love this!"

 

Well, you have to remember the era. The '70s had so much bad TV (a lot of it in this vein) that many of the people working on the project probably didn't think much about it. And, in retrospect, being able to watch this is like getting high without having to smoke anything. The absurdity of it all just brings it to another level. Just my reaction. YMMV.

 

Oh, no, I ran screaming out of the room even in the '70s. I was there and remember the era extremely well. Those shows were haaaaaarible. There was a huge difference between a good variety show and a bad variety show.

One sad thing: it was like the air got left out of the balloon for variety shows in 1977. They worked fine for 25 years on TV, but suddenly they became very "uncool" and corny by the end of the 1970s. The Carol Burnett Show (as a shining example) was a huge success for 10 years, then completely crashed and burned in 1977 and was cancelled by mutual consent in 1978. What worked in the early 1970s no longer worked by the end of the 1970s. Shows like the Brady Bunch Hour were trying to fan the flames of variety shows during 1976-1977, but they were enormous flops because the public didn't want them and they were very bad shows. I think producers Sid & Marty Krofft made a handful of good (and memorable) shows for a period of time, but variety was not their forte.

The single funniest thing about the Brady Bunch Hour: comic actor Rip Taylor played their next door neighbor, who was the new romantic interest for Alice the maid (Ann B. Davis). Somehow, I think neither Rip nor Ann were really interested in each other.

Wikipedia has some funny stories about the show -- among them:

• TV Guide listed the series at No. 4 in a 2002 compilation of the 50 worst television series in American history.

The Brady Bunch Hour - Wikipedia

 

When I saw that this existed, my jaw almost hit the floor!

 

I suspect very few saw the show's only broadcast, as it went out on one of the channels run by BSB, a short-lived UK satellite broadcaster who struggled to get viewers.

 

I guess I do not get the appeal of most 60s comedy very much either.
I can not relate to in any way.

Soldiers being held prisoner in WW2 Germany that are Far smarter than all Germans, that try to smuggle people and do little covert missions... ??
As a kid I would wonder why they acted cold, but you could never see their breath, and why it looked like there was palm trees in the distance when they were outdoors.
I truly was not even sure they were in Germany or why they did not simply overthrow the whole POW camp etc.

Hillbillies that got "Rich", but were clueless???

An air force Nasa Officer that finds a Jeannie....????

A family of Monsters (munsters and adams family....) WTF???

A marine, that would not have lasted 2 weeks in the real marines, but none of his platoon ever get sent to war, nor is the war even mentioned, even thought the Viet Nam war was full on at the time. They just hang out and do a lot of random nothing stuff...???

My parents said they watched them mostly cause there was nothing else to watch, and some of their friends and neighbors watched them also.

Gidget and Leave it to beaver, were far more believable and could relate to them.

 

But she did act somewhat like a young girl pretending to be a robot

 

Yep....far from a golden age of quality comedy TV, still, there was Get Smart! and I for one am thankful.

 

A lot of good comedies over the years have been entirely unbelievable, but they are still funny.

 

Leave It To Beaver was in no way believable in my eyes. It was such an idealised version of family life that didn't exist and knew that when I watched it as a kid. No one I knew was living that life, not even the "english" people in my neighbourhood!

It was far easier for me to believe that some clueless guy was able to get rich, especially after I started working as I kept meeting people like that. So, that didn't seem to be far fetched to me. I preferred LITB though as I thought it was funnier.

TV isn't meant to be just about realism and even though you can't believe or relate to the premise e.g. a jeannie exists, you can relate to the characters and situations, most of which have already been told anyway. We're just getting them in a new setting. A lot of shows require you to suspend belief to some degree.

Can you really tell me that TV shows now adhere to reality that much better...keep in mind I just watched Stranger Things this weekend.
The list of shows living in fantasy land is long and it doesn't end in the 60's.

I don't the era necessarily defines crazy ideas for shows although some era's might have a certain theme which just replicated what was a trend at the time.

 

The Facts Of Life: Badly written, poorly acted, not funny.

 

I absolutely LOVED "Lancelot Link Secret Chimp" when it aired. It was the one Saturday morning show I couldn't miss.

 

Good theme song though...

 

American ******' Ido. ffs. I get putting truly talented artists on the show but some of the people who are on only in the season are there because they are so bad it is laughable. Get that **** off television ........

 

They tried to make Revenge Of The Nerds into a TV series, but they only got as far as the pilot. And it shouldn't have made it THAT far.

They even included the pilot as bonus material on the DVD of the movie, but I doubt anyone could make it through 5 minutes of this drek:

 

I never new this pilot existed. Now if only I could forget...

 

Grady
The World According To Jim

 

Mystery Science Theater 3000. A guy and his puppets make fun of terrible 60’s movies. The premise is stupid and insane but I love it and somehow it’s still going 20+ years later.

 

Any show that MacLean Stevenson ever did after he left MASH.

And, while spinoffs work sometimes, there are a lot more that don't:

Mash: After Mash, Walter
Alice: Flo
The Jeffersons: Florence
Sanford & Son: Grady, Sanford Arms, Sanford
All In The Family: Had some good spinoffs (Jeffersons) but more bad ones: Gloria, plus the fairly recent one where someone else had moved into Archie's old house
Battlestar Galactica: Beats me how the actors could ever deliver their lines with a straight face since the dialogue was so bad, but Galactica 1980? Come on!
Married with Children: Top Of The Heap...which was about Kelly Bundy's boyfriend for one episode. One week he was on Married With Children, and nobody had a clue who he was, and the next week he had his own show, which also lasted about a week. Incidentally, the guy was played by Matt LeBlanc before he was on Friends.

 

Although it was one of the most popular TV shows in history I'd be fine if Friends never existed.
But then again I bailed on TV when I was 16 and just never got into it after that.
But Friends was so popular I had to check it out and I swear I thought the David Schwimmer character was mentally challenged you know like we used to say before the word got to be frowned upon, retarded.
I figured with all the diversity inclusion going on it was just the part he played.
Now in hindsight I think that is when I realized that I am old.

 

The Bastard Executioner.

Why?

 

Modern family...

 

My God...I remember "Flying High" with Connie Selleca. I havent had one thought about that show in like 30 years!!

And I really like the Theme from "The Ugliest Girl in The World"...reminds me a bit of "Love American Style"...