Things you miss from old tv shows that you don’t see anymore?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Gill-man, Aug 15, 2018.

  1. Beatles_Apple

    Beatles_Apple Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Depends on the type of show. Some shows are the modern equivalent of the 60s lip-synced shows. If we have a modern “Midnight Special” type show with lip syncing then there is valid room for criticism.
     
  2. boyjohn

    boyjohn Senior Member

    Maybe so more people know, like the idea, and watch the show/movie? And plus, the press in going to ask about it anyway, so why not applaud yourself for it.

    For example, I never shop at Walmart, but if they suddenly came out tomorrow, patting themselves on the back for suddenly being pro worker, and said they were now pro-union I might consider shopping there. It's a subtle psychological thing.

    I fear (and I'm not meaning you personally), that the problem for some people is the diversity itself, not the self-congratulation.
     
  3. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    If you're not part of the in-group then sometimes you need it forced.

    Forced either means that the viewer considers it forced (unnatural), the people producing the program are forced to include diversity when they don't want to, or the viewer is forced to watch shows including diversity because undiverse shows are no longer being made.

    Original Law And Order was forced to diversify. Original cast was six men. After the third season, NBC forced the producers to get rid of two of the male characters and replace them with female characters. Was that forced diversity? Yes. Did that make the show more representative of the actual workplaces involved? I'm guessing at this point at least 33% of those workplaces would be women. So it was likely more representative. (One of the fired actors continued as the same character on another version of L&O, with a more diverse cast.)

    Was The Andy Griffith Show wrong, in today's world, not to show the black experience in North Carolina as part of its show? I think so, yes. It's something I accept as a product of the time, but you couldn't and shouldn't do that today.
     
  4. Beatles_Apple

    Beatles_Apple Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    The story that they wanted to tell on the Andy Griffith Show wasn’t about the black experience and that it’s ok that it wasn’t. Good Times wasn’t about the White, Latino, or Asian experience in Chicago but that’s ok too. Those shows revolved a single family and their friends and neighbors. Not everyone has a diverse group of family and friends. Shows like Law and Order can’t exist without showing other experiences. That’s what those shows are about.

    That said, I would have liked to hear their definition of forced. I personally find token characters to be counterproductive as IMO they do feel forced as in “unnatural”. The end goal of diversity is for it to be natural. When I watch a show and think “this character/actor is only here because...” then I know they did it wrong.
     
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  5. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    If Andy Griffith Show was a 1970s show, they would have had to address it. Been featured in certain episodes, anyway.

    Was Gordie on MTM show a token? Maybe. They needed a minor character, and that was something they could do. Rhoda was clearly Jewish, probably less so than she would be later on, but still not something you saw in a 1960s show at all.

    All of the 1970s shows were in a different universe than the 1960s shows. Whatever their level of featuring actual diversity in the main cast, it was going to come up.
     
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  6. Matthew Tate

    Matthew Tate Forum Resident

    Location:
    Richmond, Virginia

    i don't think by "forced" they meant forced upon the show but forced as in you can tell the writers didnt put the effort into the character or the writing . we can all tell when that happens
     
  7. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    As much as we love our favorite TV shows, when the time comes to put them on DVD, the number of episodes per season will affect how the DVD releases are treated.

    We take into consideration this:
    6 to 8 half-hour shows per DVD9, depending on if special features are also included
    3 or 4 1-hour shows per DVD9, depending on if special features are also included

    What annoys me:
    Cramming more than the above amounts, since to do so would mean using extreme compression, which therefore reduces overall picture quality. There was at least one exception to this rule: The Bad News Bears (TV series), on which disc 1 has the entire first season of 12 episodes, and disc 2 making up that of the second season with 14 episodes, the last three of which CBS did not air due to the show's declining ratings. The cramming of these episodes did not seem to affect their picture quality, and their original running times (23-24 minutes) were unchanged.

    ~Ben
     
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  8. Scowl

    Scowl Forum Resident

    Location:
    ?
    I think Superstore is doing a good job of political incorrectness this season. The Cloud 9 store is changing racist policies that suggest the place had been run by Archie Bunkers.
     
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  9. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    One possibility is to put them on Blu-Ray disc but in Standard Definition and Classic Aspect Ratio (if that was the case with the original). They did this with the series Samurai Pizza Cats and they were able to fit 52 of the 53 episodes on one Blu-Ray disc (the not-included 53d episode was basically a clip show). It looks to me just as good as the original broadcast.
     
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  10. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    Something I forgot to mention is that Samurai Pizza Cats episodes filled a 30-minute time slot, so each episode was likely about 20-25 minutes.
     
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  11. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    Most of the shows I refer to were in standard definition (1.33:1 AR).

    ~Ben
     
  12. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Yes, I saw an interview with Sherwood Schwartz from a few years ago where he said the same thing. He said if he turned in a script for The Brady Bunch now they'd demand he rewrite it to put non-stop jokes in.

    I miss that 1980s shows aren't being adapted to death for the big screen the way 1950s, '60s and to a lesser extent '70s shows were. I don't really miss it, but it is odd that the earlier decades seem much more fertile for movie adaptations than the '80s. Knight Rider and MacGyver are two that definitely could work as major motion pictures. Three's Company (as a '70s-'80s show) could work on the comedy side. Perfect Strangers would be worth a try too. Alf could definitely be brought back as more of a Ted-like comedy. Cheers' original cast might be too beloved to reboot, but maybe as more time passes. Overall though, the '80s doesn't seem to have as many of the high concept shows that the '60s had which appealed to Hollywood. Family Ties and Growing Pains aren't crying out for a big screen revival.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2021
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  13. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    Well if women represent 33% of the workplace, that doesn't mean 33% of the workplace in every office. It is not unrealistic to think that there may be 6 people offices with 100% Women and 100% men or 50% women and men. A lot of it depends on the context. If you were to make a show that takes place in a Victoria's Secret store how many men would you expect to be in the cast? Diversity just for the sake of diversity is its own form of prejudice. A little common sense is called for.
     
  14. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    TV shows are not reality. They want diversity because it creates conflict and plots. We do not see TV shows about every facet of life. Only the most interesting ones.

    A lot of Archie Bunker types maybe didn't live next to someone like George Jefferson. Archie living next to someone just like him will be more boring. Why make a show about that?

    Law And Order was forced to diversify by NBC after its third season. They'd tried promoting a psychologist character, played by a woman, as a seventh character, but it wasn't enough. Later on Chris Noth, one of the actors playing a detective, was fired because he and Jerry Orbach had become too similar. That is a different lack of diversity. When the lines for multiple characters all sound the same, there's no reason to have multiple characters, no matter how many versions of this type of person might exist in real life. Put them against a different type, cover more points of view, generate more conflict.

    In Law And Order's case, all of these changes actually improved the show's ratings, and helped it last for 20 years. Hard to argue with that track record.
     
  15. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Diversity of personality is more important than diversity of ethnicity or gender. The Odd Couple was a hugely successful franchise and it was based on the personality diversity between two white men. Perfect Strangers was another successful Odd Couple-type show based on diversity of personality driven by different ethnic backgrounds. But the characters were the same race and gender. Look at a show like Gilligan's Island. Everyone is the same race and from the same country, but they are diverse based on economic status, age, intelligence, body weight, occupation and gender.

    One tragedy in modern politically correct thinking is that it's created a giant vacuum of imagination when it comes to defining what diversity actually is. They don't care about diversity unless it's a very specific kind of diversity that can be said to relate to examples of prejudice or discrimination in society.

    It is a little funny how so few shows or movies ever deal with religious diversity in any way. It probably goes back to the fact that religion is barely ever referenced on any show at all. Which is why Christians were so happy to see Ned Flanders and The Simpsons actually going to church, no matter how many times religion was used as the butt of jokes on the show. Religious diversity is still very fertile ground for someone to explore in a show.
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2021
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  16. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    Please show me your proof that it was diversity that made the show successful. That show was popular from day one. I have done many internet searches to read about the diversification of the show and couldn't find anything, so If you have something to show, please post it. It is easy to create conflicts in plots even between twins. Diversity is not required. I'm not saying diversity is not a good thing.

    Here is the real reason Noth left the show:
    Among all the many men and women who shot to fame by playing a good guy cop or crusading district attorney on a Law & Order series, Chris Noth was the first. First introduced in the pilot episode, Noth portrayed the show's first junior detective, the tough and swaggery Mike Logan. Despite the success of the show and the popularity of Noth's character, Detective Logan was written out in 1995, forcibly transferred to a Staten Island unit after he punched a politician on trial for murder.
    In reality, Logan had to leave because Noth had to leave, as producers let him go after five seasons with the series. The reason? Money. Scheduled contract renegotiations were about to begin, producer Dick Wolf told the Associated Press, and Noth would've been entitled to a "huge" salary bump if he were to stay on for a sixth season. According to Wolf, that raise would've been "impossible to grant." But according to the other side, Noth was okay with moving on to bigger and better things. "He's really sorry that they couldn't get it together, but he's had five great years, and his feeling is that it's time to move on," said Dolores Robinson, head of Noth's management team, and the actor did indeed go on to find success on TV shows like The Good Wife and Sex and the City.

    Please stop trying to pass off your theories as fact.
     
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  17. Things you miss from old tv shows
    that you don’t see anymore?

    [​IMG]
    Service station attendants, aka “Pump Jockeys” in the parlance of an earlier era
     
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  18. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    From Wiki:

    "Wolf dismissed Noth when his contract expired at the end of season 5, because he felt that Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan had become too similar to each other and the writers were having difficulty in writing their dialogue together. Furthermore, Noth had been disgruntled with the show since the dismissals of Florek and Brooks, and remained embittered against Wolf, who he felt was not a friend to his actors."

    The Wiki article is extensively sourced from this book:

    Courrier, Kevin; Green, Susan (November 20, 1999). Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Renaissance Books. ISBN 1-58063-108-8.

    Lodge your disputes with Wiki or the authors of the book.

    The Nielsen ratings for the show are also on the Wiki page. The show ranked #46 in its first two seasons, then dipped to #56 in its third season, the last of an all male cast. After that, ratings rose until they peaked in Season 12, with a #7 ranking and 18.7 million viewers.
     
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  19. Jay_Z

    Jay_Z Forum Resident

    I wouldn't say it's more important. One of the characters on WKRP was black. There were particular stories that could be told because he was black. The character also had characteristics particular to the individual character. Diversity of gender or race doesn't preclude further differentiation within the "minority" subgroups.

    The Jeffersons weren't all alike on All In The Family.

    As for The Odd Couple, it's been remade with black and female casts. And a cartoon with a cat and a dog. For Gilligan's Island, in subsequent decades the cast would have been more diverse. Does that make the show worse? Create fewer script opportunities, or more?
     
  20. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    Well if it was on Wiki it must be right. Let's ignore the quotes from the producer and actor involved and go with anonymous internet posters.
     
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  21. Matthew Tate

    Matthew Tate Forum Resident

    Location:
    Richmond, Virginia

    i know someone who meet Noth . They asked him about the law and order situation and he actually gave an answer that semi combines both accounts of the events
     
  22. Bhobb

    Bhobb Crate Digger

    Too many pages to read, but I miss westerns
     
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  23. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    Funny you should say that- right after I posted I got to thinking that in most cases like the truth is somewhere in-between. I'll buy that explanation.
     
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  24. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    There are probably more LAW & ORDER episodes produced than almost any other television series, scattered over the various sister shows. And yet, to date, I've never watched an episode. The only time I have seen any of it is passing through the room when my wife has it on ION, once in a great while. I just don't spend much time watching NBC at all.
     
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  25. Matthew Tate

    Matthew Tate Forum Resident

    Location:
    Richmond, Virginia

    so the story my friend who worked on sex in the city got from noth was this.

    he was supposed to get a raise if he stayed another year. when he and dick wolf started to discuss stuff wolf acted like they can't give him the money. this rubbed noth the wrong way because he felt the original cast had a chemistry that was lost and noth was also friends with florek and brooks and felt they were done wrong. it seemed they didn't really care if noth stayed or left and noth already felt like they were pushing him aside for orbach. after some remarks someone said to noth "we'll just give all the best lines to orbach anyways " or something along those line because the lines were almost interchangeable between the way the two characters acted .

    that was the story he got from noth or something like that and said noth said no hard feeling as he came back several times to work on law and order stuff


    if this is the truth i see how the stories are getting mixed up in places
     

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