Our Parents Could Probably Name 100% Of These TV Shows. Wanna Try?
- by Eric
- – on
- in Movies and TV
Television has been referred to as the digital hearth. On Christmas some channels just broadcast an actually hearth fireplace burning. We all love TV and the collective gathering it creates for families. It's a safe bet that nearly everyone reading this has fond memories of stirring on the couch with your folks and siblings for family TV hour.
For some people, this was the only time a day they got to spend with their loved ones after long hard days of work and school. Those fond memories can wash over you like a warm memory of sweet nostalgia. Not just nostalgia for the show but for simpler TV watching times. When we watch some of those older shows on our own now, we still laugh at jokes we heard our folks laughed at. Or we still cry at the heartache of some of our beloved characters. Jokes that we didn't get then are even funnier now.
It's time for the ultimate test. Let's see how many shows from our childhood and our parents’ young adult lives you can remember. Name as many of these TV shows as possible and see if you really are becoming your parents!
What TV Show Is This?
It was almost a rite of passage for a teenager to disagree against their parents’ teachings and ideologies. After all, most kids think their parents either aren't cool, don't know anything, or both. But what about the kid whose parents were flower children. Played by the beloved Michael J. Fox, Alex P. Keaton became a symbol for Ronald Reagan fans throughout the eighties, while his parents were the ones representing the flower child hippie counter-culture. What early-eighties sitcom was this?
What TV Show Is This?
There's no bigger sociopath on TV than Zack Morris. He's a manipulative self-serving teen who didn't care about hurting or pressuring any of his friends to get what he wants. He once pressured his girlfriend, Kelly into going steady and then immediately ignored her in favor of the beautiful new school nurse. He ignored his best friend Jessie pushing herself too hard and getting hooked on caffeine pills, just so that he could make a few bucks off of her singing. Zack Morris Is Trash, but this show is still remembered fondly.
What TV Show Is This?
This sitcom was the epitome of what a family sitcom in the eighties was. Quick intro. Schmaltzy and saccharine theme song. Sibling banter, problem. Problem solved, awws from the live audience. Roll credits. While parents Jason and Maggie might have been the heads of the family, the show was usually all about oldest son Mike and all of his antics. The series made Kirk Cameron a household name before he turned stardom down in favor of religion; which he used to make this wholesome show even more wholesome.
What TV Show Is This?
Lucille Ball was the first queen of television. Her and husband, Desi Arnaz created sitcom that still holds up to this day. The only reason it's predictable, is because it's been on reruns for nearly sixty years! But trouble maker Lucy would always try to bust in on her husband's job as an entertainer to try and become one herself. She'd also get into mischief with her friend, Ethel. This was also the first ever TV show where the series star’s pregnancy would be written into the show.
What TV Show Is This?
While Arnold and Stallone were crushing it in the theaters during the eighties, Mr. T was pitying fools all over television. Not only with his own cartoon, but he was also the star of this action adventure series, about a group of special forces who were framed for a crime they did not commit. They escaped a military holding facility and have been on the run ever since. So why not become soldiers of fortune while trying to clear their names? The show’s tagline is still one of the best - “If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and you can find them, maybe you can hire…”
What TV Show Is This?
Most us have some sort of voice in our cars nowadays. Most of us have some sort of smart feature in our cars nowadays. But it's doubtful any of us have a car like KITT. Driven by former police officer Michael Knight, drives KITT around helping those in need. It's basically a buddy cop show, but one of the buddies is a wise-cracking car. The series launched several other spin-offs and its ominous theme has become part of the lexicon, and has been sampled in several hip-hop songs.
What TV Show Is This?
Here’s a story of a lovely lady all of them had hair of gold like their mother. She happened to meet a single father of three boys. They meet, fall in love, and get married. Their now brood of six kids are sandwiched together as one big happy family and have to try and coexist. It’s one of the oldest and most beloved sitcoms of all time. The series also spun off several TV movies and even two big screen adventures.
What TV Show Is This?
How’s this for a motley crew of a family unit – widower/former baseball player Tony takes a job as a live-in housekeeper to move he and his daughter out of Brooklyn. He works for a divorced ad-exec Angela and her son Jonathan. Angela’s uber-promiscuous mom, Mona is also running around. The will they or won’t they flair helped to spice up the show, but according to series star, Tony Danza the show was more about flipping all of the gender stereotypes.
What TV Show Is This?
Not all of our parents’ shows were sitcoms or dramas. They too were kids once, hard to believe. When our folks were kids, the event of Saturday Morning Cartoons was sacrosanct. But after all of those were done for the morning, Pee-Wee Herman helped us get through lunch. He had the coolest house ever with a talking chair and a genie and just about everything a kid (or a man-child) could want. The secret word here is, the name of this show.
What TV Show Is This?
Thanks to the power of the internet, there is long-standing fan fiction that Sgt. Al Powell and Carl Winslow (both played by Reginald VelJohnson) are the same person. Carl inadvertently shot a kid, Steve Urkel in some versions of this story. He blocks it out of his mind but is still haunted by the kid. Unable to deal with the trauma, Carl fakes passing away and heads to L.A. where he takes a job as a cop at a desk and regains his self-worth by helping John McClane. None of this actually has to do with the show, it's just a fun piece of fan fiction about and actor being typecast as a cop.
What TV Show Is This?
When he was a boy, Fox Mulder watched his sister get taken by aliens. He devoted his I life to finding her and became a great FBI Profiler m along the way. But his devotion to the more fringe cases led him to the basement of the FBI. He was partnered with a young woman of science, Dana Scully in an attempt to debunk his work with m sound scientific proof. But science only proves the truth and the truth was definitely out there.
What TV Show Is This?
Leave it to two innovative stand-ups to change the sitcom game. Their show debuted with only four episodes. It continued to chug along until an episode called “The Contest.” The series even nearly twenty years since the finale is still an indelible part of pop culture. The series might have more quotable lines and phrases than any other sitcom or drama ever. “They're real and they're spectacular,” comes to mind. But also ridiculous only-in-a-sitcom events like the Puffy Shirt or Elaine’s silly dance moves. Not too bad for a show “about nothing.”
What TV Show Is This?
No matter how much a boy loves his mother, or family for that matter - there's just no way that he wants to live next door to them. Especially when your moms as overbearing as Marie Barone. But that's exactly what happened here in one of the last great traditional “taped in front of a live audience” sitcoms. NY sports writer Ray lives a moderately successful life with his wife and kids. He just has to deal with the nightmare of his entire family never leaving him alone.
What TV Show Is This?
After bringing us Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg turned their attentions to a script Crichton worked on in the seventies, detailing his life as a medical patient. The result wound up being a show that spanned fourteen years and made a household name out of George Clooney. Long before McSteamy and McDreamy, there was Dr. Doug Ross. For anyone who loves any of today's long-running medical dramas, you owe it yourselves to go check out one of the innovators.
What TV Show Is This?
The first sitcom on the Fox network debuted way back in 1987. It broke every mold in the book. Instead of wholesome families like the Huxtables, the Seavers, and the Keatons; we met the Bundys. Working class and white trash, the Bundys were crass and unapologetic. Al came home after a long hard day of selling shoes and has to put up with his untamed shrew, Peg and ingrate kids Bud and Kelly. The only smiles on this show came from its dedicated fans.
What TV Show Is This?
For some of us, our moms stayed home and in-between their errands and cleaning the house and doing whatever stay-at-home moms did, they also watched Soap Operas. One of the most popular ones, like all of them featured outlandish storylines. But none more outlandish that Luke and Laura. After their criminally questionable get together, the fans actually liked the pairing so the writers went with it and their marriage became one of the most viewed TV events of the eighties or any other time for that matter.
What TV Show Is This?
In the television world, getting that iconic role is something very special- but two of them?! That's a testament to a great actress like Mayim Bialik. Right now, she's known for playing Amy on The Big Bang Theory. But prior to becoming to becoming a neuroscientist both on TV and in real life, she was the youngest kid of widower, Nick Russo. She also happened to be the rock of the family and the series. Whether she was hanging out with her bestie, Six or getting sage advice from all sorts of stars, this girl knew it all.
What TV Show Is This?
“Thank you for being a friend…” with those five words, you'll see your folks instantly smile and turn to drivel at the nostalgia behind this series of four funny ladies living their golden years together at a retirement community in Miami. There was Dorothy, the sensible part of the group. Rose, who naive, silly, and kind. Rounding out the group was man-hungry Southern Belle, Blanche; and Dorothy’s mom, Sophia, who put them all in their places and occasionally used her sass for big time laughs.
What TV Show Is This?
This show had nearly 300 episodes under its belt, plus about the same amount of episodes for it’s spin-off, Frasier. It would take a person nearly two weeks straight to watch both of these shows. The series was about a local neighborhood bar, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.” Led by Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson, the show made stars out of Danson, Woody Harrelson, Kelsey Grammar, Rhea Pearlman, and of course Kirstie Alley. The show even launched a chain of bars, the most famous one resides near the show’s fictional setting of Boston.
What TV Show Is This?
Long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a thing, Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby were smashing bad guys to a pulp on weekly television. Dr. David Banner developed a serum that turns him into the giant Green Goliath when his adrenaline starts pumping. He travels the country looking for a cure and helping those in need. It became one of the most popular shows of the early eighties and global phenomenon. Just don't make him angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.
What TV Show Is This?
After his wife was past away in a drunk-driving accident, widower Danny knew he needed help raising his three daughters. So he invited his brother-in-law, Jesse and best friend Joey to come stay with him and help with teenager DJ, precocious Stephanie, and little baby Michelle. Stay became live and Uncles Jesse and Joey were just as important in the girls’ lives as neurotic near freak Danny was and vice-versa. Jesse even met his wife and they raised their twins in the same house. Once you're in this family you can't leave, even the house.
What TV Show Is This?
The Trouble With Tribbles, The City On The Edge Of Forever, Klingons, and Khan Noonien Singh. It all started right here. Gene Roddenberry had a vision of the future that included iPads, iPhones, racial and gender equality, and traversing the cosmos in search of new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before. Fun fact - the show was a favorite of Dr. Martin Luther King’s and he had convinced Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show.
What TV Show Is This?
Before Fox hit a winning formula with 90210, they had a moderately successful teen-cop drama. tarring Johnny Depp and Holly Robinson, they were both part of a squad of incredibly good looking and young looking police officers. They looked so young that they were able to go undercover in high schools and colleges. They'd tackle topics like from drug trafficking, and plenty of issues teenagers of the day faced. Some kids today still love Johnny Depp. Despite his own misgivings about being a teen idol, this was the show that launched him into stardom.
What TV Show Is This?
The Tanners of Full House weren't the only Tanners on TV. Gordon Shumway was a far away traveller with a penchant for eating cats (his planet’s equivalent to cows). After leaving his home world of Melmac crash lands on our planet and is taken in by the Tanners, led by social worker patriarch, Willie. The pitch for this show must have been what if ET could talk and he was cracking wise all of the time. Gordon is taken in by the Tanners, and he even grows to love the family cat.
What TV Show Is This?
It was once heralded as the greatest show on television. HBO broke the mold when they debuted an entire series about the Mafia. For fans of Goodfellas, Casino, and The Godfather films, this show had all kinds of great call backs to those films and created some of its own. Behind the scenes of the mob, we got to see the trials and tribulations of the don and cappos that run “this thing of ours.” People might want to get hung up on how it ended, but for while it was on, there was nothing on TV that united couch potatoes more.
What TV Show Is This?
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip. That started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailin’ man. The Skipper brave and sure. Five passengers set sail that day for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour. It's one of the popular theme songs in all of television and one of the first TV smash hits, watching our favorite castaways long before shows like Survivor and Lost turned the plight of shipwrecked castaways into a drama or a reality show.
What TV Show Is This?
Before there were 80 bajillion channels of new content to choose from, the familiar theme of “Rock Around The Clock,” would ring out throughout the house. The show perpetrated the fact that if you bang a dismantled item hard enough and you're as cool as The Fonz it would magically start working for you. Conversely, this is the series that term “Jumped The Shark” comes from and the show's writers thought it would be a good idea for Fonzie to go surfing and literally do the deed.
What TV Show Is This?
It was the first ever animated prime time sitcom. While the stories were mostly lifted from the Honeymooners, they also had their own flair as well. All to show us that life in the Stone Age wasn't much different than our own. All of their technology just ran on Dinosaur fuel. Except for the cars, which Fred drove with his feet! The show ran into syndication well into the early days of the Cartoon Network and still on some channels to this day. Some folks will even remember taking true vitamins based off of this series.
What TV Show Is This?
Altruistic engineer Ted Lawson designed a Voice Input Child Indenticant to help children who are handicapped. He took Vicki home, so she could learn how to interact in a family environment. The Lawsons pass her off as an adopted family member. Instead of being the typical sitcom family, some storylines also included trying to keep Vicki hidden. But it’s hard to hide and emotionless ten-year-old looking robot with super strength. It was only four seasons, but the Eighties–AF storylines also made it one of the most memorable of the decade.
What TV Show Is This?
Neil Patrick Harris’ career rejuvenation as a lecherous version of himself in Harold And Kumar and wild man Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother are both hysterical. They're even funnier if you realize they're both rooted in the fact that as a boy, NPH played a super-genius kid who became a doctor by the age of fourteen. Yes, he was able to perform surgeries and prescribe drugs all before he could drink or drive. He had his best friend Vinnie to help keep him grounded and his diary which became and iconic symbol of the series.
What TV Show Is This?
Larry Appleton just moved into his first apartment. Instead of enjoying privacy, his distant cousin from Mypos, Balki arrives to stay with him. Living on the near secluded Mediterranean means that Balki had little to no knowledge of pop culture. He first thought America was the home of the free and the land of the whopper. While Larry is slightly against the whole ordeal at first, family is family and Cousin Larry eventually grows quite fond of Balki. Let's all do the dance of joy!
What TV Show Is This?
For many of our parents (and even some grandparents at this point), 1968-1973 was a time of nostalgic social change for the entire world, much less America. For fans of this show, hearing Joe Cocker’s rendition of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends,” brings anyone right back to not only their own youth, but this show and Kevin Arnold. Played by Fred Savage, Kevin went through all the trials and tribulations of growing up, all with his best friend, Paul and his first crush, Winnie Cooper.
What TV Show Is This?
Throughout all of these other science fiction shows that have come out over the years, there all still clamoring for the number two spot. Most of us certainly weren't even alive when the show was airing originally, much less our parents even. But we all know about “traveling to another dimension.” The anthology seriesconstantly has a marathon playing every just about every holiday on the SyFy channel. Rod Serling was a master of suspense and still manages to show that every single episode nearly sixty years later.
What TV Show Is This?
You take the good, you take the bad. You take the beloved Mrs. Garrett from Diff’rent Strokes and you spin her off into her own show. Here, she was the live-in den mother to a group of girls at the Eastland School For Girls in upstate New York. Housekeepers on sit- coms always were turned into jacks/jills of all trades and Mrs. G was no different. By the second season, she was also the girls’ dietician. Pay close attention and you’ll catch a young George Clooney and the eighties it-girl, Molly Ringwald on the show.
What TV Show Is This?
The climate of today's day and age seems like everyone on either side of the aisle have lost their minds. Try being a world leader on TV. Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen), a Congressman and Governor from New Hampshire unexpectedly won the Democratic primary and took that moment straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This series focused on the day to day life of a World Leader and his staff. Besides bringing this sort of arena to prime time, the show became known for how they shot its dialogue with walk and talks.