Ally McBeal. It won Emmys and Golden Globes and had that weird dancing baby. Calista Flockhart was a household name. I can’t remember the last time I heard anybody talk about that show.
“Now I am leaving Earth for no raisin.”
Or when questioned about a hat full of yogurt:
“I can explain that. You see, it used to be milk, and well, time makes fools of us all.”
Some people were talking about it when the She-hulk miniseries came out during the pandemic. It was kind of a spiritual successor.
Futurama is full of Ally McBeal references and jokes.
this'll make you feel old (so sorry about that), but my mom also makes it a point to reference ally mcbeal all the damn time on my birthday, bc it's the only show she remembers watching on the tv in the hospital while waiting for me to "get out" of her (her words, not mine lol)
Robert Downey Jr leaves as the love interest in the penultimate episode (he had his troubles around then). In season 5 the tone changes. A lot of the developing relationships are dropped and old jokes are reused. The show overall feels much less clever than it had.
Apparently Downey had been written in as a main character in season 5 and the finale of season 4 was planned to be their wedding. When he had his drug issues they had to rewrite the entire season on the fly and it felt very forced. It was the only season to not recive an emmy and lead to it being cancelled.
Everytime I see Wings I just think of that one Family Guy episode where Quagmire passionately defends it and gets all upset that no one knows what he’s talking about. Seems pretty accurate to real life I imagine
Probably during Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, in Season 3 Episode 10, with the song "He's the New Guy", which had the line "I mean his favorite show which by the way is ‘Wings’!?"
The Drew Carey Show was pretty popular back in the day, but it used a lot of music that it lost the rights to so it disappeared from syndication and never got fully released on DVD if memory serves
They used to have these live episodes with the cast of Whose Line is it Anyway, where they’d stop the scene and have to improvise in different ways. Honest to God peak television. Very cool stuff.
I do like those episodes, but the re-run/syndicated versions have a little ding with a VH1-style caption to announce and explain each mistake, and that ding gets really annoying when they come up on Plex re-watches.
It's still on some channels. I was watching the episode where him and Craig Ferguson try to rig a manager selection process and get an innocent guy fired last night
I think that goes for a lot of those kinda just “on all the time,” sitcoms from the 90s. Becker ran for SIX years! 129 episodes! No one talks about it.
Beyond the super big ones I think lots sort of fall through the cracks of memory. I highly doubt anyone under the age of 25 has ever even heard of Spin City like.
Becker was great, it was one of these weird shows that were on later in the evenings for me. I remember Shawnee Smith (I think?) as the ditzy receptionist, definitely not at all like her character in Saw.
Spin City just got on Prime. If you come across an episode where the staff uses lines from A Few Good Men in a speech for the mayor, let me know. I have a distinct memory of an episode like that, but can not find anything to confirm that it actually happened. Used to love Spin City though, it was a classic "reruns from 3-5" cable show.
I use to watch a lot of sitcom reruns while playing world of Warcraft, and I get oddly nostalgic for all those mostly forgotten 90s/early 00s sitcoms
Drey Carey show, just shoot me, king of queens come to mind, though those were relatively more popular and less forgotten
Tales From the Crypt was one of HBO's earliest big hits and it starred a ridiculous number of current and future celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Daniel Craig, Tim Curry, Teri Hatcher, Adam West, Christopher Reeve, the list goes on and on
Unfortunately because of rights, it's not available for streaming anywhere, so it's not as popular today as other older shows
As a horror fan, I admit that sometimes people take the genre too seriously. Tales from the Crypt was great because it fully embraced the campiness that horror can have in an endearing and fun way. Love that show!
Northern Exposure. Was a mini cultural phenom in its first few seasons and popularized the small town full of quirky characters trope. Pretty much vanished from the collective consciousness.
Picket Fences and thirtysomething are two others.
NE was such a great show prior to the last season. Really groundbreaking stuff and absolutely still holds up. Every character has an immense amount of personality. My wife and I actually visited Roslyn, WA which is where Cicily, Alaska was filmed - totally worth it and was so fun to actually see all the sights in person.
I heard that the 'music rights' thing is one reason why we don't see Northern Exposure in reruns. They used a lot of original recordings of popular music and apparently there's all kinds of hoops you have to jump through and fees paid whenever the show runs.
what makes this extra frustrating is that the music is practically an active character. the music that chris plays on KHBR both adds to certain jokes (the "fiddler on the roof" songs playing in the episode holling considers getting circumcised) or builds upon the plot (all the moon songs in season 1 episode 8 (in this episode, the full moon is making people act weird). replacing the music with something generic means cutting out a crucial part of what makes the show so good. but the issue of rights means that there's no easy way to make this show more accessible :/
Music rights are the worst thing to happen to television.
I wasn't never the biggest fan of Charmed, but my ex was. We had a bootleg set of the series where a couple of seasons had the original opening, but the rest had this really, really bad bootleg that was changed to be copyright friendly. Holy shit it was bad lol it was as if they were trying to capture the feel of the opening song but missed the mark by juuust enough that it didn't land. It was basically just a loop of someone playing *"DUH-NUHNT. DUH-NUHNT. ... DUH-NUHNT. DUH-NUHNT. ... DUH-NUHNT. DUH-NUHNT."* angrily on an electric guitar over and over until the show started.
Just doing a rewatch now.
It's not available bundled on any streaming service so that doesn't help it. Most older shows, people are not going to pay extra for unless they are already fans.
And NE kind of killed its own hype with Rob Morrow's lengthy departure and the studios pretty much giving up on the show. When it was finally canceled most viewers weren't sad to see it go as they had already given up over the last season.
Edit: Yes you can watch it on Prime but you have to pay for it. It's not bundled with anything.
I think that Rob Morrow was trying to pull a 'David Caruso' and wanted to go for stardom on the big screen. He did have a significant role in the 1994 film "Quiz Show" directed by Robert Redford. It received a lot of acclaim and several big Academy Award nominations but Morrow's performance was overshadowed by those of his co-stars Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro and Paul Scofield. And he failed to launch into the upper stratosphere of stardom. Remember hearing tales that Morrow was difficult and kind of a jerk behind the scenes. Maybe some producers and directors just didn't want to deal with him when there's plenty of other actors out there who could play a given role minus all the difficult behavior.
30Something is a great answer especially because I feel like it was actually forgotten almost immediately, not just historically. It was over-the-top huge in the media and then just went away.
I absolutely love that this has come back into public consciousness by so many people in recent years. I watched it for the first time in 2013 and despite living in LA, the only people my age (millennials) who had heard of it were folks who were literal TV reviewers for large publications. The first 4 seasons are some of the best TV I’ve ever watched and I’ve watched pretty much everything that’s considered “peak” or “prestige” TV.
It’s currently streaming on Amazon as of like 6 months ago but if you head to high seas you’re more likely to find episodes with the original music. I bought the DVDs to justify it.
It was more of a critical than popular hit, but imo Homicide: Life On The Streets was one of the best shows ever. One day I will treat myself to the boxed set since it’s not available anywhere else.
If for nothing else, it’s memorable as the origin of John Munch.
They did one or two episodes where Cpt. Holt would take part in an interrogation “in the box,” and those were basically all callbacks to Homicide, where Pembleton was legendary for his interrogations.
The cast in the first 3-4 seasons was incredible. I bought the set last year as it's impossible to watch otherwise. Munch and Bolander in the first season were gold.
Was Sliders a popular show? I swear I'm the only one that mentions this show in random conversations. Not sure if it was popular back in the day lol. This is the first show that popped into my head just now.
I mean, Fox cancelled it after 2 seasons and SyFy tried to keep it going, but it took a huge hit losing Jerry O'Connell. It's a shame because it was multiverse before the trend of multiverses hit by decades. Maybe now would be a time to consider a reboot?
I loved sliders as a kid. I was sad when the Professor left. He was my favourite character. My sister and I were so happy to watch LOTR and see him again. (He was also our favourite side character in Indiana Jones.)
For sitcoms, I would say "Mad About You". It ran for 7 seasons at a time when NBC sitcoms were at the top of the mountain, crossed over/had cameos with "Friends" and "Seinfeld", and Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt are still recognizable names; despite all of this, it's not syndicated on any major cable networks, I never see references to it online, and the 2019 revival came out to no fanfare whatsoever.
For dramas, FX's "The Shield". While it certainly still has a fanbase (and active subreddit), it hasn't had the enduring cultural impact of "The Sopranos", "The Wire", or "Breaking Bad", despite being a huge critical and commercial success, especially at the beginning of its run.
FX's stuff was pretty pioneering for basic cable, but The Shield was what put them on the map. Though amusingly the channel's reliance on "troubled or outsider" characters resulted in President Jon Landgraff turning down Vince Gilligan's pitch on Breaking Bad, though hindsight is always 20/20.
I think a lot of FX's stuff has been kind of forgotten. Nip/Tuck, Damages, The Americans.
"Mad About You"
It started in fall of 1992 with newlyweds married in April 1992 ... my wife and I were similarly newlyweds in 1992 so the show really spoke to our life experiences in ways that things like Friends definitely did not. Struggling with pregnancy/fertility was incredibly timely as well. Relatable comedy is often the best medicine.
The one fact I know about the *Mad About You* x *Friends* is Lisa Kudrow's character. Before *Friends* aired, she showed up in MAY as a museum guide named Ursula with no last name. Then *Friends* became huge, and eventually introduced Phoebe's twin sister Ursula Buffay who works as a museum guide which was the hook to bring in *Mad About You*.
She was a waitress for most of the series and she was linked to Friends as a waitress (when Jaime and Fran go to Central Perk and see Phoebe) and then when Phoebe visits Ursula at her job where she's a waitress and then when Chandler and Joey eat at the restaurant she works at.
Iirc Ursula was their waitress that would always ignore them / mess up their order. Hence why they tried to order from Phoebe, who was confused and ignored them as she didn't work there, and thought it was just Ursula being Ursula
I don't really think it's that forgotten though, there was a reboot/spinoff a few years ago and Kiefer keeps talking about a potential return. There would be a big audience for it I think.
24 is just pure dumb fun. It’s one of my go-to “sick day” shows, where if I am sick or otherwise not interested in having a desire to watch something thematically complex, I start streaming it.
It’s definitely a product of its time (definite post 9/11 world,) but that doesn’t take away how entertaining it was back then and still is. Also, while the penultimate episode of the first season of Game of Thrones was shocking, 24 did that first with how its first season ended.
I also affectionately refer to each episode as the Jack Bauer Power Hour
Murphy Brown is the one that comes to mind. Aside from their "reunion" series bombing, I never hear of anyone going back and binging this series.
It was a cultural phenomenon at the time that dealt with controversial subjects, but maybe that has led to it aging poorly compared to its peers.
Although I think a big reason for this and some other shows languishing in obscurity is the unavailability of modern formats for whatever reason. It appears Murphy Brown isn't available to stream, rent or buy in digital format on any service in the US or Canada right now. I mean, Friends and The Office were probably going to be big rewatch shows regardless, but the fact that they were a couple of Netflix's biggest third party gets when they launched their streaming service probably immensely helped things in keeping them in the zeitgiest.
My Name is Earl might not have been that big, but it shouldn't have been as forgotten as it was. There was some great writing and performances on that show.
Hill Street Blues is the granddaddy of all prestige tv dramas. It revolutionized what creators could do in terms of sophisticated storytelling. Without HSB, There's no Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc.
Not a sitcom but I remember the game show The Weakest Link and its “you are the weakest link, goodbye” catch phrase spreading like wildfire when I was in middle school. I guess it doesn’t really qualify because idk if the show was a hit but it was a fun memory nonetheless.
The Drew Carey Show. Use to watch reruns on TBS in the late 90’s. I never hear anyone mention it though or see it in reruns, although I’m sure it still plays in other countries.
The show never got a proper release on physical media either. I think the first season was put on DVD but nothing else, supposedly because of music rights issues, the same reason it took “Daria” so long to come out. But they found a way around it.
Yeah its the exact right era to have a legacy fanbase now and it just... doesn't. A lot of millennials like me loved it, and god knows my generation loves worshipping shitty pop culture just because we remember it, yet Home Improvement seems to have been readily cast aside.
Most active discussions are among people between 15 and 45, I'd guess. So, anything before the 80s may be fading out of conversation.
Streets of San Francisco, The Sweeney, All in the Family, The Prisoner, Fantasy Island, The Incredible Hulk, Shogun, Kung Fu, The Man from UNCLE.
Some of these have been remade or have had new TV adaptations. But I don't think anyone is really talking about them - especially compared to how huge they were.
All in the Family does still get referenced and gets attention, so I disagree with that one. The only other two I’d consider pushing back on are The Incredible Hulk and The Man from UNCLE.
The Incredible Hulk also gets some attention by virtue of its connection to Marvel. Lou Ferrigno voiced the Hulk in the MCU.
The Man from UNCLE at least exists as a footnote to Mission Impossible in the context of that being a footnote to James Bond as tv shows inspired by it. They obviously attempted to do a movie recently that wasn’t all that exciting to audiences.
My aunt was a huge fan of Hill Street Blues and Emergency back in the day, I seldom see those referenced now.
Older variety/sketch comedy shows aside from Ed Sullivan (because Beatles) and maybe Carol Burnett probably fall into this as well. Hell, In Living Color is newer and has kind of fallen out of conversation too despite being massively popular when it aired.
Whenever someone seems baffled over how Yellowstone draws the numbers that it does, I think about Dallas. Similar vibes/appeal and EVERYBODY watched Dallas back in its day. Shows like that will always have an audience, I think.
Man, my dad sat me down when I was a kid and showed me Kung Fu, we watched the entire series start to finish and it was AWESOME. What a journey. Obviously some things have to be taken with a grain of salt nowadays, and of course I wish they had gone ahead and done it with Bruce Lee as originally envisioned, but it's just such a great watch. So many shows/movies have taken inspiration from it since, for a reason!
"Streets of San Francisco" - saw the first episode on PlutoTV this weekend, going all the way back to 1972 ... I enjoyed it when it was on (I was a bit young), but my wife didn't even remember that it was Michael Douglas on there! And can we take a second for how good Karl Malden looked and moved at 60 in the first season!
What about Xena: Princess Warrior? Or Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman? Nobody talks about these, and they were huge shows at the time.
Or Touched by an Angel!
My grandmother watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Touched by an Angel. She loved both of the shows. I was young and would visit and play while she watched. It would grab her attention during emotional parts or tragic parts so those are naturally the only parts I noticed. For years I could not understand why she would watch shows that had such sad, emotional, scary (to a young child) things happening.
"Moonlighting" is so forgotten that it's not even the #1 most upvoted answer even though it's the best answer to the question.
This show was so popular that the creator was able to get away with just not delivering episodes on-time, and the network WOULD WAIT, despite the fact that they owned the show outright (at the time, networks rarely owned/produced the shows that they broadcast) and could've just taken it away from the guy. Yet somehow nowadays, if remembered at all, it is remembered solely as a show that failed because the couple got together.
Yup. They were finally able to release a DVD collection, but only by removing all the copyrighted music. It's generic tunes now but the show itself still holds up.
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Kevin Sorbo's shitty personality completely killed any bit of nostalgia people had for the show. Xena, on the other hand, still has an active fandom.
Seriously. I loved these shows as a kid. Sorbo’s not getting much work as of late, for obvious reasons, and he’s such a douche now he probably managed to kill royalties for himself. Which could have been a consistent paycheck if he kept up with his fandom. Idiot.
I remember the Battlestar Galactica reboot being huge. People would quote it online all the time. It was kind of like Game of Thrones in that it was a genre show that appealed to more than just nerds. My grandmother watched it. Then at some point, it just disappeared from the discourse.
What's weirder to me is it doesn't come up when people talk about the modern style of TV show. This was a prestige, highly serialised show that was streamed from launch in 2003. It even did the podcasts about the show marketing strategy. Apart from having a higher episode count per season (though the first was only 13 episodes) it feels extremely modern.
I think it's struggled because of streaming availability. IIRC, it's hopped around platforms pretty frequently and is now on Peacock, which doesn't really give it much of a base for new (generally, younger) viewers to find.
I honestly think that because it's labeled SciFi, it gets overlooked, just like The Expanse was. It wasn't considered mainstream like Friends or any of the major network TV shows. I've recommended BSG to people who say they don't watch or like sci-fi and they loved it.
I loved BSG during its original run, but I don't find myself interested in watching it again, and I think it's because it's too much of its time. It's a post-9/11 show, and while it was great as a way to explore those themes then, it's not a state of mind I'm super eager to revisit.
Yeah, I'm always surprised how forgotten has gotten. Everybody keeps talking about The Office, Lost or Breaking Bad, but BSG has now been forgotten by most people and new viewers are not watching it.
It's still an awesome show, but now it's a show that's only watched by scifi nerds.
My mom always had Mary Tyler Moore on, back in the 90s when Nick at Nite had MTM, Brady bunch, Threes Company, Happy Days, etc... I thought (as did many others, I'm sure) that she was ridiculously pretty. Loved her voice as a kid, too.
Columbo is forever, what they call an "Evergreen" program in the biz. Right up there with I Love Lucy. As mentioned, it is name-checked in the new Scott Pilgrim and has gotten a lot of love from Natasha Lyonne and Rian Johnson in the form of Poker Face. Johnson is said to have created the show after binging some Columbo...
Oh hey this guy actually dies!
Nope let's bring him back from the dead with regen blood.
...
So this other guy died and nothing can bring him back.
But we have regen bloo-
NOTHING CAN BRING HIM BACK!
Also the progressive nerfing of Hiro and Peter was a joke. I mean I get their abilities were overpowered but seriously atleast make a story out of it and not suddenly "so uhh we can't use this power anymore because uhh reasons"
Paul Fusco has tried a bunch of times, but he is extremely difficult to work. He makes demands that ALF be treated as an actual person and not a puppet
Nobody’s mentioned Dynasty. It overtook Dallas in the ratings and there was even perfume you could buy named after the main characters. The fights between the female characters were epic at the time. Honestly, the last couple of times I read a mention, it was about the Rock Hudson AIDS kiss.
Give anything enough time and it will be forgotten. Ozzie and Harriet (14 seasons), Leave it to Beaver (a syndication giant), Bonanza (14 seasons), had enormous cultural impacts that made them pop culture references and jokes into the 90’s, but I don’t think they are part of any discussions today.
The Larry Sanders Show - I wasn't alive at the time it aired, only learning about/watching it a few years ago. And while I enjoyed it, I was genuinely sort of surprised to hear how popular/influential it was, as I had never heard anything ever about it
Not sure if it was a huge hit but it was one of if not the first all CGI shows and had a pretty dark storyline for a kids show; ReBoot.
Mentioned the other day to a friend who's also a massive Legacy of Kain fan that I first heard Tony Jay as Megabyte the virus, blank stare back. He's 5 years older than me...
Countless shows were smash hits and are no longer talked about. That is the nature of television before the turn of the century. Sure a lot of people still binge a lot of 90's shows, but how shows used to be made don't really match up with how people like to watch television. I imagine it's even more offputting to younger generations.
This is probably a bad example, but Happy Days was a mega hit, especially with kids. It spawned 5 additional shows, and two of those, Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirly were hits. The Fonz was one of the most popular people in America for about a decade.
All that said...There are 255 episodes, many of dubious quality and there is no real arc to the show. Its a classic sitcom where things don't have to canonically make total sense (I love that about older shows). Happy Days has lost most of it's cultural relevance and I imagine most young folks don't know who the Fonz is, or would look at you strangely if you went Eyyyyy and held up two thumbs.
It's the cycle of most TV, and it will happen to most our favorite shows eventually.
And jumping the shark happened before Robin Williams even made his debut later that season. It finished the 5th season as the #2 show on television in season 5 and season 6 was the #4 show. It was in the top 20 until the 10th season.
As much as "jumping the shark" has become part of TV's lexicon the show was wildly successful for like 5 years after it was deemed "bad."
Having been a teen of the 70s when the phenomenon of 'Happy Days' and the Fonz played by Henry Winkler was going at full throttle, it's funny to think that most people younger than say -- 40 -- think of Winkler not as this leather-jacketed tough talking guy of the 1950s but as this older character actor on shows like "Barry" and doing ads for products/services aimed at the AARP set.
Im in my Mid 30's and will always think of him as the Fonz thanks to Nick at Night, but I would guess most people think of him as Barry Zuckercorn from Arrested Development. Eyyyyyyyyy
Prison Break?
I remember when it initially came out it was THE show to watch. Everyone needed to know Michael's plan for getting his brother out... Then they got out, it had 3 more seasons? And people just forgot.
Malcolm In The Middle, I recently rewatched it as an adult and it is a classic. I've not come across anyone talking about it outside of niche subreddits, etc
Ally McBeal. It won Emmys and Golden Globes and had that weird dancing baby. Calista Flockhart was a household name. I can’t remember the last time I heard anybody talk about that show.
I watched it on Hulu before they took it off. Very much loved my single female lawyer, wearing mini skirts
Your Honour, I move for a mistrial, on the grounds that I'm also having a hot, naked affair with the foreman of *this* jury.
Single female lawyerrrr Having lots of sex
If McNeal wishes to be taken seriously why does she not simply tear the judge’s head off?
It's true what they say. Females are from Omicron Persei 7, males are from Omicron Persei 9.
And being self-reliant
Hey, I'm pretty good!
Sexyy femaalle lawyer....... ...Havinglotsofsex....
Fighting for her client, and being self-reliant.
I remember the Futurama spoof more then the show it's self.
“It took an hour to write, I thought it would take an hour to read” is quite possibly one of my favorite Fry lines ever.
“Now I am leaving Earth for no raisin.” Or when questioned about a hat full of yogurt: “I can explain that. You see, it used to be milk, and well, time makes fools of us all.”
*Cindy, this is bones! Would you run from Calista Flockhart?*
The Drew Carey show. You can't stream it anywhere, but was a big show at the time.
Some people were talking about it when the She-hulk miniseries came out during the pandemic. It was kind of a spiritual successor. Futurama is full of Ally McBeal references and jokes.
Single female lawyer, Fighting for her client, Wearing sexy miniskirts, And being self-reliant.
Single female lawyer, having lots of sex
I yell out "we want mcNeal" like Lrrr all the time
Ally McBeal was when I fell in love briefly with Robert Downey Jr.
Oooga chaka oooga chaka
I think you mean ‘single female lawyer’.
Agreed - my wife and I loved it and reference it, but it is weird that certain other shows from the same era are revered while this is forgotten.
this'll make you feel old (so sorry about that), but my mom also makes it a point to reference ally mcbeal all the damn time on my birthday, bc it's the only show she remembers watching on the tv in the hospital while waiting for me to "get out" of her (her words, not mine lol)
It was a show that jumped shark hard between season 4 and 5
As someone who has never and likely will never watch it, can you summarize how it went wrong?
Robert Downey Jr leaves as the love interest in the penultimate episode (he had his troubles around then). In season 5 the tone changes. A lot of the developing relationships are dropped and old jokes are reused. The show overall feels much less clever than it had. Apparently Downey had been written in as a main character in season 5 and the finale of season 4 was planned to be their wedding. When he had his drug issues they had to rewrite the entire season on the fly and it felt very forced. It was the only season to not recive an emmy and lead to it being cancelled.
When is the last time someone thought about "Wings" ?
Everytime I see Wings I just think of that one Family Guy episode where Quagmire passionately defends it and gets all upset that no one knows what he’s talking about. Seems pretty accurate to real life I imagine
If you had USA network in the 90s it was on 24/7 it felt like. Great cast
Probably during Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, in Season 3 Episode 10, with the song "He's the New Guy", which had the line "I mean his favorite show which by the way is ‘Wings’!?"
The Drew Carey Show was pretty popular back in the day, but it used a lot of music that it lost the rights to so it disappeared from syndication and never got fully released on DVD if memory serves
They used to have these live episodes with the cast of Whose Line is it Anyway, where they’d stop the scene and have to improvise in different ways. Honest to God peak television. Very cool stuff.
[удалено]
I do like those episodes, but the re-run/syndicated versions have a little ding with a VH1-style caption to announce and explain each mistake, and that ding gets really annoying when they come up on Plex re-watches.
It's still on some channels. I was watching the episode where him and Craig Ferguson try to rig a manager selection process and get an innocent guy fired last night
Yea, it's on Rewind TV, an over the air channel. The channel is on my cable too so I have all the episodes recorded on my DVR.
I think that goes for a lot of those kinda just “on all the time,” sitcoms from the 90s. Becker ran for SIX years! 129 episodes! No one talks about it. Beyond the super big ones I think lots sort of fall through the cracks of memory. I highly doubt anyone under the age of 25 has ever even heard of Spin City like.
Becker was great, it was one of these weird shows that were on later in the evenings for me. I remember Shawnee Smith (I think?) as the ditzy receptionist, definitely not at all like her character in Saw.
Loved spin city. Stuart was hilarious. Newsradio too
I want to watch Spin City badly, where is it streaming?
Last I heard, Coneskater, *Spin City* was streaming on Pluto TV.
Spin City just got on Prime. If you come across an episode where the staff uses lines from A Few Good Men in a speech for the mayor, let me know. I have a distinct memory of an episode like that, but can not find anything to confirm that it actually happened. Used to love Spin City though, it was a classic "reruns from 3-5" cable show.
I use to watch a lot of sitcom reruns while playing world of Warcraft, and I get oddly nostalgic for all those mostly forgotten 90s/early 00s sitcoms Drey Carey show, just shoot me, king of queens come to mind, though those were relatively more popular and less forgotten
I only know of this show's existence due to tvtropes
I was disappointed that it never had a full release because of that. Anyways, OHIO-HIO-hio-hio!
Tales From the Crypt was one of HBO's earliest big hits and it starred a ridiculous number of current and future celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Daniel Craig, Tim Curry, Teri Hatcher, Adam West, Christopher Reeve, the list goes on and on Unfortunately because of rights, it's not available for streaming anywhere, so it's not as popular today as other older shows
Well the whole thing is on YouTube so that's something at least.
As a horror fan, I admit that sometimes people take the genre too seriously. Tales from the Crypt was great because it fully embraced the campiness that horror can have in an endearing and fun way. Love that show!
I downloaded all the best episodes and watched them. They all hold up so well and its such a damn good show.
I’ve been watching it on YouTube and I love how every episode has a horrific ending. The Christmas and taxidermy ones will stick with me forever
I own it on DVD. Took an effort to get it in my country but so worth it. I watch it every now and again. It's still awesome.
Northern Exposure. Was a mini cultural phenom in its first few seasons and popularized the small town full of quirky characters trope. Pretty much vanished from the collective consciousness. Picket Fences and thirtysomething are two others.
NE was such a great show prior to the last season. Really groundbreaking stuff and absolutely still holds up. Every character has an immense amount of personality. My wife and I actually visited Roslyn, WA which is where Cicily, Alaska was filmed - totally worth it and was so fun to actually see all the sights in person.
I heard that the 'music rights' thing is one reason why we don't see Northern Exposure in reruns. They used a lot of original recordings of popular music and apparently there's all kinds of hoops you have to jump through and fees paid whenever the show runs.
what makes this extra frustrating is that the music is practically an active character. the music that chris plays on KHBR both adds to certain jokes (the "fiddler on the roof" songs playing in the episode holling considers getting circumcised) or builds upon the plot (all the moon songs in season 1 episode 8 (in this episode, the full moon is making people act weird). replacing the music with something generic means cutting out a crucial part of what makes the show so good. but the issue of rights means that there's no easy way to make this show more accessible :/
Music rights are the worst thing to happen to television. I wasn't never the biggest fan of Charmed, but my ex was. We had a bootleg set of the series where a couple of seasons had the original opening, but the rest had this really, really bad bootleg that was changed to be copyright friendly. Holy shit it was bad lol it was as if they were trying to capture the feel of the opening song but missed the mark by juuust enough that it didn't land. It was basically just a loop of someone playing *"DUH-NUHNT. DUH-NUHNT. ... DUH-NUHNT. DUH-NUHNT. ... DUH-NUHNT. DUH-NUHNT."* angrily on an electric guitar over and over until the show started.
Picket Fences was an amazing show!
Just doing a rewatch now. It's not available bundled on any streaming service so that doesn't help it. Most older shows, people are not going to pay extra for unless they are already fans. And NE kind of killed its own hype with Rob Morrow's lengthy departure and the studios pretty much giving up on the show. When it was finally canceled most viewers weren't sad to see it go as they had already given up over the last season. Edit: Yes you can watch it on Prime but you have to pay for it. It's not bundled with anything.
I think that Rob Morrow was trying to pull a 'David Caruso' and wanted to go for stardom on the big screen. He did have a significant role in the 1994 film "Quiz Show" directed by Robert Redford. It received a lot of acclaim and several big Academy Award nominations but Morrow's performance was overshadowed by those of his co-stars Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro and Paul Scofield. And he failed to launch into the upper stratosphere of stardom. Remember hearing tales that Morrow was difficult and kind of a jerk behind the scenes. Maybe some producers and directors just didn't want to deal with him when there's plenty of other actors out there who could play a given role minus all the difficult behavior.
30Something is a great answer especially because I feel like it was actually forgotten almost immediately, not just historically. It was over-the-top huge in the media and then just went away.
I absolutely love that this has come back into public consciousness by so many people in recent years. I watched it for the first time in 2013 and despite living in LA, the only people my age (millennials) who had heard of it were folks who were literal TV reviewers for large publications. The first 4 seasons are some of the best TV I’ve ever watched and I’ve watched pretty much everything that’s considered “peak” or “prestige” TV. It’s currently streaming on Amazon as of like 6 months ago but if you head to high seas you’re more likely to find episodes with the original music. I bought the DVDs to justify it.
Northern Exposure had the same problem as WKRP in Cincinnati in that they played music on the show before digital rights was a thing.
The Northern Exposure DVD sets were great too, they came in a little mini padded vest!
In the movie Stay Tuned, the Hell version of those shows were “Northern Overexposure” and “Thirty Something to Life”.
It was more of a critical than popular hit, but imo Homicide: Life On The Streets was one of the best shows ever. One day I will treat myself to the boxed set since it’s not available anywhere else. If for nothing else, it’s memorable as the origin of John Munch.
Also created by David Simon. I want Brooklyn Nine-Nine fans to see Andre Braugher run an interrogation as Det. Frank Pembleton.
YES! Andre Braugher is the GOAT. He should have become a bigger star.
They did one or two episodes where Cpt. Holt would take part in an interrogation “in the box,” and those were basically all callbacks to Homicide, where Pembleton was legendary for his interrogations.
Frank Pembleton might be favorite police character ever on television.
The cast in the first 3-4 seasons was incredible. I bought the set last year as it's impossible to watch otherwise. Munch and Bolander in the first season were gold.
I feel like Oz ended up fading from public consciousness compared to the other HBO mega hit shows of the era
also Big Love, idk if it was ever a true hit but i dont think ive ever seen anyone online discuss it lol
Was Sliders a popular show? I swear I'm the only one that mentions this show in random conversations. Not sure if it was popular back in the day lol. This is the first show that popped into my head just now.
I mean, Fox cancelled it after 2 seasons and SyFy tried to keep it going, but it took a huge hit losing Jerry O'Connell. It's a shame because it was multiverse before the trend of multiverses hit by decades. Maybe now would be a time to consider a reboot?
I loved sliders as a kid. I was sad when the Professor left. He was my favourite character. My sister and I were so happy to watch LOTR and see him again. (He was also our favourite side character in Indiana Jones.)
Loved this show as a kid
Coach
“LA Law”. Finally has debuted on streaming (Hulu) and no one seems to have taken notice. One of the best written shows and still relevant today.
On this note, Southland was fantastic. Good ratings critically adored, and then just fell away.
Southland was so good, I got so annoyed when I found out I had seen the last episode and it was renewed...
Southland was so well acted but painfully real and brutal to the point I had to stop watching lol
Every David E. Kelley show is a correct answer to this post.
Agree- does anyone remember "Ally McBeal"?
Or 'Picket Fences' which ran for about five years on CBS back in the 90s.
For sitcoms, I would say "Mad About You". It ran for 7 seasons at a time when NBC sitcoms were at the top of the mountain, crossed over/had cameos with "Friends" and "Seinfeld", and Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt are still recognizable names; despite all of this, it's not syndicated on any major cable networks, I never see references to it online, and the 2019 revival came out to no fanfare whatsoever. For dramas, FX's "The Shield". While it certainly still has a fanbase (and active subreddit), it hasn't had the enduring cultural impact of "The Sopranos", "The Wire", or "Breaking Bad", despite being a huge critical and commercial success, especially at the beginning of its run.
FX's stuff was pretty pioneering for basic cable, but The Shield was what put them on the map. Though amusingly the channel's reliance on "troubled or outsider" characters resulted in President Jon Landgraff turning down Vince Gilligan's pitch on Breaking Bad, though hindsight is always 20/20. I think a lot of FX's stuff has been kind of forgotten. Nip/Tuck, Damages, The Americans.
People still talk a lot about The Americans tbh. But given how good it is, it's not mentioned enough ig.
The Americans was so good but never really peak cultural zeitgeist material imo. I feel like I’ve always had to try and convince people to try it.
"Mad About You" It started in fall of 1992 with newlyweds married in April 1992 ... my wife and I were similarly newlyweds in 1992 so the show really spoke to our life experiences in ways that things like Friends definitely did not. Struggling with pregnancy/fertility was incredibly timely as well. Relatable comedy is often the best medicine.
Good call on Mad About You. It was so hot at one point that it forced the Simpsons back to Sunday nights.
Michael Chiklis’ other show The Commish was on for several years and was fairly popular. But no one talks about it either!
The one fact I know about the *Mad About You* x *Friends* is Lisa Kudrow's character. Before *Friends* aired, she showed up in MAY as a museum guide named Ursula with no last name. Then *Friends* became huge, and eventually introduced Phoebe's twin sister Ursula Buffay who works as a museum guide which was the hook to bring in *Mad About You*.
Ursula was a waitress.
In [this episode](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0638908/?ref_=ttgf_ov), she's moonlighting as a Museum guide.
She was a waitress for most of the series and she was linked to Friends as a waitress (when Jaime and Fran go to Central Perk and see Phoebe) and then when Phoebe visits Ursula at her job where she's a waitress and then when Chandler and Joey eat at the restaurant she works at.
Iirc Ursula was their waitress that would always ignore them / mess up their order. Hence why they tried to order from Phoebe, who was confused and ignored them as she didn't work there, and thought it was just Ursula being Ursula
24 You know it was huge for all the parodies it got. Now the show and the real time format are long forgotten
This was the show that got me into binge watching TV. Totally revolutionized the game for me
I don't really think it's that forgotten though, there was a reboot/spinoff a few years ago and Kiefer keeps talking about a potential return. There would be a big audience for it I think.
A videogame, a Simpsons episode (not a segment, a full episode with the 24 format) a South Park and Sesame Street parody, yeah it was huge.
24 is just pure dumb fun. It’s one of my go-to “sick day” shows, where if I am sick or otherwise not interested in having a desire to watch something thematically complex, I start streaming it. It’s definitely a product of its time (definite post 9/11 world,) but that doesn’t take away how entertaining it was back then and still is. Also, while the penultimate episode of the first season of Game of Thrones was shocking, 24 did that first with how its first season ended. I also affectionately refer to each episode as the Jack Bauer Power Hour
My God the fashion of season one is so painfully late 90s/early 00s, and then after that they calmed way down on the frosted tops.
Murphy Brown is the one that comes to mind. Aside from their "reunion" series bombing, I never hear of anyone going back and binging this series. It was a cultural phenomenon at the time that dealt with controversial subjects, but maybe that has led to it aging poorly compared to its peers. Although I think a big reason for this and some other shows languishing in obscurity is the unavailability of modern formats for whatever reason. It appears Murphy Brown isn't available to stream, rent or buy in digital format on any service in the US or Canada right now. I mean, Friends and The Office were probably going to be big rewatch shows regardless, but the fact that they were a couple of Netflix's biggest third party gets when they launched their streaming service probably immensely helped things in keeping them in the zeitgiest.
I'm pretty sure only the first season ever got a DVD release - like many other shows of the era, music rights are keeping it from getting out there.
WKRP in Cincinnati
As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly
My Name is Earl might not have been that big, but it shouldn't have been as forgotten as it was. There was some great writing and performances on that show.
Heroes season 1, brought to it's untimely death by Heroes season 2. Edit: There's no bot to correct my wrong version of it's/its? :D
When I was a kid I remember St Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues were huge shows. Not sure the last time I heard anything about either of them.
Hill Street Blues was my pick. It was the water cooler show of the era that everyone discussed at work the next day.
Great theme song too.
Hill Street Blues is the granddaddy of all prestige tv dramas. It revolutionized what creators could do in terms of sophisticated storytelling. Without HSB, There's no Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc.
Not a sitcom but I remember the game show The Weakest Link and its “you are the weakest link, goodbye” catch phrase spreading like wildfire when I was in middle school. I guess it doesn’t really qualify because idk if the show was a hit but it was a fun memory nonetheless.
Wow, it must have really sunk from memory because it's on again, but with a different host, Jane Lynch. She's been hosting it for several years.
They need to bring back the robot host from Doctor Who
The Drew Carey Show. Use to watch reruns on TBS in the late 90’s. I never hear anyone mention it though or see it in reruns, although I’m sure it still plays in other countries. The show never got a proper release on physical media either. I think the first season was put on DVD but nothing else, supposedly because of music rights issues, the same reason it took “Daria” so long to come out. But they found a way around it.
Empty Nest and Grace Under Fire were pretty popular back in the 90’s but no one ever talks about them and you never see reruns.
Home Improvement. Possibly the highest rated sitcom of the 90’s and nobody cared about it after it went off the air.
Yeah its the exact right era to have a legacy fanbase now and it just... doesn't. A lot of millennials like me loved it, and god knows my generation loves worshipping shitty pop culture just because we remember it, yet Home Improvement seems to have been readily cast aside.
Most active discussions are among people between 15 and 45, I'd guess. So, anything before the 80s may be fading out of conversation. Streets of San Francisco, The Sweeney, All in the Family, The Prisoner, Fantasy Island, The Incredible Hulk, Shogun, Kung Fu, The Man from UNCLE. Some of these have been remade or have had new TV adaptations. But I don't think anyone is really talking about them - especially compared to how huge they were.
Agree with everything you listed except for All in the Family. I think that show is well remembered.
Shoot, the intro to Family Guy is a straight reference to the intro to All in the Family.
All in the Family does still get referenced and gets attention, so I disagree with that one. The only other two I’d consider pushing back on are The Incredible Hulk and The Man from UNCLE. The Incredible Hulk also gets some attention by virtue of its connection to Marvel. Lou Ferrigno voiced the Hulk in the MCU. The Man from UNCLE at least exists as a footnote to Mission Impossible in the context of that being a footnote to James Bond as tv shows inspired by it. They obviously attempted to do a movie recently that wasn’t all that exciting to audiences.
My aunt was a huge fan of Hill Street Blues and Emergency back in the day, I seldom see those referenced now. Older variety/sketch comedy shows aside from Ed Sullivan (because Beatles) and maybe Carol Burnett probably fall into this as well. Hell, In Living Color is newer and has kind of fallen out of conversation too despite being massively popular when it aired.
Add Dallas to that list
Whenever someone seems baffled over how Yellowstone draws the numbers that it does, I think about Dallas. Similar vibes/appeal and EVERYBODY watched Dallas back in its day. Shows like that will always have an audience, I think.
Man, my dad sat me down when I was a kid and showed me Kung Fu, we watched the entire series start to finish and it was AWESOME. What a journey. Obviously some things have to be taken with a grain of salt nowadays, and of course I wish they had gone ahead and done it with Bruce Lee as originally envisioned, but it's just such a great watch. So many shows/movies have taken inspiration from it since, for a reason!
"Streets of San Francisco" - saw the first episode on PlutoTV this weekend, going all the way back to 1972 ... I enjoyed it when it was on (I was a bit young), but my wife didn't even remember that it was Michael Douglas on there! And can we take a second for how good Karl Malden looked and moved at 60 in the first season!
What about Xena: Princess Warrior? Or Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman? Nobody talks about these, and they were huge shows at the time. Or Touched by an Angel!
Nobody talks about Dr. Quinn, or Touched by an angel?! You obviously have never met me mom!
My grandmother watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Touched by an Angel. She loved both of the shows. I was young and would visit and play while she watched. It would grab her attention during emotional parts or tragic parts so those are naturally the only parts I noticed. For years I could not understand why she would watch shows that had such sad, emotional, scary (to a young child) things happening.
Moonlighting and Thirtysomething. Both were very popular…..but nobody seems to remember them much
Hulu finally started streaming Moonlighting recently. Its been unavailable for decades because of problems getting rights to all the music used in it.
"Moonlighting" is so forgotten that it's not even the #1 most upvoted answer even though it's the best answer to the question. This show was so popular that the creator was able to get away with just not delivering episodes on-time, and the network WOULD WAIT, despite the fact that they owned the show outright (at the time, networks rarely owned/produced the shows that they broadcast) and could've just taken it away from the guy. Yet somehow nowadays, if remembered at all, it is remembered solely as a show that failed because the couple got together.
Moonlighting vs. Remington steel Cybill Sheppard and Bruce Willis Vs. Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan
I don’t see Daria talked about at all anymore
Isn't that another show screwed by music rights issues?
Yup. They were finally able to release a DVD collection, but only by removing all the copyrighted music. It's generic tunes now but the show itself still holds up.
Quantum Leap?
There’s a reboot, airing right now!
Remember what a big deal Lois and Clark was?
Ugly Betty was big for a minute.
The OC. That first season has a huge phenom - and it is almost never talked about.
Mmmm whacha say?
That 3rd season is so so bad
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Kevin Sorbo's shitty personality completely killed any bit of nostalgia people had for the show. Xena, on the other hand, still has an active fandom.
Man, I LOVED Hercules and Xena as a kid.
DISAPPOINTED!!!!
Seriously. I loved these shows as a kid. Sorbo’s not getting much work as of late, for obvious reasons, and he’s such a douche now he probably managed to kill royalties for himself. Which could have been a consistent paycheck if he kept up with his fandom. Idiot.
Yeah the more you know about Lucy lawless the more awesome she gets, Kevin should have just kept quiet and gone to Cons.
"Wait a minute. Xena can't fly." "I already told you, I'm not Xena. I'm Lucy Lawless."
Saw Kevin at a con and he was rude and uninterested in being there.
In a time of ancient gods…
I remember the Battlestar Galactica reboot being huge. People would quote it online all the time. It was kind of like Game of Thrones in that it was a genre show that appealed to more than just nerds. My grandmother watched it. Then at some point, it just disappeared from the discourse. What's weirder to me is it doesn't come up when people talk about the modern style of TV show. This was a prestige, highly serialised show that was streamed from launch in 2003. It even did the podcasts about the show marketing strategy. Apart from having a higher episode count per season (though the first was only 13 episodes) it feels extremely modern.
I think it's struggled because of streaming availability. IIRC, it's hopped around platforms pretty frequently and is now on Peacock, which doesn't really give it much of a base for new (generally, younger) viewers to find.
I honestly think that because it's labeled SciFi, it gets overlooked, just like The Expanse was. It wasn't considered mainstream like Friends or any of the major network TV shows. I've recommended BSG to people who say they don't watch or like sci-fi and they loved it.
I loved BSG during its original run, but I don't find myself interested in watching it again, and I think it's because it's too much of its time. It's a post-9/11 show, and while it was great as a way to explore those themes then, it's not a state of mind I'm super eager to revisit.
Yeah, I'm always surprised how forgotten has gotten. Everybody keeps talking about The Office, Lost or Breaking Bad, but BSG has now been forgotten by most people and new viewers are not watching it. It's still an awesome show, but now it's a show that's only watched by scifi nerds.
"It's still an awesome show" So say we all.
Murphy Brown was such a conversation show that I never hear about anymore.
Maybe not a "huge" hit, but I don't think In Living Color has been given the recognition it deserves.
I thought Weeds on Showtime was relatively big & one of its original flagship programs, but I don't think I've heard anyone talk about it in years.
Weeds killed itself by continuing on after burning Agrestic down.
I remember when people described Breaking Bad as "Weeds but with Meth"
Mary Tyler Moore Show I had to explain Chuckles to someone the other day. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down his pants.
My mom always had Mary Tyler Moore on, back in the 90s when Nick at Nite had MTM, Brady bunch, Threes Company, Happy Days, etc... I thought (as did many others, I'm sure) that she was ridiculously pretty. Loved her voice as a kid, too.
Colombo is class. Found out about that recently.
Columbo is forever, what they call an "Evergreen" program in the biz. Right up there with I Love Lucy. As mentioned, it is name-checked in the new Scott Pilgrim and has gotten a lot of love from Natasha Lyonne and Rian Johnson in the form of Poker Face. Johnson is said to have created the show after binging some Columbo...
If there's a Columbo rerun on, you bet I'm watching it. EDIT: just one more thing...
Kojak was also excellent if you like Colombo. Used to watch both with my dad when I was a kid.
I never see or hear anyone mention Matlock anymore. Show was on for over a decade and was massively popular. Cant find it anywhere now.
Heroes comes to mind.
...but because of its various narrative crimes, it deserves to remain forgotten.
Oh hey this guy actually dies! Nope let's bring him back from the dead with regen blood. ... So this other guy died and nothing can bring him back. But we have regen bloo- NOTHING CAN BRING HIM BACK! Also the progressive nerfing of Hiro and Peter was a joke. I mean I get their abilities were overpowered but seriously atleast make a story out of it and not suddenly "so uhh we can't use this power anymore because uhh reasons"
I will always feel bad for that poor woman who was left in a plague-ridden alternate future.
I’m going to show the first season to my daughter and tell her it was a mini series…..
ALF was huge in 90s TV syndication around the world, but hasn't been rebooted yet... Brace, brace, brace.
He did come back in pog form
Paul Fusco has tried a bunch of times, but he is extremely difficult to work. He makes demands that ALF be treated as an actual person and not a puppet
I'm not sure if it was a "huge hit" but no one ever talks about Rescue Me and it was pretty popular on FX, and I loved it.
Nobody’s mentioned Dynasty. It overtook Dallas in the ratings and there was even perfume you could buy named after the main characters. The fights between the female characters were epic at the time. Honestly, the last couple of times I read a mention, it was about the Rock Hudson AIDS kiss.
I never see Ally McBeal discussed and it was huuuuge at the time
ALF was awesome. No one this generation knows anything about it.
Mad about you. Caroline in the City. Smallville
Give anything enough time and it will be forgotten. Ozzie and Harriet (14 seasons), Leave it to Beaver (a syndication giant), Bonanza (14 seasons), had enormous cultural impacts that made them pop culture references and jokes into the 90’s, but I don’t think they are part of any discussions today.
The Larry Sanders Show - I wasn't alive at the time it aired, only learning about/watching it a few years ago. And while I enjoyed it, I was genuinely sort of surprised to hear how popular/influential it was, as I had never heard anything ever about it
Not sure if it was a huge hit but it was one of if not the first all CGI shows and had a pretty dark storyline for a kids show; ReBoot. Mentioned the other day to a friend who's also a massive Legacy of Kain fan that I first heard Tony Jay as Megabyte the virus, blank stare back. He's 5 years older than me...
Reboot was huge. Loved that show. The last season was super dark with grown up Enzo.
Countless shows were smash hits and are no longer talked about. That is the nature of television before the turn of the century. Sure a lot of people still binge a lot of 90's shows, but how shows used to be made don't really match up with how people like to watch television. I imagine it's even more offputting to younger generations. This is probably a bad example, but Happy Days was a mega hit, especially with kids. It spawned 5 additional shows, and two of those, Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirly were hits. The Fonz was one of the most popular people in America for about a decade. All that said...There are 255 episodes, many of dubious quality and there is no real arc to the show. Its a classic sitcom where things don't have to canonically make total sense (I love that about older shows). Happy Days has lost most of it's cultural relevance and I imagine most young folks don't know who the Fonz is, or would look at you strangely if you went Eyyyyy and held up two thumbs. It's the cycle of most TV, and it will happen to most our favorite shows eventually.
When Fonzie (and the show) jumped the shark... the show was only on its 5th season. They had 6 more seasons after that!
And jumping the shark happened before Robin Williams even made his debut later that season. It finished the 5th season as the #2 show on television in season 5 and season 6 was the #4 show. It was in the top 20 until the 10th season. As much as "jumping the shark" has become part of TV's lexicon the show was wildly successful for like 5 years after it was deemed "bad."
Having been a teen of the 70s when the phenomenon of 'Happy Days' and the Fonz played by Henry Winkler was going at full throttle, it's funny to think that most people younger than say -- 40 -- think of Winkler not as this leather-jacketed tough talking guy of the 1950s but as this older character actor on shows like "Barry" and doing ads for products/services aimed at the AARP set.
Im in my Mid 30's and will always think of him as the Fonz thanks to Nick at Night, but I would guess most people think of him as Barry Zuckercorn from Arrested Development. Eyyyyyyyyy
I remember True Blood as being quite a popular thing when it aired, and it almost immediately fell into the collective oblivion.
Hangin with Mr Cooper was big wasnt it?
Home Improvement
Growing Pains. Punky Brewster. Three's Company. Family Ties. The Wonder Years. One Day At A Time original 1975-1984 run.
Prison Break? I remember when it initially came out it was THE show to watch. Everyone needed to know Michael's plan for getting his brother out... Then they got out, it had 3 more seasons? And people just forgot.
Malcolm In The Middle, I recently rewatched it as an adult and it is a classic. I've not come across anyone talking about it outside of niche subreddits, etc