300th Blog Special : My All-Time LEAST Favorite TV Shows

 Hard to believe I have made the 300 blog mark. I guess that's what happens when you keep getting ideas. And have lots of time on your hands due to being unemployed and/or laid up from surgery…..

For my 200th blog special I looked at my absolute favoriteTV shows. This time I wanted to look at the opposite, those shows I just flat out hated. Now, here are a few rules:

1.It has to be a show a hated from the beginning. Lots of shows I like until they change something, for instance when Laverne & Shirley went to California.

2.It has to be a show I hated completely. For example as bad as Star Trek Enterprise is, there were a few episodes I liked and even enjoyed

3.It has to be a show I have seen and given a chance. For example I say I hated The Drew Carey Show, but honestly I never watched it. Just going on what I know the show just doesn't seem like one I would like very much. There are lots of bad stuff out there I never saw.

4.Finally, it has to be a show that was successful and even loved by others. It's easy to say you hated a show that bombed after six weeks.

Of course I am not saying these shows are necessarily bad,just that I hated them. As always this is just my opinion feel free to disagree.  Ok, so here are now are some TV shows I absolutely hate in no particular order.

Welcome Back, Kotter

I have talked about this before. I just never got into this show. The Sweathogs were kind of funny, but something about the show just seemed so, fake. I know this coming from the guy who loves The Brady Bunch. But the show never felt real at all, it felt like a sketch on a comedy show. Gabe Kaplan especially, with his mugging and those stupid jokes he told in the teaser and tag of every episode. Then Gabe Kaplan left the show, as well as John Travolta, and man did the show get bad after that!

Maude

I totally respect Norman Lear, he was a genius who truly influenced sitcoms and TV as a whole, but I never liked the guys writing. All in the Family wasn't bad but I never got into it. Good Times was ok, but also kind of depressing. I swear every time I watched that show they used the word "ghetto" five or six times an episode! We get it! But the worst has to be Maude. I caught some re-runs of this, and just cringed. And unlike a lot of these I was no kid at the time either. I just didn't find it funny. And I love Bea Arthur, Conrad Bain, Rue McClanahan and even Bill Macy in other things so it has to be the writing. Norman Lear I respect you, but I don't enjoy your work.

The Munsters

While I loved The Addams Family, this show just  never did it for me. The characters were lovable, from Herman Munster to Grandpa Munster and all of them, but I just could never stand this show.

The Dana Carvey Show

I am making an exception to one of my rules so I can talk about this awful and mean spirited show. Dana Carvey came out with this sketch show in the 90's. It premiered as a mid-season replacement and should have been great! But it wasn't. This show was just nasty, even cruel in the jokes and sketches. I only really saw one episode and just couldn’t believe what I was watching. Dana Carvey was great on SNL but in other things he just can’t seem to find the right tone. This show could take up a whole article talking about how dumb it was.

Evening Shade

An important part of liking a show is loving the characters.So what happens when you can't stand the characters? You get a show like this.To be fair Burt Reynolds and Marilu Henner were ok, but the supporting characters were so annoying. Michael Jeter was quite a talent but I never could stand him.  I just couldn't get into this show at all. The show was about Burt Reynolds as a football coach of a lousy team. This would be a prime candidate for a face-off with Coach, except I watched it a few times and never watched it again.

Cosby

When Bill Cosby came back to TV in the 90's he decided to docsomething different. And he succeeded; I tried watching this show but it gritty style just didn't work for me. Unlike Evening Shade I liked the characters, but the stories and tone of the series kept me away. To be fair of all the shows on this list this is probably the one I would willingly watch today. And it also featured Madeline Khan in what would be her last role, have to love that. The premise in this show was that Bill Cosby played an okder guy who got laid off from his job. He is Cliff Huxtable if Cliff was not a wealthy MD.

Barney Miller

Occasionally I would be over my aunt's house at night and forced to watch what they wanted. That was fine, until 7:30 rolled around and these re-runs came on. To tell the truth I don't know why I hated this show.Maybe I was just too young. This show starred Hal Linden and of course Abe Vigoda who would go on to star in the spin-off, Fish. I really hated that show! This show was a nice ensemble comedy and in fact I have enjoyed the actors in otherwork, but I never got into it.

The Monkees

Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork were The Monkees! My local station would show this during the day, often before The Brady Bunch. I never got it.It was just so weird and nonsensical. I understand that this was sort of the American version of the Beatles, but this show just did not click with me. I think if I had been older and more familiar with The Beatles, especially their movies, I might have responded more to this show. As it was, the show just did not work for me. I did like Davy Jones, and enjoyed his appearance in The Brady Bunch.

Hey, I just noticed something...I have picked A LOT on the70's and 90's. But what about the 80's? Certainly there was something I hated in that era. I guess that comes from being a very picky TV viewer in those days. Of course I caught the 70's stuff in re-runs often against my will. Well I dug a bit and found some 80's shows I just hated!

Designing Women

I really tried to like this show. This is the one of all on this list that I watched the most. My brother was a huge fan at one time and thanks to him I saw plenty of episodes. But this show is way to “Women are awesome especially if they’re from Atlanta”. Now I am a big fan of women and I amsure that Atlanta is an amazing city, but my lord! The show just gets to preachy. When they discuss a sensitive topic rather than making it entertaining it feels like a lecture and it’s always one sided. Julia is just plain infuriating;her opinion is the only one that counts apparently! Just once I would have like to see an episode where the side the girls were on turned out to be the wrongone! There is a reason Delta Burke stood out on this, she was the only likable character!

American Gladiators

Ah, now we're talking. Am I the only one who never got into this show? My brother used to love it but it was never for me. Two teams (one male, one female) compete in games of physical strength against very athletic body builders who attempt to halt the contestants from scoring points in any of the competitions. Kind of like Double Dare for adults, and by the way I never got into that show either.

Real People

This show should have been called “Really freaky and bizarre”people. Before reality television became a standard thing, we had this early 80’s show which profiled real people. The problem was that they would show some very strange things on this show.  I remember getting freaked out by the things they showed. Of course I was a kid. The show did feature Sarah Purcell so it wasn’t all bad I guess. This and That’s Incredible! were the 80’s versions of reality TV. And I hated them both.

Welcome To Pooh Corner

Classic Disney channel was really cool. I used to watch Mousercising every morning followed by Good Morning, Mickey which was awesome repackaged Mickey cartoons. But it wasn’t all gold. This was a really lame show featuring Winnie The Pooh and his friends. The costumes were creepy and the stories were lame. They also had Dumbo’s Circus….brrrr, just got a chill! Ithink this show was the reason I was a little warm to Winnie the Pooh, until the awesome New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh finally came on in the 90’s. Not much else to say here, look it up sure there are some clips online.

Back to the Future: The Animated Series

I was real excited at the idea of a cartoon based on my favorite movie. That is, until I watched it. They just made everything to silly. Why couldn’t they have played it straight like The Real Ghostbusters had been? No instead Doc turns in a caricature of the character, Marty is a goofy dufus, and the stories were so silly. Not the worst ever, but I was disappointed.I only watched the pilot and then never tuned in again. Rowdy Reviwer recently reviewed this positvily, so maybe I was to hard on this show back then.

Family Guy

Annoying! Annoying! Annoying!  Next……

Saved By The Bell :The New Class

If you treat this as its own series separate from Saved ByThe Bell then this was just plain awful! It is possible to clone a series and still make it passable. I mean, wasn’t Melrose Place basically a retread of Beverly Hills, 90210? But this was such a pitiful excuse for a clone. The characters were boring, so broing they had to bring Screech back to shake things up. They also changed the cast like 80 times, how can we get to know these people if you do that? Thankfully the series finally went away, and I choose not to remember this terrible show. I said I would not include shows that were generally hated, but it was on for seven years???? Someone must have been watching!

Whose Line is it Anyway?

There are two types of people in the world. People who love this show and think its hilarious. And the others who just didn’t get it and never found it funny. Guess which I am? I just didn’t get it, and the fact that Drew Carey was host didn’t help.It was basically an improv show and I guess whoever did the best job won, or something, What's was the point anyway is the question I really asked. I don't know it wasn't funny and I hated it.

Ghostbusters

Can you imagine my surprise when I heard there would be a cartoon based on Ghostbusters, and when I tuned in instead I saw a show about two guys and a talking gorilla? This was based on a live action children’s show called Ghost Busters which aired back 1975, and obviously creators intended to confuse people into watching it. As much as I love Filmation shows, this one sucked. It was basically a gloried Scooby Doo rip-off. Thank goodness The Real Ghostbusters soon arrived, which was an awesome and I think somewhat underappreciated show.

Two and a Half Men

I wish I could explain why I hate this show. I admit, when I have watched it did make me laugh. But there is just something about it I cannot stand. Is it Charlie Sheen? Is it John Cryer? It all the off color jokes which I never really like? This show has been on for ten years and I still cannot bring myself to watch it willingly. I hate it and that dumb theme song.

The Larry Sanders Show

First of all, Gary Shandling is not a favorite. But that is not the reason I hated this show. I do not like profanity. Now don’t get me wrong, I use it at times especially in moments of stress. But all in all I try not to swear. I can take some swearing, like an F bomb here and there. Heck, I like Nostalgia Critic and he is downright skillful in his swearing! But in this show it was obvious they were swearing because they could and I did not like it. I don’t like profanity with no context, especially when it becomes name calling.  I mean, when is it ever ok to call someone a cocksucker out loud? I don’t care how friendly you mean it! I do not swear, I do not hang around with people who swear, and I will not watch a movie or TV show with excessive profanity. So, I think you can understand why I never watched this show.

Dr.Who

Nah, just kidding. As a kid the show never interested me,and now I figure with over 40 years of history I will be confused and never figure out what is going on. So I just don’t watch, but the peer pressure iskilling me!  I was happy to see Alex Kingston had become popular on it, to bad she isn't on it anymore. A great show with loyal fans, and I am not among them. 

So that is my 300th blog. So the question is what’s next? I have started working full time again and between that and the episode guide being finished the volume I had been producing will drop off. Maybe one or two a week, and that’s all. But I am still coming up with new ideas and there are lots of things I still want to do, so I imagine I will be around for awhile.

So come back on Monday as I take look at a Disney special. First, I want to thank everyone on Manic Expression who reads and supports my stuff, for a time there blogging for  this site was all I had to keep me from getting depressed about my life. That is something I will always be grateful for.