Saturday, December 06, 2008
The worst television show of all time?
When I can't sleep, I get up and channel surf in the dark until I get sleepy, which usually takes about an 45 minutes to an hour. I like to linger on the Weather Channel, especially the local weather on the 8's. The combination of elevator music, bland graphics, and computerized narration is a sure thing.1 C-SPAN is also nice, especially when they're interviewing a writer who has little to say. But mostly I just flip around.
Sometimes, though, if I'm particularly unlucky, I will catch one of Nick at Nite's marathons. When Nick at Nite first started, they played old TV shows that could reasonably be considered classic - I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, etc. In the last few years, however, they've moved pretty solely to more recent family sitcoms of rather dubious quality2: Home Improvement, Full House, The George Lopez Show, and the big one: Family Matters.
If I'm unlucky enough to be flipping around and land on a Family Matters block, any idea I had of falling asleep is over. I simply cannot turn away from this show. I sit on my couch, agape and shocked at the bizarre dreadfulness that coming from my television screen and boring its way into my consciousness. I contemplate just how something this irredeemably awful can be produced for 215 episodes3 over nine seasons4. Who watches this unironically? Why is it still in syndication, ten years after it was mercifully cancelled? Is Family Matters the worst show of all time? I think so. Consider some of the show's crimes against humanity:
Footnotes:
1. Well, 99% of the time. They have this show which postulates the death and destruction caused by hypothetical weather events. Once I happened to catch the one about a tornado hitting downtown Dallas, which freaked me out.
2. And also The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which is of course great.
3. !
4. !!
5. See Urkel's Wikipedia page for other inventions.
6. i.e., "Grandmama" exists as an actual old woman who is awesome at basketball and also a Converse shoes enthusiast
7. See the Wikipedia page for direct crossovers. Note that Full House once crossed over with Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World crossed over with Sabrina, and Sabrina crossed over with Clueless and Moesha. (See Poobala.com for all your TV crossover needs.)
Sometimes, though, if I'm particularly unlucky, I will catch one of Nick at Nite's marathons. When Nick at Nite first started, they played old TV shows that could reasonably be considered classic - I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, etc. In the last few years, however, they've moved pretty solely to more recent family sitcoms of rather dubious quality2: Home Improvement, Full House, The George Lopez Show, and the big one: Family Matters.
If I'm unlucky enough to be flipping around and land on a Family Matters block, any idea I had of falling asleep is over. I simply cannot turn away from this show. I sit on my couch, agape and shocked at the bizarre dreadfulness that coming from my television screen and boring its way into my consciousness. I contemplate just how something this irredeemably awful can be produced for 215 episodes3 over nine seasons4. Who watches this unironically? Why is it still in syndication, ten years after it was mercifully cancelled? Is Family Matters the worst show of all time? I think so. Consider some of the show's crimes against humanity:
- A show that is ostensibly about a family that shifts its focus almost entirely to a minor character: that handsome young man pictured above, one Steve Urkel. As a result, a majority of the episodes featured this nerd doing nerdy things, such as taking pratfalls and breaking things. Once these were done over and over and over again, Urkel was changed from just a regular nerd into possibly the smartest person who ever existed:
- He created the "Urkelbot", a sentient robot that eventually became a police officer.
- He created the Transformation Chamber, which crossed his and Carl's genes with Bruce Lee once, leading to perhaps the worst fight scene in history.5
- Urkel's most important invention, however, was "Boss Sauce", which at first just transformed Steve into Stefan Urquelle, a smooth alter ego of Steve. Steve eventually cloned Stefan, who fell in love with Laura Winslow.
- One episode featured Eddie, the Winslow son, dumping Urkel as his partner in a 2-on-2 basketball tournament. The notion of uber-nerd Urkel being good at basketball is ridiculous enough, but Urkel, as revenge, gets as his new partner "Grandmama" from Larry Johnson's Converse commercials. "Grandmama" was not introduced or presented as Larry Johnson, only as "Grandmama". Taking that at face value6, that means that Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, Full House, Step by Step, and Boy Meets World, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Clueless, Moesha, and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper7 all exist in the same fictional universe as a series of Converse commercials.
Footnotes:
1. Well, 99% of the time. They have this show which postulates the death and destruction caused by hypothetical weather events. Once I happened to catch the one about a tornado hitting downtown Dallas, which freaked me out.
2. And also The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which is of course great.
3. !
4. !!
5. See Urkel's Wikipedia page for other inventions.
6. i.e., "Grandmama" exists as an actual old woman who is awesome at basketball and also a Converse shoes enthusiast
7. See the Wikipedia page for direct crossovers. Note that Full House once crossed over with Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World crossed over with Sabrina, and Sabrina crossed over with Clueless and Moesha. (See Poobala.com for all your TV crossover needs.)
Labels: TV
