Leave It to Beaver - the changing times are what kills this show. Now that we've seen what TV can really do, this show is just awash in bad writing, stereotypes, old-fashioned bird-brained characters who aren't worth watching and whom are impossible to relate to now. It's also incredibly insulting to one's intelligence.
M*A*S*H - I guess this show isn't strictly
bad so much as it is just relentlessly unfunny. It's supposed to be a comedy and it's quite tasteless. But it's not funny. It really does apply the standard sitcom formula against a backdrop of startlingly-serious reality. And it's not a good mixture.
All In the Family - You have got to be kidding me with this. America, an absurdly stark decade which in itself is a war of progressive versus tradition American values, and here we have a TV show portraying a bigot the way of course he should be portrayed- as a hapless, rather ignorant, bumbling bafoon (which in reality, they rarely are)... and audiences love him. Although, how many minorities thought this was a good thing? Still today this show is revered by the people who are responsible for the upbring of today's modern skinheads. And taking a closer look at this show / upon further investigation, it wasn't even half as groundbreaking as it was ever hailed to be.
Gilligan's Island - the characters were imaginatively created, and the episodes themselves were quite inspiredly inventive in crafting yet another formula where the boat's passengers were convinced they would finally make it off the island... However, every single episode was about little more than how Gilligan screws the whole thing up. You'd think after all that time, and with 6 other castaways, they would have thought to assign ONE to tie Gilligan up so that he wouldn't foil their escape. Also, Gilligan was practically the star and at the same time, the inadvertant villain. What's up with that?
The Brady Bunch - while this show was attractively cast and had a "far out" score, these were some of the most poorly written episodes of any televised sitcom in history. One of the very first sitcoms where the children of the family were all bizarrely normal and never had any real problems that extended beyond a self-esteem related confusion, a mix-up, or breaking something and how to tell the truth. And the only reason to really watch this show was Jan, the only child of the bunch with any real personality, all based on the fact that she was unpopular to a 'certain' sector of the school and the family itself who unfairly prayed upon Jan and her low self-esteem more often than not.
Sanford & Son - unfortunately, every black-focused show from the 1970's has received somewhat blemishless critical applause. Because, while the greater majority of them had an outlook not yet having made it's way into America's living room, and handled subject matter a lot better than most white or mixed sitcoms, this was a show about nothing. None of the actors had any true comedic talent, the episode plotlines were completely void of story or comedy, the jokes were ridiculously cliched and never resonated, and none of the characters had any presence onscreen. Some have claimed that the main character played by Redd Foxx was a landmark comic character, when half the time it could barely be distinguised whether he was awake or asleep. The whole thing seemed to be the invention of a group of people who were past their prime, writers and producers included.
Three's Company - while this show was surely worth something for it's ability to often come up with one heck of a crazy audience-shocking, laughter-inducing misunderstanding sequence, and it was quite audacious for it's time... It was also the kind of show that was written to make only about 1 season's worth of quality episodes. The formula was impossible to sustain itself beyond maybe 20 episodes, and the show suffered from quickly becoming predictable, to the episodes without Chrissy, where everyone found themselves wondering why it was still on the air.
Bosom Buddies - two completely uninteresting characters, though they both had a likability that probably saw the show staying around just long enough for Tom Hanks to find a foothole in films. And for any of the plots to work,
someone had to buy the fact that these two guys looked convincing when dressed as women. They never did, yet every other character onscreen believed they were women. Which one would have to be insane to believe. Which says, they were able to pull off their charade. Now what? Why? Was it worth it; if everyone is stupid enough to believe these guys are gals, what do they really gain? Every episode where they did it tried to come up with a new reason but it never worked, though in writing, it always worked. Is this a joke I'm not in on? If it is, it's pathetic. And they were ugly and horse-voiced women at that. A show with a crazy plot that never managed to have writing that made their crossdressing interesting.
Family Ties - a coming-of-age sitcom about a young-Republican son born into a family of budding democrats and a pair of definitely uncool liberal parents. First of all... this was like science fiction. To believe that a son could have so little contact with his parents that he could become something so wrong without their sort of noticing before it's too late, is truly absurd. Most of the jokes that actually confronted this issue all had to do with the parents' disbelief that this kid was actually theres', going back to science fiction. And the show only dealt with this issue intermittently. So now the young boy is always getting that surprise of always being reminded of just how young he really is, thinking he's a real adult and is ready to become a self-made wealthy man when he's really just a boy. That all of the surprise, the situations he found himself in, were completely predictable. Not to mention that the plot is completely unrealistic. And a true gifted child, at least one who 'seems' to be doing what this kid was doing to rebel, would have had a different attitude. Everything on this show was metaphorically about aliens.
Night Court - this as a show had some of the spottiest writing in comedy. Then, half the cast wasn't funny. The show had basically, too many characters, not enough writing to cover them all, rather hackneyed plots that were also not clever, and actors like Markie Post who were just never funny, or John Larroquette, who took their parts too seriously, that whatever comedy laid in their delivery or motivation fell flat every time. Doesn't hold up at all well over time.
The Wonder Years - if there's one thing worse than a television show centered around sentimentality, it's a flashback/period piece, coming-of-age, nostalgia show romanticizing the 1960's. Yeah it's true, a lot of important things happened in the 60's, it was a decade that gave us a lot of great music and socially began advancing us truly headfirst out of the cultural dark ages. But it was also a very hard decade for most people to have lived in, if they weren't born to life's basic privilages. This show basically just decided to focus upon the most boring, pedestrian, and unimportant of all events at that time - the growing up of a white, American-born-&-raised heterosexual boy. Oh wow, he falls in love with a girl, he discovers what condoms are, he learns how to drive, he has his heart broken, his father is his hero and sometimes his enemy, his mother is clueless, his brother is a bully with a kind-heart in there somewhere, his friends are his friends based on that fact that they haven't discovered any more or less about life than he has. This show was so predictable and "safe", it was sickening. And since having spoken with a GREAT deal of people of the same makeup as this boy, Kevin, his childhood was like none of theirs. Even some of them who grew up in the 60's. It was pretentious and lame.
Growing Pains - a somewhat contemporary resurrection of Leave It to Beaver, only with Beaver as an endless obnoxious punk who loved and constantly looked for trouble. This was one of the worst families on television. The youngest brother had no character, he was just the youngest brother - no personality, sometimes a little too tranquil. The sister was a snobby, insecure bookworm who was made into someone with little to no concept of reality, including her own. And the parents were the stereotypical busy-bodies, trying to raise a family when they're dedicated to their work, and for some reason though the eldest boy is in his teens, still have yet to find a balance between the two. The episode's plots remained stunted in the childish antics of the main character who the show couldn'd afford to stretch for fear of losing the base of fans that made the boring actor a teenbeat heart-throb. Then, the main actor turns around and stabs the show's producers in the back when he becomes a psycho-religious creton. Nothing of quality was ever associated with this show.
Saved By the Bell - of course we all know this is a bad show. Though the earlier version, Good Morning Miss Bliss, faired much better with Hailey Mills' wonderfully endearing and supportive teacher character, a funny Joan Ryan as a regular-seen faculty member/teacher, and Mr. Belding surprisingly portrayed as much less cartoonishly bafoon-like, dorky, and aged wannabe-hipster like. Even in this incarnation, the "other" friends of Zach- Nikki and Mikey, failed to be compelling enough to continue with. This show does have some value now as a complete laughing stock into the world of horribly tacky outdated 80's trends, from shockingly hideous fashion and outlandish set decoration, to utterly painful music and storylines that were actually quite different from all other shows at the time, only to be matched in the form of California Dreams, but were still so ridiculous that they required a whole world of suspension of disbelief in themselves.
Full House - another show we all know is horrible, but we can't quite turn ourselves away from. Which is where it has it's value, not quite redeeming. It's entertaining on that level where you look at the attractive cast, and are almost fooled by the dramatic yet poorly arranged music cues suggesting how we should feel about every story development at every moment of the show. Funny thing though, I remember hearing a lot of the laugh track acting up but no one ever said or did anything the slightest bit funny. This show isn't even funny in that unintentional way that, for instance, Saved By the Bell is a superstar at.
The Cosby Show - a house full of growing and bouncy young kids, two wonderfully sarcastic but loving professional parents, where could this possibly go wrong? In the worst place - it's completely and utterly unrealistic. We all know, to start with, that these two professional parents are quite successful, yet they're always at home. How do they get any work done?? How do they bring home the bacon if they're always taking it easy? The whole show, from the parents' perspective, is how their kids are driving them bonkers, but how everything always works out in the end, their kids always learn a valuable lesson. Of course that's still not how life works and yet this show has always received acclaim for it's positive portrayal of it's characters. Well it sured earned those awards, because this formula would never work in real life. Episode after episode became a grind of bland comedy and storylines that were never worthy of the wonderfully grounded characters, nor of the top-notch talented cast.
Cops - the VERY beginning of exploitational reality TV, this is also the absolute dregs of television. A show devised in the spirit of showing people what it's really like to be a cop. Somewhere along the line, this show lost all of it's integrity, and became dedicated to showing us what it wanted us to see of American criminals - drug-dealing, squalor-living blacks dominated each episode and was, it's been statistically proven, responsible for fueling a great deal of white fear of blacks and especially, black men. This show also just keeps going. Yet your basic episode has nothing to offer, at all. The same thing you've seen a hundred times before. The cops themselves turn out to often be as intelligent as the criminals, and just brute numbskulls who chase 1 car of criminals now with 6 or more cop cars in overblown highway pursuits, and with bad camera effects. It's a depressingly stupid show that alarmingly, a lot of Americans still watch.
Baywatch - probably the single WORST television show in history. The beginning formula: ordinary girls with extraordinary bodies with monotoned voices (a reflection of their acting abilities), running along the beach so their boobs bounce up and down and get their lifeguard-suits' wet so we can see their nipples. This really is stuff that should have been Pay Per View. Then as time goes on, they hope to expand their audience to women, so they get a couple of hunks (Billy Warlock & David Chokachi), and they discover the hard way that this doesn't help get any female viewers who aren't really scary lesbians. So they just keep on with the closeups of women's bodies, and all the great people who never watched the show get to celebrate it's final season and show in 2001. Oh, the plots? There was more drama on Alf than this one!
Ren & Stimpy - In a word... : EEEEWWW!!!!! This one was just absolutely sent to the wrong market, this is ageless humor, but the lengths this show went to gross people out was truly disturbing. It should never have been given to children to digest. And it's also not a show you want to be watching while eating. And given that, it's only appealing to a 'certain' sector of the viewing public. Completely unentertaining. And way too gross!!! Though the "Log" stuff was actually cool. Nickelodeon's first *superstar* Nick Toons show, was followed by much better series Doug, Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Spongebob Squarepants, and The Fairly Odd Parents.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - again, we all know it's a bad show. But, the only thing that was really bad about this show was the fact that it just hoped in vein that mixing newly shot footage of attractive teens and stunt persons jumping around and kicking/punching through badguys with about 2.5 solid minutes of stock library footage of industrial-esque machines doing battle would make a great show. It became a great success however with families, and when you look back, it was all for good reasons. Few children were ever hurt or hurt one another because of what they saw the Power Ranger characters do. A lot of parent hulabaloo for nothing, really.
Homicide: Life On the Streets - did these people really think that by combining the styles of Law & Order and NYPD Blue that they'd have something that somehow canceled out our need to watch either show, having found one that sublimely offered us everything they were?? No. Rather, L&O and NYPD offered us things Homicide didn't. This one was just a vehicle for some great dramatic actors, none of which were close to being half as compelling as Andy Sipowicz, Bobby Simone, Jack McCoy, Anita Van Buren, Benjamin Stone, or Adam Schiff.
Friends - Seinfeld was a show about nothing, with hilarious episodes that were all about something. Then Friends comes along, sporting an attractive cast that appeals perfectly to young people, and has that annoying theme song that charts the pop billboards. But is in essence, about nothing more than personality quirks, with no personalities. These 6 characters are so superficial that it's sick for this show to show them somehow functioning in a 'normal' society. Unlike Seinfeld, that uses the characters of the rest of the world to show just how weird and abnormal the main characters were, the characters of Friends created their own world where no one else came through. Rather, they were inducted into the super-artificial Friends' world by one of the main characters. Notice how not a single character makes contact with the group as they sit on the orange coffee shop couch, who isn't escourted into the building by a character on their arms or tapped on the shoulder over at the bar by a character who notices them but they somehow failed to notice the Friend, though these Friends are impossible to NOT notice since they are also the ONLY ones who ever sit on the orange couch. The men are all annoying and each are versions of each other, all are geeky and insecure (and paranoid of contact with one another apart from conversation), the women are all completely focused on their appearence or for Pheobe, noticing the inconsistencies of the main group, they can't make a relationship work outside of the members of their group of Friends. This is a ridiculous trapped-in-a-bubble-of-plastic show. And it's not worth watching on a daily basis. It never managed to be smart or interesting.
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer - somewhere between teen comedies and bad youth-focused 1-hour drama-soap operas, there came a genre of really bad teen 1-hour soap opera drama-comedies. They weren't dramatic, funny, well-acted, well-written, and worse of all - they subjected us to some of the worst make-up & CGI FX seen in decades!! Though Angel truly was the leader in this trend of stupid-looking monsters, some of whom were good and some evil, they tried to model their plots after X-Men (the animated series) and Alien Nation and failed MISERABLY. Buffy was the new Jason Voorhees, only alive and young and pretty and flesh colored - nothing could stop her, nothing phased her or weakened her, and it was pathetic to watch the show try to find something that made her human. Because when they did, they showed off Sarah Michelle Gellar's underdeveloped skills, she can shed tears without otherwise showing age or wisdom's experience in her glances. The worst thing the show did was continue to build up enemies that were more worthy of her, which resulted in awful, cartoony battles with both adversaries spouting embarassing one-liners and always seeming rejuvenated. This sort of thing gets so badly redundant, that there's simply no reason to watch the show. Unless you were somehow captivated by the Willow-Tara romance. Which, not surprisingly, didn't last long.
Ed, Edd, & Eddy - crudely animated, which is it's main selling point. But just not fun. For a cartoon, that's devastating. Maybe kids like it, for some reason, but it holds no real interest for older viewers.
The Daily Show / The Colbert Report - I'm sorry but, news is news, and Saturday Night Live is the only show that's ever been able to really make it funny. This show basically gets the reject writers from SNL and has some of the saddent comedy portions I've ever seen. Basically, you're made an idiot for agreeing with anything they say because they're always making fun of something, which means they don't ever mean anything they say. They can't focus on something to get the real life humor from it, so they just basically blow it up and jump on it, hoping jelly with come flying out, instead of stinky gas. But this show is always just: Number 2 (if you get my drift).
Family Guy - a blatant rip-off of The Simpsons combined with South Park, we have Homer Simpson: Peter, Marge: Lois, Lisa: Meg/Brian, Bart/Ralph Wiggum: Chris, Mr. Burns/Maggie: Stewie. The worst is when the show makes pop culture reference jokes, because The Simpsons did it first and much, much better. The worst is also when they try to make the show unlike the Simpsons, because they've got nothing. These characters exist without the physical familiarity of the Simpson character types and the ugly, sometimes gross-out humor of South Park, only coming off in a 2nd-rate animation style along the lines of The Critic. Did I just say "the worse" twice when there can only be one? Yes and that's because this show is twice as bad(!) as the sum of it's stolen elements.
The 'Man' Show - And I use this term loosely, but for any show to get it's name by constantly degrading women... it was more a show for a$$holes and idiots than for serious viewers looking for real comedy. No good men ever bragged about watching it. And they never really will either.
American Chopper - after Cops, this is the most pointless and completely mind-numbingly awful, headache-inducing excuse for a reality television show. The people are so stupid that they can't even make shouting arguements worth watching. Truly, these are just a bunch of amazingly stupid guys yelling and working on motorcycles. Nothing against motorcycles, personally, but these guys are dumber than dirt!!!
all ABC/CBS/NBC-network soap operas, especially : The Bold & the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, All My Children, General Hospital, One Life to Live, ... You get the picture.
Reality dating-hookup shows : Blind Date, ElimiDate, Dismissed, NEXT, Room Raiders, Paradise Hotel, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Joe Millionaire, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?, Married by America, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Average Joe. Only one that I've ever seen was the least bit ground-breaking, it was Boy Meets Boy, and even that show operated on a cruel "twist" and sexy people to make it interesting. They're all the same, relying on either catfights or hottub/make-out/massage scenes to rake-in viewers.
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - after just a few episodes, you realize this show is just vanilla TV. The home and clothes makeovers are all the same. Some of the colors and food and jokes are different, but it's all "their" idea of what things should be. All the straight guys completely lack personality or for the most part, opinions. This show needs some SERIOUS spicing up to make it more watchable. But I must say that at least this show shows straight guys as for the most part being very accepting of gays (or "these" kind of gay guys, HA!). Overall, this show is not very representative of the gay community. It's about time we see straight people take care of themselves for once!!!
The Gilmore Girls / 7th Heaven - worst scripted TV shows on the air right now, avoid if you have ANY brainpower in your head at all!!!!!!
The Shield - worthless
The West Wing - impossible to pay attention to, it's so unbelievably bland, boring, and uninteresting : much like the world of politics stripped of extremism
24 - when I say melodramatic is a bad thing, I'm talking about shows like this. A bad drama that feels it has to underwrite it's characters to make the action compelling, and make way for a lot of overused high-budget camera tricks. An ultra-pretentious theme that really was worn out by the first season, the 1 episode equals 1 hour in a day was definitely new for 1 season, but now it's just tired!
I'm really burnt out as one could imagine on taking many of these TV programs to task and I do have a life, so I'll have to get back to this later.
from me. 
