Overrated/Underrated Geek Media

[Ruin Explorer]

Add in Fresh Prince and maybe Home Improvement and Everyone Loves Raymond, and it seems like Friends and Seinfeld are the only 90s* sitcoms that get revisited**. In the 90s Friends and Seinfeld were big hits (the biggest, at various points), but so were Wings, Mad About You, Spin City, The Nanny, etc. It seems strange, but I haven't thought thoroughly on if it is different for other decades.
*strictly 90s. The Cosby Show, Cheers and Full House and so on also get discussion, but I'm lumping them in with the 80s.
**in discussions. I'm sure people with streaming or the DVDs watch whatever they like.

I can honestly say as someone who lived through the '80s and '90s, that I have never watched an episode of Wings.

So I do think that, at least outside the US, it may have been a little lower-profile (despite getting eight seasons - which was less uncommon then) than other shows. I literally don't even know anything about it - I'll go look it up!

Fresh Prince is definitely something people still watch a bit.

Also, there kind of is a pattern - Friends, Seinfeld, Fresh Prince and Everyone Loves Raymond (and maaaaybe even Home Improvement) were lightly (well more than lightly with Seinfeld) transgressive in their humour quite frequently. There's an edge to them (least of those Raymond but even there...), a kind of low cleverness, a willingness to take that extra step for the gag, that wasn't really present in say, Mad About You or The Nanny. Wings I haven't seen, and Spin City I think was similar but maybe I am not giving it enough credit.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Frasier gets a lot of rewatching.

But not Cheers, weirdly enough. I think that's partly timing - fewer people alive now saw it when they were younger, and I think almost all '80s sitcoms are sufficiently ugly as to be hard to watch now.

 

[TiQuinn]

I loved this show:

 

[payn]

I’m trying to think of wings was ever syndicated or not? I don’t recall but I know things like Cheers, Fraiser, and news radio were on all the time on multiple channels.

 

[TiQuinn]

I’m trying to think of wings was ever syndicated or not? I don’t recall but I know things like Cheers, Fraiser, and news radio were on all the time on multiple channels.

Yeah Wings used to play all the time on USA Network in syndication.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How many young Movie Stars do we even have nowadays?

I think we have several female ones, but I feel like male casting has absolutely gone to hell for the under-35s and we can't even blame it on "New" Hollywood, because people like Spielberg, very much part of the older Hollywood, are absolutely a huge part of the problem, casting young male leads in roles where they come across as bland, charisma-free, and untalented. I suspect it's unfair - I doubt they really got that role whilst not being able to act, but if so they're either being miscast or misdirected - Ansel Elgort is a prime example.

Timothee Chalamet exists and is still under 30 though! So it's not like no-one is making it through! And he is a pull - there's no way a Dune with say, Elgort as the lead would have done anywhere near as well as it did with Chalamet.

It doesn't seem to be happening to young women to the same degree - more young female actors actually seem to have charisma and personality and unique looks (rather than just being "white guy who is handsome in a forgettable way") and could have done fine in the '80s or '90s.

Not bad examples here though I'd never heard of 25 or 24:

25 Best Hollywood Actors in Their 20s, Young Stars Ranked

Discover the best actors and actresses in their 20s today...

www.complex.com

(Also man if they ever need someone to play a young, Black version of Jake Gyllenhall for some reason, then Jharrel Jerome is a lock! He even has a similar name!)

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can honestly say as someone who lived through the '80s and '90s, that I have never watched an episode of Wings.

So I do think that, at least outside the US, it may have been a little lower-profile (despite getting eight seasons - which was less uncommon then) than other shows. I literally don't even know anything about it - I'll go look it up!

Fresh Prince is definitely something people still watch a bit.

Also, there kind of is a pattern - Friends, Seinfeld, Fresh Prince and Everyone Loves Raymond (and maaaaybe even Home Improvement) were lightly (well more than lightly with Seinfeld) transgressive in their humour quite frequently. There's an edge to them (least of those Raymond but even there...), a kind of low cleverness, a willingness to take that extra step for the gag, that wasn't really present in say, Mad About You or The Nanny. Wings I haven't seen, and Spin City I think was similar but maybe I am not giving it enough credit.

A lot of shows started to emulate seinfeld in the 90s. So it was massively influential (arguably remains so). It isn’t like there weren’t smart or transgressive shows before it (Gary Shandling Show, Sledgehammer, Newhart, etc). But Seinfeld, once it took off was like a bomb going off. It did take time to catch on though. Also Seinfeld was just more in line with 90s American culture than typical sitcoms. But the 80s had lots of experimental and weird shows. I think with Seinfeld the difference was the laughs felt on a completely different level at the time. I watched it from the start because I liked Jerry’s standup specials as a kid. It was also a show where the characters were not nice people. That existed but the US generally hadn’t had a show like say Black Adder. So it was refreshing in that respect. The other element was the dialogue. It’s dialogue was distinct from standard sitcom patter at the time (I think this is why some people will do think pieces now about how Seinfeld wasn’t funny: it was funny, these think pieces cherry pick their evidence but it is true it didn’t have the obvious set ups and punchlines you had in stuff like Fact of Life or Growing Pains. Another interesting thing is the show was heavily inspired by the Abbot and Costello Show. That show did interesting word building with a range if stark characters, and you can see the influence of you go back and watch it. Also the cultural references in Seinfeld felt more sophisticated than standard sitcoms (there are references to historical events and movies other shows wouldn’t have done because they didn’t want to alienate viewers. But Seinfeld felt like it trusted the audience’s intelligence.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think we have several female ones, but I feel like male casting has absolutely gone to hell for the under-35s and we can't even blame it on "New" Hollywood, because people like Spielberg, very much part of the older Hollywood, are absolutely a huge part of the problem, casting young male leads in roles where they come across as bland, charisma-free, and untalented. I suspect it's unfair - I doubt they really got that role whilst not being able to act, but if so they're either being miscast or misdirected - Ansel Elgort is a prime example.

Timothee Chalamet exists and is still under 30 though! So it's not like no-one is making it through! And he is a pull - there's no way a Dune with say, Elgort as the lead would have done anywhere near as well as it did with Chalamet.

It doesn't seem to be happening to young women to the same degree - more young female actors actually seem to have charisma and personality and unique looks (rather than just being "white guy who is handsome in a forgettable way") and could have done fine in the '80s or '90s.

Not bad examples here though I'd never heard of 25 or 24:

25 Best Hollywood Actors in Their 20s, Young Stars Ranked

Discover the best actors and actresses in their 20s today...

www.complex.com

(Also man if they ever need someone to play a young, Black version of Jake Gyllenhall for some reason, then Jharrel Jerome is a lock! He even has a similar name!)

I find it hard to take movies seriously when the actors are too young. Some of that is also people just look younger now than when I was a kid. But if a make character was in a leadership role in a show or movie they used to look pretty weathered. However a lot of these actors do grow. People who I had difficulty believing in when they first emerge often surprise me years later.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But not Cheers, weirdly enough. I think that's partly timing - fewer people alive now saw it when they were younger, and I think almost all '80s sitcoms are sufficiently ugly as to be hard to watch now.

Here Cheers was massive when it aired. I think it was also probably viewed as one of the smarter shows. I think it is hard for people now to appreciate just how big Cheers was, maybe because Frazier has eclipsed it in our cultural memory?

 

[Reynard]

Overrated (and on mind only because the TV show is coming so ads are everywhere): The Murderbot Diaries. Ugh. Terrible.