I was in middle school at the time but it feels like it was perceived to be a "simple time" even then -- Clinton scandals aside. Not to get too deep but 9/11 feels like the end of that.
@@amittaizero Oh definitely. It's quite gradual, but from early 2002 onwards you can see US TV getting sombre and gritty. And then there's now, which feels like it's all come to a head.
When people comment on these videos about how they have never heard of the shows or that they faded into obscurity, I never know whether to be impressed that they made it through life without watching much tv or concerned that many of them include shows that were on for 5-10 years and were pretty popular.
You'd be surprised how often it's happened. In 2013 single camera sitcoms with Michael J. Fox and Robin Williams (the latter created by David E. Kelley) only lasted one season each. Same goes for show with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton back in 2007. Heck, even Lucille Ball's fourth and final sitcom "Life With Lucy" in the 1980's only lasted half a season.
I remember "You Wish" for starring Maureen McCormick as the mom and for the nightmare fuel of watching a teenager die horribly from eating an expired burger. 1997's TGIF lineup was...interesting. Ally McBeal gifted us with the Dancing Baby meme before we truly understood what memes were.
Losing Hanging with Mr. Cooper to weekends and Step by Step to CBS hurt TGIF a lot. When CBS came for Family Matters, the party was over (even though Urkelmania was waning).
Who has time to watch all this. There's been a plethora of shows that have come and gone and I've yet to watch one minute. Even popular ones like sopranos.
Brooklyn South had a hell of a cast there. Including Titus Welliver. I do like the fact that it appears FOX only had one credits department that only seemed to know one thing.
"Michael Hayes" was David Caruso's attempt at a TV comeback after leaving "NYPD Blue" for a movie career that never panned out. The show didn't last long, but I've heard his professional behavior on set went a long way towards rehabilitating his well-earned reputation as a diva. Without it, he might not have donned the famous sunglasses on "CSI- Miami", five years later.
That's how it works every year. Thousands of actors go up for pilots every year. Only a small number will get a role in the main cast. Only a small number of those pilots will get a series order from a network, and only a small number of series will last more than a few weeks or months.
@@toddsmitts And after six seasons of one show under their belt, they try and fail to replicate their success on a second or third show. (I'm talking about you, Tony Danza!)
Back around this time I was eating almond bark (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond_bark ) right out of the package while watching Ally McBeal, the only time I had ever done either of those two things. Ever since then, every time I see a reference to Calista Flockhart, or think about her in any way whatsoever, it reminds me of the taste of that almond bark.
Interestingly enough, You Wish and Teen Angel apparently share universe with Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Boy Meets World. There was a four part special where Salem the Cat eats a magic time ball that transport the cast of each comedy to a different decade. Only Sabrina and Teen Angel interact, though.
March 10, 1997. ...which is interesting because Buffy fans celebrate March 10 as Buffy Day, and Super Mario fans celebrate Mar10 because it looks like "Mario"!
Man, I had such a crush on Jenna Elfman because of Dharma & Greg. This year was when I finally got my own TV and would sit at night for two-three hours watching sitcoms, before being ordered by parents to go to bed.
Top cop being ~9? episodes I would have thought it was a Mid-season replacement Teen Angel/Meego/You Wish gives me the impression Sabrina the Teenaged Witch resonated with Networks the year before and A Lot of Cop shows (that were 1 & Done) starring people who would go on to have better luck (longer runs) in Longer running Cop Shows...
@@TheMadMaple someone else mentioned that too... looking into it Meego was the outlier and aired on CBS (as opposed to ABCs TGIF) but was from the same Production team that created Perfect Strangers, Family Matters and Full House, (all TGIF anchors at one time or another IIRC)
BTW, you missed one: Union Square, an ill-fated sitcom about the employees and regulars of a NY diner. It was really only notable for the fact that it was slotted right after "Friends".
@@RwDt09 You're right. My bad. I read a little more on this series. Apparently, the two lead characters were dropped entirely after the pilot and it was just retooled as another workplace comedy. (Like, imagine if Sam and Diane were written out after the pilot of "Cheers" and the show just focused on the remaining characters).
The only redeeming factor about "Union Square" was that it was scheduled in the highly coveted eight-thirty p.m. timeslot directly between "Friends" and "Seinfeld" on Thursdays; other than that, it was nothing more than an uninspired and rather derivative imitation of the aforementioned "Friends." (If my memory serves me correctly, "Union Square" actually ranked in the top five overall for the largely lackluster 1997-98 season, despite mediocre reviews...in any case, NBC declined to renew it for a second season.)
Where is Buffy? You're also missing South Park, one of my all time favorite shows. I guess network tv doesn't include the WB and Comedy Central. This is about the time I started drifting away from the networks anyway. Towards cable tv.
By 1997, I had already stopped watching network television shows and it seems that I did not miss any of these new shows because they were all absolute rubbish. Out of the bunch, only "Dharma & Greg" & "Ally McBeal" were hits. The rest just faded into oblivion... where they belong!
Undoubtedly one of the weakest--not to mention lackluster--fall seasons in television history, bar none. Of the thirty-five new programs that debuted on the (then) six major television networks that autumn, only "Ally McBeal," "Dharma & Greg," "Working," "Veronica's Closet," and "Dawson's Creek" (which premiered on the WB network in January of '98) survived the ax.
