As a child of the 80's, these types of traumatic things were crow-barred into sitcoms to raise awareness and open a dialog. Clunky, but done with good intentions, and that's one to grow on.
They had The Hogan Family with 'The Best of Friends, Worst of Times' where they find out Rich has AIDS. I'm sure they explained it but I don't remember how they said he contracted AIDS.
Princess Taboo I do not recall the episode, but from I’ve read online, if never is explained how Rich contracted the virus. That makes sense. That’d be a very sitcom sort of thing to do in 1991.
Too many drama club nerds from high school on the internet. Seething at anything, including humor, that reminds them of the jock in high school who made a joke to them one time and they took it way too seriously.
It was a PSA episode. Lots of sitcoms of those had that. Hell in the early 2000's there were plenty of sitcoms that had episodes on cyber predators. If there is a problem that does affect a demographic of a certain era then the shows of that era will make episodes on it. It's called staying relevant. Good times had an episode about child molestation and not trusting strangers. You all need to grow thicker skin. Kids need to be told this stuff and parents don't always have the time to talk about every scenario.
Mr. Belvedere was one of the very 1st of the '80s sitcoms to address the AIDS issue and The Hogan Family (Valerie) was one of the 1st sitcoms to utter the word "condom" on national TV. AIDS was quite the rage in most 1980s sitcoms, weren't they?
It was more about the social stigma associated with AIDS at the time. The kid was an outcast because of all the misinformation floating around about AIDS in the early 80s.
I've been wanting to re-watch all the episodes of Mr. Belvedere. I loved this show! No one ever said we had any clue in the 80's. I mean, AIDS was very new. I'll have to find all of these to re-watch!
Ah, the "very special episode" where sit-com writers basically spent an entire episode apologizing for being funny during the rest of the season along with trying to hammer home heavy handed points about serious issues of the day. Sometimes they were done well but most of the time they were done very poorly. This was one of the better ones but it's still incredibly cheesy and heavy handed.
@docjizzay As an afterthought, it would have been great for Jerry Lewis to do a walk on right after the kids entrance, you know breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience with the lights low...
"In one of many very special episodes, one of Wesley’s classmates contracts HIV via Factor VIII, like Ryan White. When all of Wesley’s classmates shun him for still associating with his friend (due to the belief at the time of stereotypes of AIDS being mainly associated with drug addicts and gay men), Belvedere is there for him and the child, and he helps the other students befriend the boy." Episode wasn't meant to be mean but informative.
I have hiv/aids, but I only say jokes like that to other people who also have it. Anyone else would feel so awkward not knowing if it was OK to laugh or not.
:20 the parents are like"wtf! we didnt ask him if he had aids" and the aids boy looks like he had some kind of jerry kids birth defect than an aids victim.
"I should want to cook him a nice meal, but I shouldn't want to... cut into him... to tear the flesh, to wear the flesh. To be reborn into new worlds where his flesh is my key..."
@shadowman2192 Bob Uecker was his name. He used to be a baseball player (.200 career batting average); afterward, he became a sportscaster and actor/entertainer.
This wasn't even the best line from this episode, just the most awkward. There was a much funnier part where Mr. Owens said to Wesley, "you can't get AIDS just by fooling around," then quickly realized what he just said. And the Miller-Boyett garbage factory shows that replaced this were much worse than this.
Christian B "Full House" was just a proto-"Friends", and those are the two worst TV shows ever, even worse than the worst "reality" TV shows. They never made me laugh, which is a primary qualification for something that claims to be a comedy, and Candace Cameron is a religious homophobe whose brother Kirk is an even worse one; I cannot stand "Growing Pains" for the same reason and I watched almost every successful network sitcom in the 1980s. "Family Matters" was tolerable only when Telma Hopkins was on it; Urkel was a stalker-why didn't Carl just issue a restraining order-and the later Stefan Urquelle episodes were just silly without actually being funny. Lorimar's prime-time actually made me laugh harder than any of their sitcoms, and I'm sure "Friends" would have been done by Lorimar had it not been folded into Warner Bros. Television. Thomas Miller is also partly to blame for why "Happy Days" declined in quality so severely, but none of Garry Marshall's shows were nearly as stupid even at their most mindless. But I'd watch every episode of "Mr. Belvedere" back to back before I watched a second of anything by Miller-Boyett again. I bought the DVDs and was surprised how well the show held up. It was more consistently funny than the average ABC sitcom of the era-and frankly, NBC had the best sitcoms in the 1980s-and if nothing else, at least Christopher Hewett could act. Meanwhile, the only other good show TGIF ever aired was "Dinosaurs," which ABC moved around on purpose. TGIF and Must-See TV were the two most overrated TV schedules ever. If you actually liked the shows, that's one thing, but if you want us to respect your opinions, you need to respect the fact that some of us don't and have concrete reasons for that.
to be fair, kids will say things like that, I mean kids say the darndest things anyone remember quantum leap where he's in a mentally challenged person's body? that was powerful
wow, what a fucked up clip! hahahaha i can't beleive someone actually green lit that comment made by the kid and what made it worse was the canned laugh as soon as he said it. good stuff!
@LadyKittyn Kids grow up so fast these days. Not having seen the episode, this is only a guess, but this was probably one of several "Hey, regular people gets AIDS from blood transfusions too, not just those creepy queer people" sitcom episodes that were aired during the mid-1980s. The first time I remember a TV show (not a TV movie, an episode of a recurring show) showing someone who got AIDS from gay sex, it was an episode of 21 JUMP STREET, and I don't think they even said the word "gay."
This kid probably got the Aids from the Bicycle guy on different strokes. but seriously I am not poking fun at this kid. The prognosis for this child in 1985 was certain death. It is highly improbable he survived, as effective anti-viral protease inhibitors were not invented till the early 1990's and did not begin being widely used till the very late 1990's and early 21st century.
