Generation 90210 Remembers: Creepy 80s sitcoms

Gen 90210-ers remember that back in the 80s, sitcoms were where it was at. Most of these thirty minute morality plays aired on weekend nights, back when getting a Friday or Saturday night primetime slot was a coup. Now, Friday and Saturday nights are kind of like the tuberculosis sanatoriums of television: places where things go to die while no one watches.

Oddly, many of these shows revolved around depressing premises, usually involving a dead/absent parent or being orphaned by the deaths of both parents (Silver Spoons, Out of this World, Punky Brewster, Full House, Who’s the Boss?). Not content to be outdone by killing off a child’s parents, some shows (Diff’rent Strokes, Gimme a Break, Webster) threw in an interracial component that usually involved a poor, black person coming into a wealthy, white person’s home to provide comic relief. You have to wonder what possessed some television writer to think, I know, I’ll take a little black boy (preferably one with challenged pituatary glands so that he looks like he's 5 when he's 13), kill both his parents, and send him to live with one of his deceased father’s white friends where he will address the mother figure as "Ma’am" for the duration of his childhood (Webster). Shits and giggles all around!


If you remember these shows, then it is very likely you also remember the “special” episodes that aired every once in a while that were supposed to teach the kiddies watching at home a lesson. The problem is, instead of serving their intended didactic purpose, they almost always ended up in traumatizing us. Let us closely examine some of these moments after the jump . . .




PUNKY BREWSTER - Cherie gets stuck in the refrigirator!


When Punky and the gang finally find Cherie, she is unconscious and collapses out of the refrigerator. Luckily, Punky paid attention to the CPR lesson at school during the first part of this dramatic episode and so is able to use her mouth to mouth skills to revive Cherie. This episode teaches us that CPR is really, really important to know and that if you, like Allen, get sent to the principal's office during CPR training and your friend dies, it's your fucking fault.




WEBSTER

One episode involved a teacher at school who touched the girls too much . Then there was the episode where, oops, Webster burned down George and Ma’am’s apartment, clearing the way from them to move to the house with the secret passageways. However, the episode that really stuck with Ramona was the one where Webster finds a secret passage in his house to a hidden room that has a rocking chair with a doll in it that, we find out later, was supposed to serve as a shrine to the previous tenant’s runaway daughter. Frighteningly for Webster and the viewers, the show decided to get its Faulkner on and get all "A Rose for Emily"ish by making it seem as though it was actually a corpse that had been sitting in this room for years. Webster, after finding himself locked in the room, opted to take a snooze. Naturally.





Diff'rent Strokes


So much to work with here! In fact, when Arnold became convinced of the fact that kids were selling drugs at his upper crust prep school, Nancy Reagan herself came on the show to let everyone know that we should all “JUST SAY NO.” Alas, this lesson hasn’t stuck with Ramona as much as the others. Diff’rent Strokes produced the two creepiest episodes of sitcom television ever. In one, Arnold and his pal, Dudley, get lured into the apartment of a man who owns a bicycle shop but who is really a pedophile.

Later in the series’ run, we learn the dangers of hitchhiking (an epidemic on the upper-eastside of Manhattan in case you hadn't heard) from Kimberly and Arnold, who, frustrated by their inability to catch a cab after fifteen seconds, decide to hitchhike instead and get in the car with a guy who seems nice but then holds them hostage in his apartment with the intent of raping Kimberly and perhaps killing Arnold; he remains gagged and bound in the bedroom while the man forces Kimberly to slow dance with him while he serenades her with “Strangers in the Night.” Arnold is told he will be okay if he is just "a good little Astronaut," a phrase so creepy that Miss Ramona intends to use it on her students in order to instill fear. Luckily, Arnold busts out the window, gets help, and Arnold and Kimberly make it home to celebrate Mr. Drummond’s birthday. Because who doesn’t feel like celebrating after an attempted rape?