Tuesday TV Touchbase: TV From the 1990's

Today's Tuesday TV Touchbase  succumbs to the inevitable blog theme for the month, November Nineties.

What the heck was I watching in the 1990's?

A lot of cartoons, for starters.  

Steven Spielberg's animated Warner Bros. shows took up way too much of my attention for a man who entered his 30's in that decade.  

• Tiny Toon Adventures may have started as a modern kids spin on classic Warner Bros.  but it was subversive enough to appeal to adults. Any show that features animated segments set to the music of They Might Be Giants is just the kind of weird to appeal to my arrested development brain.
• Animaniacs leaned hard on the subversive with the Warner Brothers (and the Warner sister Dot) who were...   monkeys? mice? monkey mice? malformed mutant monkey mice men (and women)?  This was the show that gave us a parody of a Martin Scorcese gangster movie in the form of Good Feathers. And Tom Bodett's Good Idea/Bad Idea. And of course Pinky & the Brain.   
• Freakazoid was a super hero series that relied heavily on parody, satire, pop culture references and a total obliteration of the 4th wall.  

Freakazoid creators Bruce Timm and Paul Dini were a bit more serious about their other big super hero series, Batman the Animated Series which used the best of the Batman comics as source material (such as Ra's al Ghul by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams) to create a unique and viable world for hard core fans of the Darkknight Detective.  Besides giving the world the best Batman performance (from the late great Kevin Conroy), the show also gave us Mark Hamill as the Joker.  

 

I was also getting my sci-fi geek on in the 1990's with Star Trek: The Next Generation and later Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  While Next Gen began in the 1980's, it was in the '90's that the show really hit it's stride in terms of quality of writing and production.   As a successful drama in first run syndication (instead of being on a network), it inspired a number of shows that came out during the 1990's to cash in on first run syndication. 

A couple of shows I followed in syndication were Highlander: The Series (the adventures of an immortal Scotsman but not the immortal Scotsman from the movie series) and Forever Knight  (a vampire who is also a police detective. This show had the most depressing series finale EVER!)   

I don't think there are any first run syndication dramas anymore. Any show that does not go to a network goes to cable and more likely these days a streaming service. 

The '90's decade was big for a lot of sitcoms that I watched.  Besides Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld, there was Mad About You with Paul Reiser and Helen Hunter as big city professionals who make a go at being married. My idea for a spin off would have the characters get divorced and rename the show Mad At You. (Ha.<pause>. Ha.)  

There was my long term crush Lea Thompson in Caroline in the City which I've recently rewatched some episodes on Paramount+.   

One of my favorite shows of the decade that sadly gets forgotten is NewsRadio set at a fictional all news radio station in New York City.  The show starred Dave Foley (my favorite cast member from Kids In the Hall) and Maura Tierney.  The show features very funny performances from Phil Hartman which casts an unfortunate pall over the show when you know of the real life tragedy that ended Phil's life.  

My wife was a fan of Home Improvement and Coach which I watched with her as I found them genuinely funny at the time.  She also watched Full House but that was her thing, not mine. 

The '90's were big for Married With Children which I can't say I was a fan of exactly but I was appreciative of the wicked satire underneath the show's broader farce.  (And Kelly Bundy! I'm a perv. I'll own it.) And this was the decade The Simpsons was last any good.  Which I know is sort of a knee jerk thing to say. To be honest, I just stopped seeking out the new episodes on Sunday night.  

 

Andrea was a fan of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place.  90210 was her thing but I did watch some MP episodes with her.  We also both watched Ally McBeal  together.  

There was a show that debuted on Fox in 1993 that Andrea and I watched but it sadly only lasted one season, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr , a western series (with some sci-fi mixed in)  starring Bruce Campbell. What the hell, we'll stick around for the show that came after, The X-Files which became our new jam long after Bruce Campbell was out of a job.  

The 1990's was perhaps the last hurrah of broadcast television. Even as late as that decade, networks were still programming 

new shows on Saturday like NBC's Golden Girls or over on CBS, shows like the western series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and the modern western/cop show Walker, Texas Ranger.  

There was a funny exchange on Friends where Monica is trying unsuccessfully to convince Rachel her dating life does not suck.  

Monica: I go out on lots of dates!

Rachel: Yeah? What happened last week on Walker Texas Ranger? 

Monica: Oh, it was a good one! Walker and Trivette are out to ... Oh my God! My dating life sucks! 

After the 1990's, networks realized that the audience actually home on Saturday was NOT the demographic they wanted and decided not spend money on new programming.  Now Saturday night is a wasteland of reruns, sports and true crime shows. 

The 1990's were a time of peak TV. 

Tomorrow, November Nineties tackles Doctor Who as we post about the infamous movie.

Next week the Touchbase returns with season 2 of Julia and also the 6th and final series of That Damned Thing AKA The Crown. Also coming up on the Touchbase, I have discovered a new Australia adjacent crime show called Deadloch.

AND I've got season 2 of Invincible to catch up on.   

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.