It’s time to delve into the stacks of yellowing pages of TV Guides from the year 1984 – specifically the October editions. It’s the Halloween Season, and there’s plenty of cheesy specials and godawful sitcoms to enjoy. Let’s have a look!
Yes, it definitely was “tough being a kid” on 1980s sitcoms. These kids were constantly being molested, kidnapped and scarred-for-life. For more on the surprisingly horrific nature of 80s “comedies” check out: TV Nightmares.
The Hoff in a creepy monastery? It’s sort of like The Name of the Rose… but retarded.
Wait.. that doesn’t look like George Clooney. Oh, yes – this is a different “ER”… the terrible “comedic” predecessor to the 90s drama, starring Elliott Gould (who, it’s important to note, would be declaring bankruptcy shortly thereafter).
It’s getting near Halloween, so they’re playing up the ghost bit…. spoiler alert: it’s not really a ghost.
The Dukes of Hazzard was never exactly high-brow entertainment, but a robot Rosco was insanely stupid, even by the show’s low standard. Suffice it to say, by 1984 it had long since jumped the shark.
And now a word from our sponsor:
Because murdering prostitutes is always hot! (Yeesh. Something tells me this wouldn’t pass the politically correct censors of today.)
Miami Vice was new in October 1984, but it didn’t take long before it was a phenomenon. Pastel colors, white jackets, cocaine, sports cars, to the tune of “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins… who could resist?
As someone who grew up with Bill Cosby – from I Spy to Fat Albert to The Cosby Show – I find what became of Cosby’s reputation and legacy tremendously sad… perhaps well deserved, but still sad.
These days we take for granted high-production television like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. So, it’s hard to appreciate the awesomeness of a show like V, which, for the time, seemed absolutely epic.
As today, it was election season in October 1984 – it was Reagan (going for a second term) versus Walter Mondale, the former vice president under Jimmy Carter. Reagan mopped the floor with Mondale (in electoral votes, but not by much in popular votes) in an election that was nowhere near as low-down and dirty as Trump-Clinton race.
Also take note that we have yet another sitcom kid in peril. Damn those 80s sitcom kids were in a perpetual state of horrific tragedy!
It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, a Halloween classic.. Garfield in the Rough, not so much.
I wonder if “The City Killer” is any relation to TJ Hooker’s “Boulevard Strangler”?
Dear God, everywhere this woman went, someone dies! My advice to you: if you see Angela Lansbury coming, run in the opposite direction as fast as your little legs will carry you.
Another glorious TJ Hooker advert for October ’84. The flames under the exclamation mark are slightly different than before – but most definitely still HOT!
In that classic episode of Community, the professor poses the question to his “Communication Studies” class: “Who’s the Boss?”… to which Abed replies: “Angela”. Thus igniting perhaps the most important debate of our time: Who really was the boss? Angela, Mona or Tony? Talk among yourselves.
Three years after the premier of Elvira’s Movie Macabre, she was everywhere on TV in 1984 – from The Tonight Show to The Fall Guy. For more pictures and information on Elvira that you could dream of, check out Elvira: An Illustrated History of the Mistress of the Dark.
Well, it’s time to step away from Joan Collins’ giant puffy shoulder pads, and end our tour of October 1984. Cheers!
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