That's even worse. Even Bob only got one pizza that he had to share with his wife when he won the "loved one" challenge in his season (I forget how many years ago that was; he won the whole thing and Sugar came in second).
I disagree on 24 for sure. I started watching as of 2017 and I think it's the best show to hit television and it just gets better and better with every re watch. I love it and I introduce to others and they love it. I do agree of the 'studio audience' style sitcoms. I think they will fade.
What is timeless? Stories that illuminate the Human Condition. Stories about people that are rooted in our common humanity, rather than a particular time or place.
I think Stranger Things won't age well, after all the hype dies down. I thought it was a good, not amazing show.
I am really surprised that the current MacGyver is still going on for a second season. I thought it would be one season and out. It is quite different from the original MacGyver. Imho, new Mac doesn't compare well to original Mac. The ensemble cast, the constant inane banter between the characters, and the frat boy Mac doesn't work for me. But I suppose the new version fits with the time. I was able to see some episodes of the original Mac, on one of the cable channels, not too long ago. For the most part, I thought it aged well. There is something appealing about a character who can rely on his own wits and ingenuity to solve the challenge of the episode. Original Mac was a blue collar kind of guy, unlike the slick new Mac who has a posse to assist him.
Technology always gets outdated. There are no exceptions. Language and slang, clothing styles (or lack thereof), and so on, always will. So do societal attitudes. The test of time. Most shows are little more than time capsule fluff that would baffle audiences for the differences in technological advancements alone. Like "What's a typewriter?" or "Where's the monitor?" The shows that somehow remain watchable despite their trappings or shortcomings - those are truly special. And the next time camp goes back into fashion, all the dark and dreary "superhero" movies with the drab costumes that miss the point entirely, excessive deaths of innocents (that one Superman movie was so off-putting, are the makers sure they weren't doing Bizarro by accident? It was several years ago...), and other (travesties) to the genre, will be forgotten until the next time camp goes to the wayside and people want it gloom'n'doomy and psycho again...
Well, in one respect TOS has aged well-that optimistic streak in Star Trek. This still has a strong appeal.
The Walking Dead. I just have a hard time seeing anyone who will pick this up for syndication. Whether you think it's good or not, whether or not you think like me, that it's not as good as it once was, it's foul, gross, & violent. A lot of why it's been so hugely successful is that it's a groundbreaking leap in the adult nature of prime time tv. That will work against it in syndication. Who's going to put up reruns of that after Family Feud at 10 in the morning?
Anachronistic humour like this regularly irks, as what they are referring to rarely actually has enough cultural significance to make it past 25 years, let alone 250 years. The Orville has jokes about "Dora the Explorer", Shamu, "Friends", "Nancy Drew", "American Idol"... Doesn't feel honest, or funny, just cheap Hugo - not my kind of show
Star Trek Discovery. Why? Its serialised storytelling is very much of this period in TV history and its design and look is very evocative of current sci-fi on TV and in cinema. The show really needs to have exceptional writing (and therefore exceptional stories) to counterbalance what will quickly become a dated look (and I predict more dated than, say, DS9 looks now). The quality of the storytelling will dictate whether or not it stands the test of time.
Maybe the Orville universe is simply into retro entertainment. It's not all that different from Trek where ever earth holodeck program is from our past or present time period. Jason
I think the dating issue is more from the point of view of the audience rather than in universe. Case in point, one of my favourite shows is a British sitcom called Only Fools and Horses. It's still popular in reruns today, but if there is one thing that noticeably ages it it's the contemporaneous pop culture and poliitcal references of the time. They are very much of the time they were made (mostly 80s and early 90s) and some now simply fly over the heads of younger generations. .
I wonder though with so many shows and movies set in the past and with nostiga based shows like "Stranger Days" and the fact that younger people interact with older people if lot of the references might be understood if not fully appreciated in the same way as older viewers. I mean I never lived in the 60's but I get most hippie jokes and some of the 60's pop culture stuff though it does take some time to get a better feel of the past IMO. I feel like I understand the 60's better today then I did 20 years ago, even though what I understand is a shadow compared to people who lived during that time but even then those memories are not always reliable because everyone is unique and also because people experience different time periods at different times. I was a kid in the 80's so to me my memories of Reagan was that seem like a kind old man who made lame jokes. I had no idea that AIDS was something that was worst in the gay community than every other place. Heck I even though racism was something that was basically something relagated to the 60's that most people had gotten over. Also when racism did it exist it was over the top like the one dude who didn't want his daughter being friends with Gary Coleman in that very special "Different Strokes" episode and don't get me started on some of the confusion I had with the Bike shop episode. Jason
Big Bang Theory is already outdated and it hasn't even finished yet. Sitcoms tend to age badly, look at Friends now, some of the humour makes me cringe. Gay panic, transphobic jokes, Ross is a possessive man child. That show would not get made today in the same way. But it takes a special kind of comedy to age well because humour is naturally a very contemporary thing.
I still find some of the older comedies better than today's comedies. Comedies such as Blackadder II-IV, Yes Minister/Prime Minister to name a couple.
Perhaps I would adjust my remark to be 'sitcoms about contemporary young people tend not to age well'. Many sitcoms, probably most, focus on a group of young friends and their daily lives, and therefore naturally draw heavily on the views, politics, pop culture trends and in jokes of the day. This ages the show pretty quickly in a way mere setting doesn't - for example, I don't think The Fresh Prince has aged badly, even though it screams 90s in its costuming and set design, because it focused on more general topics such as family, class, racism, and society which applied outside of its immediate time. Similarly Yes Minister is clearly set and made in another time, but dealt with themes and issues which still resonate today. Ditto Blackadder, mostly, although they were definitely guilty of some cheap gender/homosexuality jokes along the way which fall a bit flat to modern sensibilities - as demonstrated by the cringeworthy Upstart Crow which returns to the same well without any of the accompanying charm or wit.
I think it's already aged very poorly. Some of that is because of the terrible lighting in Seasons 1 & 2 that tended to emphasize the crappy quality of the video that they were shooting on. Also, the first couple seasons have a very tentative feeling, like they didn't know how far they could go with some of the sci-fi stuff. The later seasons felt much more confident. As far as Star Trek, I think it's weird how the original series has aged better in the last 50 years than The Next Generation has in the last 30. Season 1 TNG especially. I keep thinking of "Haven" and how we're supposed to think that one blonde alien woman is so beautiful but all I can do is retch as the awful frizzy hair. Then there was all the swearing & sex references in Season 1 which felt really out of place next to later seasons. A lot of the pop culture jokes from early seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have aged so poorly that I really have no idea what they're talking about. They're already far less common than they were in their Must-See-TV heyday 20 years ago. I dunno. When I was a kid growing up in the late-1980s & '90s, I felt like I absorbed a lot of pop culture stuff from well before my time, like references to Elvis & John Wayne & Richard Nixon and reruns of shows like The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, & M*A*S*H. They're not the kind of stuff that I would have sought out on my own but I watched them because that's what was on. Nowadays, I think the current younger generation has far less pop culture literacy because they can stream or download whatever they want and not have to digest other stuff just because it's what's on. I'm in an improv comedy troupe with a bunch of people of various ages and I'm often shocked at how little the college kids know, even on a broad stereotype level, about much of anything that's more than 20 years old (except for Star Wars). I thought that anyone who says they remember the '60s wasn't really there. Which perhaps explains all of the missing Doctor Who episodes from that era.
Yes Minister was rebooted and had its name changed to Veep. After previously being rebooted as a movie called In The Loop. Shows like this are an exception, I find. There are a few great comedies of that era. Most are very pat, formulaic and predictable. Blackadder is awesome but if we're being honest had some dumb things about it TURNIP TURNIP TURNIP TURNIP TURNIP. It's pretty rare in history for comedy and intelligence to collide. Yes, Minister and Blackadder are two of those cases. But now we have Silicon Valley and things like that.