The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Agreed! I miss Charles Nelson, Brett and all the rest...and the "other" Gene (Rayburn) was unmatched!

Gene Rayburn was the original gangsta.

Game shows were a HUGE part of my childhood. You'd be surprised at how much you can learn by watching them. And I don't just mean Jeopardy either...
"I can Name That Tune in 7 notes!"
"Big bucks! Big bucks! NO WHAMMIES!"
"And your host, Tom Kennedy..."

Unfortunately, the time that I personally consider the glory days of game shows (the 70's and early 80's) will probably never be equaled again.

I mean, apart from the rotten corpse of The Price is Right, what game shows are even being MADE nowadays anyway?

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Gene Rayburn was the original gangsta.

Game shows were a HUGE part of my childhood. You'd be surprised at how much you can learn by watching them. And I don't just mean Jeopardy either...
"I can Name That Tune in 7 notes!"
"Big bucks! Big bucks! NO WHAMMIES!"
"And your host, Tom Kennedy..."

Unfortunately, the time that I personally consider the glory days of game shows (the 70's and early 80's) will probably never be equaled again.

I mean, apart from the rotten corpse of The Price is Right, what game shows are even being MADE nowadays anyway?

Well, we still have Family Feud, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune going after all these years.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Drew Carey was a fine host of Whose Line Is It Anyway? but whoever decided to let him near TPIR should be shot without trial.

Good point about Family Feud, though. No one will ever equal the comic genius of Richard Dawson but Steve Harvey is a worthy successor, I think. That's one reboot I can live with.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Man, I used to love watching game shows with my grandpa in the 70's. Wheel of Fortune, Price is Right, Hollywood Squares and Match Game. I still remember favorites Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Richard Dawson, Betty White and Fannie Flagg on the Match Game and Paul Lynde and George Gobel on Hollywood Squares. I think I may have been the only preteen fan of George Gobel lol.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The thing about game shows is that reality game shows filled the niche they used to inhabit. Cheap glitzy ways to have fun and show off celebrity faces. The drama-filled serial games are a bigger hook now than the 'Bunch of folks standing behind podiums answering things' style of game shows.

One of my favorite older shows is Columbo. I like that character driven word jousting a lot more than the special effects forensics driven detective shows they have now. Though mostly I like newer TV more than older TV because shows were mostly forced to be gimmicky and trite to be broadly accessible.

 

[Random_Spock]

Drew Carey was a fine host of Whose Line Is It Anyway? but whoever decided to let him near TPIR should be shot without trial.

Good point about Family Feud, though. No one will ever equal the comic genius of Richard Dawson but Steve Harvey is a worthy successor, I think. That's one reboot I can live with.

Steve Harvey has done a really good job with the Feud, that's for sure. It reminds me of the show that I grew up with .

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I like Steve Harvey's reaction to guesses with sexual connotation.

 

[Random_Spock]

I like Steve Harvey's reaction to guesses with sexual connotation.

I do too . He's just classic with those.

 

[HIjol]

Richard. Dawson.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

One of my favorite older shows is Columbo.

The man with the dirty mac who discovered America?

 

[HIjol]

Christobal? Are they still teaching that lie? Everyone knows Al Gore discovered Amer-...no, wait...

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Depends what your definition of 'Discover' is. The first humans there walked there through Alaska thousands of years ago, the first European was Lief Erikson, but Colombo was the first one within his 'known world' to verify it was there, so in that sense he did 'Discover' it.

And they really should teach Colombo in schools as the mass murdering slave driver he was, but that shouldn't take away from his brilliance as a detective. He didn't extract DNA off a knife handle, he talked the murderer into incriminating himself. Much more dramatically interesting.

 

[Christopher]

Depends what your definition of 'Discover' is. The first humans there walked there through Alaska thousands of years ago, the first European was Lief Erikson, but Colombo was the first one within his 'known world' to verify it was there, so in that sense he did 'Discover' it.

Except he went to his death believing he'd found a shortcut to the East Indies, which is why the islands he actually found are called the West indies. I'm not sure it makes sense to count someone as a discoverer if they never realize what it was they found. It was Amerigo Vespucci who first proposed it was a new continent, which is why it's named America. So if anything, Vespucci was the better detective. Christopher Columbus was less like his namesake and more like, say, Chief O'Hara on Batman.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Depends what your definition of 'Discover' is.

A credit card.

 

[HIjol]

A credit card.

With Cash-Back Points That Accrue With Every Charge You Make!™

 

[RJDiogenes]

Apparently, Antenna TV has no affiliates in Massachusetts at all. No It's About Time for me.

I was just starting to catch My Favorite Martian on late Sunday mornings on Cozi, but it looks like they moved it to weekday afternoons. That's one that I never saw much of in syndication before. Bill Bixby really had some good comedic chops.

Another of my favorites from childhood. Both Ray Walston and Bill Bixby were great, and they made a great team. I have the entire series on DVD.

I was hoping that Have Gun Will Travel would come back. Even though I have seen all of them, too.

That's a fantastic show. My favorite mainstream Western.

You ever notice the shows you want to see are always on one of these channels you don't get?

Indeed. There's 500 channels on there, but somebody else always has number 501.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

This was one of my favorite shows when I was in high school. I've always thought it would make a great Stargate plotline (it would surely fit into the SG-1 universe with little rewriting necessary):

Also a huge fan of the 80's Twilight Zone. Some eps were genuinely creepy:

And some were just hilarious:

 

[The Old Mixer]

This was one of my favorite shows when I was in high school. I've always thought it would make a great Stargate plotline (it would surely fit into the SG-1 universe with little rewriting necessary):

Not familiar with that one, but the intro was giving me flashbacks to this....

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Apparently, Antenna TV has no affiliates in Massachusetts at all. No It's About Time for me. .

I had never seen it before and searched the other night and there are a lot of full length episodes on Youtube.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I had never seen it before and searched the other night and there are a lot of full length episodes on Youtube.

Wow, it is. Thanks! I'm watching the first episode now. I haven't seen those sparkly rockets come down in fifty years.