Review

Five 90s shows that have aged badly – and one that’s still great

15/7/2023

Translation: Megan Cornish

Co-author: Martin Jungfer, Claudio Candinas, Anika Schulz, Richie Müller

If you grew up with TV in the 90s, you’ll know Al Bundy, Mitch Buchannon and the A-Team. But it’s likely your childhood heroes wouldn’t survive their first season today. Or would they?

This article is a crazy idea dreamt up during a fun evening of co-writing. We came up with the following list of TV series that flickered on CRT screens in the 90s and captivated us in the pre-Netflix age, but have aged so badly that they’d be painful to watch again today.

This idea fits the current situation in Hollywood perfectly. Actors recently went on strike, joining their writing colleagues. You can read why these two unions called a strike in this detailed report by our film and TV expert Luca Fontana:

Background information
Hollywood is now at a standstill: actors have joined the strike
by Luca Fontana

It’s already clear that a number of film and TV projects will be postponed indefinitely. So we could well run out of new things to watch pretty soon. What could be better then than remembering some favourites from childhood and adolescence and getting a good dose of nostalgia on your screen at home?

So, here’s a short, definitely not exhaustive list of 80s and 90s TV series that five members of the editorial team can’t watch anymore.

And one that’s aged like a bottle of 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

Baywatch

Oliver Fischer

Six men and six women (roughly) in their early to mid-20s. All (very) good-looking by average American standards. Scantily clad on the beach. Then add a simple story and bad dialogue. These are the ingredients for ~~porn~~ the plot of the most successful TV series of all time: Baywatch – a TV crime that had already failed in the 1980s before it began its triumphant march around the world in the 90s. Today, though, no one would dare to write something similar.

The fact that this success story exists at all is ultimately due to main character Mitch Buchannon and the actor who played him, David Hasselhoff. After the first season flopped, Baywatch was cancelled. Hasselhoff then took over the rights with his own production company, going on to produce the 22 episodes in seasons 2 to 11.

Despite its resounding success, the series was famously underfunded. And let’s be honest: that’s apparent in every single episode. The «Lexikon des Internationales Films» (now filmdienst.de) (website in German) describes the pilot as: «a shallow potpourri with no surprises, which flows with the same old stereotypical form and content.» But the series doesn’t owe its success to good storylines; it’s because of the slow-motion shots of the actresses (and actors) jogging across the beach in Malibu in the skimpiest of bathing suits. And that was mainly due to a lack of money. Because episodes would often be too short due to a lack of funds, a few additional «running along the beach» slow-motion sequences were cut into the story, creating the distinctive feature of the series.

The casting criteria for the actors in question were also extremely simple: slim, big-busted women under 25; fit men under 30; white but tanned men and women. While the hashtag #oscarsowhite shook the Academy’s world in 2015, in the 90s no one saw a problem with the world’s most successful TV series having an over 90 per cent white cast.

What can be credited to Baywatch with all its 90s trash aesthetics is that men and women were cast to a comparable degree as freely interchangeable objects and were replaced after 1-3 seasons. And when it came to the lifeguards’ achievements – because that’s what the series was about – men and women were actually mostly equal.

A series that’s written so badly, produced so lousily and cast so uniformly wouldn’t even get a pilot made today. And rightly so. This was also convincingly demonstrated in 2017 by the moderately successful and less than moderately good Baywatch film. Not even as a parody and carried by the impressively broad shoulders of Dwayne «box office draw» Johnson, it was still able to ~~inspire~~ amuse the masses.

Home Improvement

The definition of toxic masculinity: Tim Taylor and Al Borland.
Source: ABC

Claudio Candinas

Take a talentless DIYer with a hunger for recognition and a distinct passion for hot rods, enrich his life with a woman who gave up her studies for the happiness of the family, give them three healthy, (hyper)active sons and set them up in a house in good ol’ Motown Detroit.

What sounds like a conservative politician’s dream managed to unite millions of people around the world in front of the TV week after week in the 90s. Home Improvement, the sitcom about lead actor Tim Allen, delivered US broadcaster ABC fantastic ratings and also managed to get laughs from a staunch RTL aficionado. All it takes is a handful of home improvement accidents, a heaped spoonful of toxic masculinity and the odd mum joke or two.

In his role as the clumsy «DIY king», lead actor and stand-up comedian Tim Allen doesn’t do much episode after episode other than take a back seat in household and family matters and regularly criticise his wife Jill’s cooking skills. Speaking of speaking: Tim regularly seeks advice outside the family from his neighbour Wilson. Because it’d be a bit weird to talk about problems and feelings with your own wife, wouldn’t it?!

In his own home improvement show «Tool Time», Tim regularly turns things up a notch – literally. No chainsaw is too loud, no leaf blower is too powerful, no voltage is too high. Fittingly, Tim often loses control of what he actually wants to demonstrate on the show. Swiss Accident Prevention Authority employees probably narrowly avoided heart attacks episode after episode in front of their TVs. As if watching Tim’s recklessness with heavy duty tools wasn’t painful enough, he dismisses any well-intentioned help from his sidekick Al Borland with a joke about his mother, his flannel shirts or his role as an assistant.

Can you do that? No! Can you laugh about it? The ratings say you can, at least from 1991 to 1999.

Even though Home Improvement is undoubtedly one of the most successful sitcoms of the 90s, I’d ask whether this format has aged well and answer with Al Borland’s famous catchphrase: «I don’t think so, Tim…»

Married... with Children

By the way, leading actress Fran Drescher is currently president of the Screen Actors Guild and right at the centre of strike action.
Source: CBS

Martin Jungfer

From 1992, I followed the activities of the Bundy family on German television on RTL for eleven seasons and an incredible 259 episodes. The harmless-sounding original title Married… with Children, became «A terribly nice family» in the German translation. What sounded like harmless entertainment was biting satire to the point of pain, and often beyond.

Head of the family Al Bundy, a shoe salesman by trade, was a perennial loser whose life consisted mostly of insulting those around him. This bordered on bullying, whether it was aimed at pretty but dim (and blonde, what a shock) daughter Kelly, or Bud, his teenage son who, although clever, was notoriously unsuccessful with women. The marriage between Al and his wife Peggy provides scenes for which the term second-hand embarrassment could have been invented. She doesn’t want to work, but she does want to have regular sex with her husband, which he enjoys far less than chasing other younger women, without ever actually cheating on Peggy.

Basically, Married… with Children is a collection of politically incorrect gags. And from a time when the boundaries were perhaps a little looser. Persevering with the concept of only misogynist jokes and completely exaggerated clichés for so long – the series was only discontinued in 1997 – is ~~almost~~ an achievement. Because there’s no character development, no recognisable story and no deeper level of relationships between the main characters. Instead, stereotypes, egoism and parasitism are celebrated in predictable gags, which today would have curtailed it after the second season at the latest.

Honourable mention: in the 2000s and 2010s, Al Bundy actor Ed O’Neill pulled off the masterstroke of playing the head of a TV family again in sitcom Modern Family – and rectifying everything that was wrong and inappropriate about Al Bundy and his clan. His character is stereotypical and cliché through and through, but he’s so disarmingly honest and personable that at times it’s hard to believe you’re watching the former Al Bundy.

The Nanny

Four times the toxic masculinity.
Source: NBC

Anika Schulz

The plot of The Nanny is as simple as it is trashy: the nanny, Fran Fine, loses her entire livelihood when her lover and boss (never f*** the company!) cheats on her with her high school rival and kicks her out. By chance, she gets a job as a nanny for the widowed, filthy rich and of course incredibly good-looking Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield and moves into his luxury mansion.

From then on, it’s all about the classic Cinderella story. Fran falls in love with her boss (again!) and he falls in love with her too. Secretly, of course, because as a well-mannered businessman from New York’s upper class you don’t start seeing your nanny in the 90s. That just doesn’t work. So, Fran does what women supposedly did back then when they wanted to get a man: she throws on tight clothes that barely cover her bum, keeps her age a secret and parades herself in front of his desk. Of course, it works and they have their first kiss quite quickly, which initially has no consequences because Sheffield is too uptight.

The whole thing culminates in him confessing his love to her when their plane almost crashes, but he takes it back shortly afterwards. Today we’d call that a toxic relationship and recognise elements of gaslighting. Nevertheless, Fran ignores all the red flags, ploughs on and marries Sheffield. At the end of the sixth season, their twins are born.

And before die-hard The Nanny fans grumble that I’d write the CBS series badly, let me mention something positive for the sake of completeness. Fran may be resistant to advice when it comes to men. But her heart’s in the right place, which benefits Sheffield’s children. She gives shy Maggie more self-confidence, solitary Gracie starts to enjoy social things and rowdy Brighton morphs into a Harvard student thanks to Fran’s empathy. But as there are stereotypes here too – the girls are too nice, the boy too wild – the series would no longer work today for that reason alone. Even if Maggie’s and Gracie’s development almost exudes a hint of emancipation.

The A-Team

The Gen Z of the 1990s: the main cast of Seinfeld.
Source: NBC

Richie Müller

Each episode lasted 45 minutes – and the TV room in my boarding school was always packed when they were on. The A-Team had cult status. The four Vietnam War veterans fleeing the military police was a huge draw for us at the time.

The plot? Very simple: the A-Team helped other people in need. Hannibal was the group’s leader. He accepted assignments that the friends often carried out in remote areas. Their adversaries tended to be clumsy gangs of thugs – working on behalf of a shady businessman.

Charmer Face sourced what they needed with his characteristic smooth-talking, bagging the client’s daughter while he was at it. At the time we thought it was great. There was whistling and jeering in the TV room. Today I’d call it a clumsy move. The group also included Murdock, a howling and slightly mad pilot. He and B.A. Baracus had a kind of love-hate relationship. There was always some spat between them.

But who was B.A.? He was tall, muscular and dark-skinned. For us, he was the star of the group. Always sporting cheap gold bling, plus his iconic mohawk. He wore a leather weight-lifting belt and had strong upper arms, as thick as a professional cyclist’s thighs. And he had a terrible fear of flying. He was so popular at the time that a fellow boarding school pupil once gave me the same haircut during our lunch break. Let’s just say it wasn’t a good look for me… Luckily there were no smartphones back then.

Each episode ended with a bang, with the guns never having to be reloaded. People, cars and other things flew through the air in slow motion – multiple times. Any deaths or injuries? Nope, never. Anyone who watches an episode today can no longer understand the magic of that time. It looks too cheap, too bad and too clumsy in 2023.

And yet, the NBC series ran from 1983 to 1987, and it was one of the most successful American TV series at the time. According to the Wikipedia entry, the first of the five seasons had an average of 16.7 million viewers.

Last but not least, we’re moving away from the soured TV memories of our childhoods and leaving you with a gem of TV history:

Seinfeld

Oliver Fischer

Besides all the series from the 90s that have aged really badly (and there are still so many more) there’s one – of course not just one – that’s still great today. As current as it was then, timelessly contemporary, funny, politically incorrect and (almost) without silly platitudes: Seinfeld!

The plot about four chaotic, neurotic, eccentric friends in Manhattan including relatively successful stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld – who plays himself and is a co-creator of the series – revolves around almost nothing. This is even referenced in a multi-part storyline in Season 4, when Jerry and his buddy George Costanza produce a pilot episode for a series for NBC with the concept «a show about nothing».

The drivers of the stories aired over 9 seasons from 1989 to 1997 are Jerry’s notorious turnover of women – there are 171 episodes and he has a similar number of girlfriends.
George’s laziness and reluctance to work and his associated inability (or unwillingness) to keep a job for a long time are on the same level. A constant source of chaotic storylines is also provided by the more than questionably crazy business ideas and whims of Jerry’s permanently unemployed, borderline eccentric neighbour Cosmo Kramer. And last but definitely not least, there’s Elaine Benes – the only woman in the quartet – whose confrontational, insensitive way of dealing with everything and everyone regularly results in faux pas that get the group into trouble.

Admittedly, there are one or two justified accusations that can definitely be levelled at Seinfeld. The cast is anything but diverse: mostly male – except for Elaine and the endless conveyor belt of short-term girlfriends – and primarily white.

The series and its characters don’t take themselves seriously at all and are often exaggerated to the point of caricature. So, accusations that it’s discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate towards certain communities would be wrong. Yes, the characters are anything but sensitive to each other, they’re sarcastic to the point of being hurtful, neurotic to the point of second-hand embarrassment, and aimless and irresponsible beyond measure. But they’re also always funny and charming, and the Seinfeld format is ultimately stand-up comedy-turned-series. And, by that definition, it’s a good job well done.

From today’s perspective, the constant search for an even better relationship, the unwillingness or inability to pursue a steady job – or even deliberately avoiding it – or a constant lack of commitment as a major constant in the lives of the four main characters come across as a parody of the allegedly unwilling to commit, erratic, always-looking-for-a-better-opportunity, work-shy Generation Z.

Think we’ve missed any 80s and 90s series that have aged badly? Let me know in the comments. Or are there any programmes – other than Seinfeld – that you still like watching? We’d love to know.

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Oliver Fischer

Teamleader Editorial

Oliver.Fischer@digitecgalaxus.ch

Globetrotter, hiker, wok world champion (not in the ice channel), word acrobat and photo enthusiast.

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