The 1980s was certainly a golden age when it came to television. Some truly great shows were released during the decade of neon spandex and hair big enough that God could almost touch it. However, looking back at the television landscape of the decade through a modern lens, you can't help but ask yourself, "they actually put this on the air?"
While some of the decade's best shows have certainly aged like fine wine, there are others that have turned into milk that has been left out in the sun. They're chunky, it's a bit sour, and they don't go down as easily as they did during their original run. From sitcoms that were built on punchlines that would be frowned upon today, to questionable power dynamics, we decided to dig in the crates to come up with shows from the '80s that have easily passed their expiration date. Without further ado, let's grab the antacid and dive in.
'Growing Pains' (1985–1992)
Image via ABCWhen you heard the theme "As Long as We Got Each Other," you knew you were going to be in for a cozy family experience with Growing Pains, or so we thought. Created by Neal Marlens, the show follows the Seaver family, in which the traditional gender roles of a household were swapped, with the father, Jason (Alan Thicke) staying at home to take care of their three children, and the mother, Maggie (Joanna Kerns), going back to work after 15 years of being a stay-at-home mom. During the mid-to-late '80s, Growing Pains was a ratings hit for ABC, and was a staple of the decade's sitcom landscape; but, unlike its contemporaries, there were a number of things behind the scenes that fundamentally altered the show, and not in a good way.
The most obvious was star Kirk Cameron's religious pivot, who, in the later seasons, became a born-again Christian, and he began to demand that the script change to align to his newfound beliefs. All of a sudden, Cameron's Mike went from being a "lovable rebel" to a rigid "holier-than-thou" character that threw off the show's DNA. Then, there was the treatment of Tracey Gold, who portrayed Carol, Mike and Maggie's middle child. In real life, Gold was suffering from anorexia; but the writers continued to write "fat jokes" at the character's expense, which led to her being written out of most of the final season to seek treatment. The later seasons of Growing Pains were less of a cozy re-watch and more of a jarring experience that has aged the show poorly.
‘Small Wonder’ (1985–1989)
Image via Metroland Video ProductionsIn all honesty, it's actually quite a stretch to call Small Wonder a show that "aged poorly," because it was dated from the moment it premiered in syndication in 1985. Routinely called one of the "worst sitcoms of all-time" by critics, Small Wonder was a show that, in critics' eyes, was doomed to failure from the start. However, television viewers at the time loved the show, and it was a massive hit in syndication. However, looking back on the sitcom now, and the major flaws that were pointed out by critics are crystal clear.
For starters, Small Wonder feels like a show pulled out of the "bargain bin," with bad special effects and uninspired sets that made the show look terrible. Then there was the premise itself, which revolves around V.I.C.I. (Voice Input Child Indenticant), an android who takes the form of a little girl (portrayed by Tiffany Brissette). While Brissette played the part of an emotionless android child well, her monotone delivery gives off a very cold, creepy vibe. Add in the tasteless writing, numerous innuendos with children involved, and how the family treated the android child, and you have a sitcom that is basically spoiled rotten by today's standards. No wonder you can hardly find it on streaming.
'The Dukes of Hazzard' (1979–1985)
Image via CBSSometimes, when talking about TV shows that have aged poorly, you have to separate the impact from the intent, which is what we have to do while discussing The Dukes of Hazzard. Created by Gy Waldron, this CBS action comedy premiered in 1979, but it hit its zenith with audiences in the early '80s, where it was constantly ranked as one TV's most viewed shows. The series follows "the Duke Boys," Bo (John Schneider) and Like (Tom Wopat), who constantly evade the corrupt commissioner of Hazzard County, J.D. "Boss" Hogg (Sorrell Brook) in their 1969 Dodge Charger named "The General Lee."
One of the main issues with The Dukes of Hazzard was The General Lee itself, which had the Confederate flag painted on the roof. Back during its original run, the Confederate flag was seen as a symbol of "Southern rebellion" that was divorced from what it really stood for, as a symbol of white supremacy and offensive to African Americans. That alone makes The Dukes of Hazzard quite problematic, but this is where we have to separate the "intent" from the "impact." While most aspects of the show have become extremely dated by today's standards, there is a segment of older television viewers who see The Dukes of Hazzard as harmless escapism that wasn't aiming to offend anybody. While that may be true, the aspects of the show that were harmless back in the '80s — the flag, the cartoonish stereotype of southerners, and the objectification of women — are really problematic in today's culture and have made the show age very poorly.
'Charles in Charge' (1984–1990)
Image via CBSIn 1984, Who's the Boss changed the way we thought of the power structure within the home, with Tony Danza playing the housekeeper, and Judith Light as his boss. While the ABC sitcom has become a beloved classic, the same can't be said about a similar show on CBS, Charles in Charge. Created by Michael Jacobs and Barbara Weisberg, the sitcom stars Scott Baio as a 19-year-old college student who, in a bid to find room and board, becomes a live-in caretaker to three kids in New Jersey. While the premise made sense in the sitcom's first season, when the kids Charles (Baio) took care of were young; but it was in the later seasons that this became problematic, in which Charles was a caretaker for older children, and with the new family having a live-in grandfather, it didn't make any sense as to why Charles was present.
Then there's the disturbing behind-the-scenes allegations that were made against the show's star, with allegations of grooming, assault, and abuse occurring on the set of Charles in Charge. While these are just allegations, and Baio had strongly denied them over the years, they created a permanent dark cloud over the show. Much like Bill Cosby's legal troubles tarnished The Cosby Show's legacy, the allegations against Baio completely ruined the legacy of Charles in Charge, and few viewers look back at the show with nostalgic fondness.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz
Which Fictional Hospital
Would You Work Best In?
The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Ten questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey's Anatomy
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.
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02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview.
ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life.
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03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
How do you actually perform under extreme pressure? The worst shifts reveal things about you that the good ones never will.
AI narrow in — everything irrelevant falls away and I become completely focused on what's in front of me. BI lead — pressure is when I'm at my most useful, keeping everyone else on track while managing my own fear. CI feel it fully and work through it — I don't pretend the fear isn't there, I just don't let it win. DI get sharper — high stakes are clarifying. This is exactly the environment I think best in. EI hold it together in the moment and fall apart slightly afterwards — which I've made my peace with.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.
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06
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like.
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07
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.
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08
What kind of medical work do you find most compelling? What draws your attention when you walk through those doors matters.
AEmergency and trauma — I want to see everything, handle anything, and never know what's coming next. BGeneral emergency medicine — breadth over depth, keeping the whole machine running under impossible conditions. CSurgery — I want to be in the room where the most consequential thing happening is happening right now. DDiagnostics — the cases no one else can solve, the symptoms that don't add up, the answer hiding underneath everything. EWhatever needs doing — I'm a generalist at heart and I find something interesting in almost every patient.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours?
AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.
REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →
Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown. The Pitt doesn't romanticise the work — it puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away. You are someone who needs their work to be real, who finds meaning not in the drama surrounding medicine but in medicine itself, and who has made peace with the fact that this job will take from you constantly and give back in ways that are harder to name. You don't need the chaos to be aestheticised. You need it to be honest. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is exactly that — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential. County General is built on the shoulders of people who show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without requiring the job to be anything other than what it is. You care deeply about patients as individual human beings, you believe in the system even when it fails you, and you understand that emergency medicine at its core is about holding the line between order and chaos for just long enough. ER is television about endurance, and you have it.
Grey's Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. Grey Sloan is a hospital where the personal and the professional are permanently, chaotically entangled, and where that entanglement produces both the greatest disasters and the most remarkable saves. You are someone who feels things fully, who forms deep attachments to the people you work with, and who understands that the most extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection. It's messy here. You would not have it any other way.
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else. Not the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it — but the case as a puzzle, the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. Princeton-Plainsboro is a hospital that exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind, and everyone around that mind is there because they are smart enough and stubborn enough to keep up. You work best when the stakes are highest, when the standard answer is wrong, and when the only way forward is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you would do here.
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure, and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time. Sacred Heart is a hospital where the laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable — where a terrible joke can get you through a terrible moment, and where the most ridiculous people are also, on their best days, remarkably good doctors. You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field. You lean on the people around you and you let them lean back. Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job — and you are still very much in the middle of that process, which is exactly right.
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'Mr. Belvedere' (1985–1990)
Image via ABCFor six seasons in the mid-to-late '80s, viewers flocked to the living room to watch a posh English butler struggle to adapt to a suburban American household. Mr. Belvedere, which was adapted from Gwen Davenport's 1947 novel, follows the exploits of Lynn Belvedere (Christopher Hewett), a butler for the Owens family of suburban Pittsburgh. There is no question that Mr. Belvedere was a prime example of "comfort food TV" in the '80s, a sitcom that always played it safe and had that warm and fuzzy moral center. However, the very same tropes that made Mr. Belvedere so comforting and moralistic are what actually dates the sitcom horribly.
Sitcoms in the '80s are well-known for certain episodes that tackle serious issues. The "Very Special Episode" often dealt with themes such as drugs and other social issues at the time. Mr. Belvedere stands out as a sitcom that frequently aired "Very Special Episodes," and while they were seen as progressive at the time, when you re-watch these episodes today, they often come off as extremely preachy and superficial, which terribly dates the show. Also, because Mr. Belvedere played things safe, the sitcom feels very rigid in its tropes, especially when it came to the family the titular character cared for. The Owens family were often portrayed as chaotic and incompetent, the complete opposite to their sophisticated butler. This is where most of the show's comedy was sourced from, but by not allowing the characters to develop, Mr. Belvedere is very much a product of the decade; and as such, has aged quite poorly.
'Family Ties' (1982–1989)
Image via NBCAs we earlier stated with The Dukes of Hazzard, determining how poorly a show has aged comes down to "intent" and "impact," and this can also be extended to the classic NBC sitcom Family Ties. The brainchild of Gary David Goldberg, Family Ties details the changing social shift of the decade, from the cultural liberalism of the 1960s and '70s to the conservatism that would dominate the '80s. This was seen in the relationship dynamic between the parents, Steven (Michael Gross) and Elyse (Meredith Baxter) Keaton and their son, Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox). The parents were hippies in the '60s and still retain liberal attitudes, while Alex was a staunch young Republican and held conservative views.
It's within this formula that the "impact" of Family Ties could lead viewers to look back on the family sitcom in a poor light. The central hook, liberal parents trying to understand their conservative children, was a fresh concept during the decade, but it definitely lost its appeal with today's viewers, who don't see any overlap between liberal and conservative politics. It's almost like Family Ties is now a caricature of the political tension between the left and right, with the sitcom treating these differences as domestic squabble rather than ideological battle royale. This wasn't the intent of Family Ties, which aimed to detail the changing culture of the decade, but the impact is far different today, and, as good as this sitcom is, you can't help but notice just how poorly the show has aged.
'Bosom Buddies' (1980–1982)
Image via ABCIn today's TV landscape, shows take a nuanced approach when it comes to how society views gender and identity, but in the early 1980s, gender and identity were ripped for sitcom fodder. However, even from looking at Bosom Buddies through those lenses, this was a comedy that is the definition of spoiled milk. Starring a young Tom Hanks and the late Peter Scolari, Bosom Buddies follows two single men who dress as women in order to live in a hotel for women.
Dressing in drag to "solve" a housing issue was a very weird premise, and using drag as a means to an end is seen as very offensive to today’s audiences. By making the main characters dress in drag as the main punchline, it trivializes the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and women as a whole. Speaking of, Bosom Buddies relied heavily on an exaggerated portrayal of women. For example, when Hanks and Scolari were in their "female" personas, they were often clumsy and inept, which only reinforced the '80s stereotype that women didn't possess the same "intelligence" as men; and, as a bonus, the show's entire premise of men needing to keep up a "ruse" to infiltrate women's spaces is just downright creepy. While some may see Bosom Buddies as harmless, this sitcom was definitely a misfire.
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