Growing up in the early ’80s, as many kids, I loved watching television. The A-Team and Knight Rider were my favorites, followed by Remington Steele, The Fall Guy, Battlestar Gallactica, Moonlighting, and of course Magnum P.I. I watched my share of sitcoms too. I still have vivid memories of imitating Gary Coleman on Different Strokes – “Whatcha talking about, Willis?” Of course, I enjoy television these days too. Sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Frasier, along with shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives are some of what I manage to catch.
When I think about shows today compared to those of yester-years, there are a few things that come to mind. First, the production quality has improved tremendously. But this is true across the film/T.V. industry. Another thing that’s changed is the amount of violence and adult situations that are now shown on T.V. Think about a show like Knight Rider or The A-Team. They both had tons of action sequences with machine guns, explosions and missiles. But one rarely saw anyone actually die from the violence. In fact, no one died per se. Once in a while, someone did but it was always ‘delivered news’ and not something you saw on the screen. Same thing with the romantic/lustful moments. These days, audiences and censorboards are much more forgiving. The one other thing that I’ve noticed that may be subtle is that characters on T.V. shows used to be, more or less, black and white from a character perspective. In other words, they used to be good guys or bad guys. These days, characters are painted grey and clearly have their flaws, even if they’re the heros or heroines. Allowing for multi-dimensional characters definitely helps us, the audience, believe the stories that are told and recognize that everyone has their good and bad qualities.
