Did The Cosby Show become dated the moment Roseanne went on the air

[TMC]

To put things into perspective, The Cosby Show was about a family where the dad was always right, the mom and dad always had wise and pithy advice for their kids (or a funny joke), where the kids recognized the wisdom of their parents and where no one ever really made a meaningful mistake. In essence, The Cosby Show was the epitome of happy family sitcom to that point.

Roseanne when it first came on in 1988 however, blew it up (as did The Simpsons and you can argue, Married...with Children). The Conners in contrast to the Huxtables, were a family that featured people who didn't like each other at times, were ignorant and flawed and made bad decisions. Also as partially a consequence of those decisions, the Conners didn't have a great life - and yet they were also a family.

This is probably why Roseanne seems to hold up better and is funnier than The Cosby Show because it addressed much harsher realities.

[robby76]

Roseanne definitely signalled the end of the wholesome 80s. You can't fault it really as it was probably more true to life. The whole vibe in 1988 had changed and all the feel good tv shows were beginning to get too formulaic. A change was inevitable.

For me the Cosby Show in later seasons just got a bit dull. I think Denise leaving home was a huge impact on the whole family dynamics. And then Rudy stopped becoming cute lol - again can't be helped.

[Janice Johnson]

I remember someone saying something like "Cliff completely let Claire boss him around as if she were his mother, not his wife. She walked all over him and he acted subservient to him. She treated him like a child not an adult who was in fact older than her. I found it kind of unrealistic. I found the marriage between Roseanne and Dan realistic. Sure Roseanne yelled at Dan but Dan yelled at her too. That's the real world I grew up in.

[Janice Johnson]

Originally Posted by robby76

Roseanne definitely signalled the end of the wholesome 80s. You can't fault it really as it was probably more true to life. The whole vibe in 1988 had changed and all the feel good tv shows were beginning to get too formulaic. A change was inevitable.

For me the Cosby Show in later seasons just got a bit dull. I think Denise leaving home was a huge impact on the whole family dynamics. And then Rudy stopped becoming cute lol - again can't be helped.

Keshia Knight Pulliam was beginning to go through an awkward ugly phase around 1988. She wasn't as pretty as say 1984/1985 season.By 1990 she was becoming even more ugly. In 1991 she began to start looking pretty again. In the episode where she wants to go to a teen club she is kind of pretty and the episode where she is rebelling against Clair and Cliff she looks pretty too.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by robby76

Roseanne definitely signalled the end of the wholesome 80s. You can't fault it really as it was probably more true to life. The whole vibe in 1988 had changed and all the feel good tv shows were beginning to get too formulaic. A change was inevitable.

For me the Cosby Show in later seasons just got a bit dull. I think Denise leaving home was a huge impact on the whole family dynamics. And then Rudy stopped becoming cute lol - again can't be helped.

Just about every other popular sitcom from the '80s pre-Roseanne particularly sold the notion of the parents as moral and behavioral paragons who always had the right answers. Notice that many of the fathers back then: Jason Seaver, Cliff Huxtable, Steven Keaton, Danny Tanner, George Papadopolis, and Philip Drummond had professions as good communicators or caretakers/counselors of some kind.

[Furienna]

To be honest here, I have to take the old "Roseanne was more realistic than any other sitcom" claim with a big grain of salt. Because it wasn't true to everybody's reality. Did it show us a different kind of family than what many other TV shows did? Yes, maybe. But if you come from a middle class family, I guess that you would rather relate to things like "The Cosby Show" or "Family Ties". And if you were a rich kid, "Fresh Prince" and "The Nanny" would be your thing. "Roseanne" was for the working class/white trash crowd.

Of course, I have always managed to enjoy different shows about different social classes. As a matter of fact, it is very interesting to see their varying points of view. But I won't say that either one is more or less realistic than the other. Because in the same way as there are different kinds of families in real life, there are different kinds of families in Sitcom Land. Some will be successful and well-educated, others will be struggling uncouth slobs. And many will be somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. But they all exist and are realistic to some people out there.

[robby76]

Originally Posted by Furienna

To be honest here, I have to take the old "'Roseanne' was more realistic than any other sitcom" claim with a big grain of salt. Because it wasn't true to everybody's reality. Did it show us a different kind of family than what many other TV shows did? Yes, maybe. But if you come from a middle class family, I guess that you would rather relate to things like "The Cosby Show" or "Family Ties". And if you were a rich kid, "Fresh Prince" and "The Nanny" would be your thing. "Roseanne" was for the working class/white trash crowd.

Very true actually - my family in the 80s was probably slightly above middle class. So yes I didn't relate to Roseanne or Married with Children, but back then that never crossed my mind. If the show was funny I'd watch it. I think my point that people were over the safe wholesome comedy still stands. Some storylines had been done to death by all the wholesome family sitcoms. It was time for something new... good or bad.

[Furienna]

Originally Posted by robby76

Very true actually - my family in the 80s was probably slightly above middle class. So yes I didn't relate to Roseanne or Married with Children, but back then that never crossed my mind. If the show was funny I'd watch it. I think my point that people were over the safe wholesome comedy still stands. Some storylines had been done to death by all the wholesome family sitcoms. It was time for something new... good or bad.

Indeed, formulas will never work forever. And when it starts to get stale, you have to shake things up.

[Donthe2nd]

Have we forgotten about Full House, which came out about the same time as Roseanne? That was even more idealistic than the Cosby show and it lasted for 8 years. That show I think was the last show that featured a happy functional family as opposed to the more dysfunctional families like the Conners and the Bundys. Rudeness is funny to a point but I have to confess I would sometimes watch FH as an escape, when I wanted to feel like everything was fine.

[Furienna]

No, I actually did not forget about "Full House". I was going to mention it earlier on, but I somehow didn't. So let's do it now instead.

In a defence to "Full House", I don't believe that it was as idealistic as some people say it is. Oh sure, you can see the Tanners as a happier and more functional family than the Connors (even if all the three men had their quirks). And yes, the show in general was cheesy enough to almost be a kids show. But in the same way as "Roseanne" is not realistic to every family, neither is "Full House" too idealistic all the time. After all, the girls had lost their mother when she was killed by a drunk driver, and Michelle was just a baby at that point, so she actually can not remember her own mother. And that is a surprisingly dark premise to what otherwise was a very light-hearted family sitcom. And there also were episodes about tougher issues, like how an old grandfather suddenly died during a visit in the Tanner household, Alzheimer's disease, eating disorders and child abuse.

And in a way, you can see the Tanners as less traditional than the Connors. Because you have the Tanner sisters being raised by a single father and two uncles, while the Connor kids were raised by a (mostly) happily married mother and father. So that is also a thing to consider.

[Yong Fang]

I don't know if the Huxtables were really that much of a "happy family" at times. All of the children, especially the three middle ones caused trouble at some point of another. There is one clip of an episode where Vanessa was a teen and was caught running away to a rock concert in Maryland. The parents picked her up and coming into the house, Claire was literally going to beat Vanessa's ass, and Bill had to physically hold her back.

Claire was a witch. Maybe this is why Bill Cosby liked her so much.

[Furienna]

Originally Posted by Yong Fang

I don't know if the Huxtables were really that much of a "happy family" at times. All of the children, especially the three middle ones caused trouble at some point of another. There is one clip of an episode where Vanessa was a teen and was caught running away to a rock concert in Maryland. The parents picked her up and coming into the house, Claire was literally going to beat Vanessa's ass, and Bill had to physically hold her back.

Claire was a witch. Maybe this is why Bill Cosby liked her so much.

I agree. But we still were supposed to see Cliff and Claire as awesome parents, just because they were wealthy and successful.

[favoriteshow]

I remember growing up watching Roseanne. My mom didn't like it because it showed the kids talking back to the parents and a level of disrepect. Was it realistic? Maybe - kids have fights with their parents, but my mom probably didn't like that it gave the OK for kids to be talk back.

Everyone probably figured Married With Children was exaggerated and obviously unrealistic.

But like Roseanne, it was the new type of family sitcom. But Fox at the time was the new and edgy network, trying to push limits.

I think the first five seasons of both shows are the best seasons. Interestingly enough, my mom was fine watching Roseanne when it was revived last year (before she was fired from her show).

[GSU2004]

Originally Posted by TMC

To put things into perspective, The Cosby Show was about a family where the dad was always right, the mom and dad always had wise and pithy advice for their kids (or a funny joke), where the kids recognized the wisdom of their parents and where no one ever really made a meaningful mistake. In essence, The Cosby Show was the epitome of happy family sitcom to that point.

Roseanne when it first came on in 1988 however, blew it up (as did The Simpsons and you can argue, Married...with Children). The Conners in contrast to the Huxtables, were a family that featured people who didn't like each other at times, were ignorant and flawed and made bad decisions. Also as partially a consequence of those decisions, the Conners didn't have a great life - and yet they were also a family.

This is probably why Roseanne seems to hold up better and is funnier than The Cosby Show because it addressed much harsher realities.

The Cosby Show did disrupt the previous era of shows like Gimme A Break and Diff'rent Strokes where it showcased an affluent black family instead of black kids being raised by a wealthy white man (Diff'rent Strokes) or a black housekeeper raising white children (Gimme A Break). It also is credited by some TV historians of reviving the sitcom concept as many networks were finding less and less hits along with opening the door for black centered casts that lasted well up into the 2000s.

However, as the family friendly 1980s came to a close, the 1990s was more about realism instead of fantasy and fiction. Michael Moye, the creator of Married with Children stated his motivation behind MWC was it was more accurate of American families that showed dysfunction but underlying love. While MWC was more on the fantasy side, Roseanne was more realistic of showcasing a working class white family sort of like the white version of Good Times so to speak. There weren't happy endings always on Roseanne and that's how real life was.

The Simpsons also pushed back on Cosby as well and Fox started running the series against the show. While Cosby was at 24 in the final season and even saw itself beat out by its spin-off A Different World, Cosby himself knew things were changing and wanted to go out on top which worked out well as it didn't run out of gas or steam to the point it became an irrelevant TV series. I believe the show could have probably lasted two more seasons and gotten the ax.

[GSU2004]

Originally Posted by robby76

Very true actually - my family in the 80s was probably slightly above middle class. So yes I didn't relate to Roseanne or Married with Children, but back then that never crossed my mind. If the show was funny I'd watch it. I think my point that people were over the safe wholesome comedy still stands. Some storylines had been done to death by all the wholesome family sitcoms. It was time for something new... good or bad.

My family could relate to Cosby more than Roseanne, Roc, or even South Central but like you said, times were changing as a society and the viewership got what they wanted. Producers go in the direction of the market and a concept like Cosby was getting stale.