Were Tom Miller and Bob Boyett in retrospect, "hacks"

[TMC]

I've addressed Miller-Boyett Productions several times on here so I'll try not to go to deeply at the moment. Do you think that all of their shows (especially their post Paramount/Garry Marshall work at Lorimar), including Valerie/Valerie's Family: The Hogans/The Hogan Family don't hold up at all? Do you think that they may have lowered the bar for sitcoms for a generation?

[glickmam]

Originally Posted by TMC

I've addressed Miller-Boyett Productions several times on here so I'll try no to go to deeply at the moment. Do you think that all of their shows (especially their post Paramount/Garry Marshall work at Lorimar), including Valerie/Valerie's Family: The Hogans/The Hogan Family don't hold up at all? Do you think that they may have lowered the bar for sitcoms for a generation?

I most definitely think so.

[TV Guy]

They’re certainly not classics, but then again, there are a lot of shows from the 60s and 70s that were popular at the time and aren’t classics either. There are kids who grew up on Full House and Family Matters in the 80s and 90s and have a lot of affection for them. It’s the same way I have a lot of affection for the Brady Bunch, and people from a generation before think it’s terrible.

Did Miller/Boyett lower the bar? No. It was plenty low to begin with. They sure didn’t raise it though.

[Sonny Carson]

Originally Posted by TMC

I've addressed Miller-Boyett Productions several times on here so I'll try not to go to deeply at the moment. Do you think that all of their shows (especially their post Paramount/Garry Marshall work at Lorimar), including Valerie/Valerie's Family: The Hogans/The Hogan Family don't hold up at all? Do you think that they may have lowered the bar for sitcoms for a generation?

Well Full House is crap, Family Matters was only good the first four years, Step By Step became awful when it was ‘all about Cody’, I don’t care to see Perfect Strangers again, though it had it’s moments. Then you have Valarie/The Hogan Family which had the potential to be a classic 80s show with Valarie Harper on the show, became only decent with Sandy Duncan. I would say Miller-Boyett had a really average to not good track record!

[RetroGuy2000]

Yeah, they definitely didn't understand the importance of continuity.

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

Yeah, they definitely didn't understand the importance of continuity.

They need to go back to class.

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[Mr. Television]

No the bar was lowered this century.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

They need to go back to class.

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[TMC]

I posted this in the Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley forums previously. As far as Happy Days is concerned, Robert Boyett joined the production staff around 1978-79. Before this, the bulk of the production (besides Garry Marshall of course) on Happy Days was handled by Thomas Miller and Edward Milkis. I thought about this after watching the Rowdy Reviewer's "TV Trash" retrospective on Joanie Loves Chachi.

Not that it matters in regards to Happy Days but as the newly christened Miller-Milkis-Boyett Productions, no show outside of Bosom Buddies lasted for more than a single season. And even Bosom Buddies itself, only got two. And while it's hard to truly blame Robert Boyett for whatever went wrong with Joanie Love Chachi, bare in mind that Edward Milkis none the less, got bumped down to "Associate Producer" on that show.

Meanwhile, on Laverne and Shirley, many fans naturally point to Season 6, when the locale changed from Milwaukee to Los Angeles as when the show jumped the shark. But the show was already slipping creatively leading up that point, don't you agree? It was around this time that the humor seemingly became more juvenile, with more "awwww" moments, and more dramatic episodes. Meanwhile, they brought on writers like the aforementioned, Bob Boyett and Jeff Franklin, who perfected the family-friendly "laughter with heart" formula later used in Full House, Family Matters, etc.

[TMC]

I was reading a recent entry on Ken Levine's blog concerning the studio audiences on sitcoms applauding the main characters entrances. Somebody wrote in the comments section that the writing on the shows (which depending on whom you ask, was for the most part, writing is high school level deep) that Miller and Boyett helped produced, especially the ones that the worked on with Garry Marshall back at Paramount (i.e. Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork & Mindy) always pandered to the audience. You had actors reiterating catch phrases and mugging their lines for the audience that screamed their heads off everytime someone new entered the room. And it wasn't just the outsized cheering, yelling and screaming that greeted every cast member's entrance (it's one thing to do that when the Fonz enters, it's a whole lot other when Tom Bosley enters), but the sappy endings those shows liked to do, where the principals in that episode's story spelled out for the audience the big, important lesson they'd learned while sentimental music played in the background.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Sonny Carson

Well Full House is crap, Family Matters was only good the first four years, Step By Step became awful when it was ‘all about Cody’, I don’t care to see Perfect Strangers again, though it had it’s moments. Then you have Valarie/The Hogan Family which had the potential to be a classic 80s show with Valarie Harper on the show, became only decent with Sandy Duncan. I would say Miller-Boyett had a really average to not good track record!

The easiest way that I would describe shows under the Miller-Boyett umbrella like Full House and Family Matters (and maybe even Valerie/The Hogan Family for the sake of the discussion) is that they were corny. I'm not necessarily saying that those shows (especially from an adult perspective) didn't have any sort of entertainment or redeemable value. My point is that MB's shows specialized in cheesy, milquetoast, unchallenging humor and storytelling. Miller-Boyett always wanted their sitcoms to have "heart" in them, but they always felt so sappy and saccharine instead of authentic or genuinely earned.

[Heenan Fan]

I've never been a fan of Miller / Boyett. I thought most of their sitcoms were horrible.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by Heenan Fan

I've never been a fan of Miller / Boyett. I thought most of their sitcoms were horrible.

Yes, and as time went on, they got worse. Miller-Boyett never understood that their audiences cared about the characters. If you lose those characters, the audience gradually tunes out.

[someguy23475]

I briefly mentioned on the Happy Days forum how many more clunker episodes were made after Boyett joined. Valerie/Hogan Family and Family Matters are good in small doses. Step By Step is blah, and Full House is horrendous. I’ve seen very little of Perfect Strangers.

I have never liked Laverne and Shirley, even before Boyett. The characters were annoying, even on Happy Days.

[TMC]

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/mille...post-164693850

It's more than just the 3-camera setup, the timing of these shows was boiled down to a formula. The humor had a very christian slant, with themes of abstinence, marriage, say no to drugs, etc. permeating episodes beyond the "very special" variety. I saw an episode of Step by Step, as an example, which revolved entirely around two different interpretations of the adam and eve mythos.

Just on the random, I caught a bit of an episode of Step by Step (truTV is currently running a New Year's Eve/Day marathon) and there's an episode from 1993 called "The Marrying Dude". And point blank, there's a scene in the Lambert/Foster's living room where Cody tells his girlfriend that he thinks that a man and woman should be married before they start having sex. Of course, Cody only said it in a manner of which was unique and special to him, but you could still get the message as clear as day.