Cosby Boned the Fish When...

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http://www.bonethefish.com/viewtopics.php?1289

Cosby is a situation comedy television series broadcast on CBS from September 16, 1996 to April 28, 2000. The television program starred Bill Cosby, Phylicia Rashad (who previously worked with Cosby in the 1984-1992 sitcom The Cosby Show). Madeline Kahn portrayed their neighbor, Pauline, until her death in 1999.

[Yong Fang]

This to me was a strange show since it was the Huxtable couple playing a different couple, which to me is the first time two actors played two different married couples. Maybe this show was in the alternate universe of The Huxtables.

Another interesting thing was that they only had one grown up child, soma lot of the dynamic was Cosby and Rashad and not a bunch of children and teens underfoot. Cosby's character here was pushed into retirement from working for an airline as a ground crew person, and was grumpy and not happy with his life, unlike Cliff Huxtable.

Madalyn Kahn made the show. Attractive, funny woman who died a tragic death at a relatively young age. The Huxtables did not have a hip white friend.

I remember this show now, but next to the NBC Cosby Show, this is more or less a forgotten TV series. I remember watching it, but forgetting a lot of details.

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https://web.archive.org/web/20070225...ptheshark.com/

• Other Thoughts:
  
  This is not the Cosby show. I think it is actually funny, unlike the Cosby Show, and I really think more people should pay more attention to the Cos'. I know that Kids Say the Darndest Things sucks, but this doesn't, and I also know that CBS is considered the network for geriatrics, but I'm 15, and I find Cosby funny.
  This jumped the second I realised it was just an American copy of One Foot in the Grave (UK) Kind of a Same character different actor thing. Just a lazy ripoff!
  2 very special, the drug episode, and the new school episode.
  This show never jumped. Cosby was the best. Of course, CBS had to cancel it just when I started watching it this year (it used to be on Mondays but I watched wrestling then) Unfortunately, CBS also canceled yet another one of my favorites on Wednesdays--Work With Me. And they wonder why they placed third among networks in 1999!
  It jumped the shark when they casted Philicia Rashad with Cos because it made the show literally look like a poor man's version of "The Cosby Show"
  When Madeline Kahn died, it broke my heart. She was the best thing about this show.
  When Madeline Kahn died. She was the best thing that ever happened to that show, and I still cry when I see her in reruns
  This show was a letdown, especially after Mr. Cosby's great 1984-1992 series. Even with him, Phylicia Rashad, and the late great Madeline Kahn, this show could never rise above mediocre at best. Avoid the reruns and watch "The Cosby Show" instead.
  This show was actually funny when it debuted. Hilton was kind of a mean old curmudgeon. The stories had a lot of funny "wacky misunderstanding" humor. (The daughter's boyfriend thinks that Cosby is a hitman out to kill him, Cosby on a rocky plane flight with William Shatner, etc.) It suddenly got all touchy-feely, becoming like the Cosby Show. Hilton become a nice old guy, and suddenly there were a bunch of kids hanging around. It got that slow, boring "Cosby Show" pace, too. Cosby making stupid faces and gibberish sounds, he Doug E. Doug just saying "tiny wine!" over and over.
  I'll pick the drug and video game episodes as when COSBY jumped. A poster above already commented on the drug story, so I'll refrain from doing so here. The video game episode was lame because it assumed that ALL kids who play video games are bad students or lazy juveniles. Not true (and that STUPID lecture with the "Plurrr! plurrr!" sound effects belongs in the paper shredder). But overall, IMHO, COSBY was more elitism from a once-funny comedian. People on the "COSBY SHOW" board have complained about the inferred message there that any young adult who didn't go to college or become a "professional" was looked upon as a "slacker" or "not living up to their potential." This was true. Whenever SONDRA, DENISE, THEO, etc., wanted to try something outside of their college-oriented plans, CLIFF and CLAIRE got cold, distant and gave them a bad attitude. The episode where CLIFF mockingly makes a "salute" gesture while holding the door for THEO after CLAIR kicks him out for living with a girlfriend makes me sick to this day, as does CLIFF's vile "you're gonna pay me back" crapola delivered to ELVIN when he and SONDRA chose to open a health food store. It's not like CLIFF (an obstretician) needed the money! But I digress. On COSBY, Bill is HILTON LUCAS. His daughter, ERICA, decides to become a chef instead of being a lawyer? Yup, you guessed it--a cold, distant "I'm gonna take potshots and make smart-alecky wisecracks and rub it in that I'm disappointed unless you do things my way" attitude. If cooking's what makes her happy, why shouldn't she do it? GRIFFIN lives with the LUCAS'? Uh huh, you got it. Constant badgering from HILTON along the lines of "I have (or had) a job, I'm gonna kick you out if you don't do things my way, if you eat anything here I'm gonna bitch about how you're eating 'MY food in MY house' that you 'didn't pay for,' yada yada yada..." GRIFFIN was a good guy even if he was directionless--for God's sake, Cosby (or HILTON): why don't you just share your food with the guy without giving him this played-out Republican crap about "you owe me, I expect to be 'paid back' for this", etc. It's not as if HILTON and RUTH (a surprisingly less shrill Phylicia Rashad) were going to eat ALL the food in the fridge themselves anyway. But again--what can you expect from a comedian who went from rhapsodizing on the joys of childhood as a younger man (on his classic '60s' comedy albums and FAT ALBERT) to, as a parent in the '80s', glorifying child abuse on the "comedy" routines "Same Thing Happens Every Night" (Cosby's wife beats her kids while Cos looks on) and "Kill The Boy" (both from HIMSELF). Granted, we all change when we get older, but in the case of this show, it wasn't for the better. Cos had probably already made enough money from the '60s' through the '80s' to have made this mediocre show. The Jazz music was the best thing on it. PEACE!
  For some reason, I found myself watching the debut of this much-hyped show when it debuted and found it hilarious. I liked it a heck of a lot more than the original "Cosby Show". It was just fun to watch old Bill Cosby struggle through life everyday. The comic chemistry between himself and Phylicia Rashad was brilliant. Then something happened around the second season when his daughter (played by T'Keyah 'Crystal' Keymáh) and Dougy. Doug characters just where there too much. And then it got serious every so often with drugs (and then Madeline Kahn died!). It just lost its zip and I completely lost interest. It was good while it lasted one season.
  Madeline Kahn's death left a huge void in the show. Without Pauline around, it seemed like every episode was either about teaching the audience a lesson, or Cosby and Doug engaging in some "hilarious" antics involving funny words or tiny wine. Many of the last season's episodes were just embarrassingly incoherent.
  I agree this show was pretty funny at the beginning. My favorite episode is where Cosby unwittingly joined a gay men's softball team. But then for some reason, the show started adding episodes with serious subject matters, usually about that kid Jurnee or her classmates. How did a show about a man adjusting to retirement suddenly become a forum about educating your children? But the real jump came when Madeline Khan died. With her gone, the shows got even more serious and downright preachy, and the few episodes that actually tried to be funny, really fell flat. CBS wisely decided it was time to pull the plug on this.
  How did I miss this when I mentioned how most programs managed to rebound after the death of a main actor. I said that only a few were so affected that they could never rebound, but I didn't mention this one. Without Madelyn Kahn the program truly lacked something that it never got a chance to get back. Kahn and Cosby made a great comedic team and truly had chemistry that worked so well. Without her Cosby seem to be missing something or maybe he was just missing her. They truly were the reason this program lasted as long as it did.
  Madeline Kahn's death noted the end of this Cosby series, but the start of the shark jumping had to be the heartless murder of Bill Cosby's son Ennis. Remember the old saying "The greatest tragedy for any parent is the loss of a child?" This is a prime example. After the tragedy, Bill tried to keep the show's zest going on, but it was obvious that behind the laughter was the pain of a father.
  I loved this show and I don't think it really ever jumped the shark, but i do have to admit that the later episodes did revolve around teaching you something. I don't really understand why it changed like, but I adore Phylicia Rashad and Bill Cosby and the show was awesome. I do have to also say that it was sad not having Madeline Kahn around....she was fabulous.
  When they did the episode when Hilton met a friend who was homeless after Madeline Kahn died. THAT jumped the shark and went down the drain!
  Cosby jumped in the episode when Griffin (Doug E Doug) blacks out the entire Sesame Street-like neighborhood installing a generator in anticipation of Y2K. So what does Ruthie (Phylicia Rashad) do? Light a candle you say? Of course not! Too logical. This is a sitcom after all!!! She belts out this horrendous, asinine, unbelievable tune that went something like "You're OK, it's Y2K" for all the neighborhood to hear. (I swear I am NOT making this up!)
  Cosby's downfall has always been the addition of ugly, untalented children, and Jurnee Smolett is no exception. Instead of letting the show die gracefully with the Madeline Kahn tribute, they just lose steam with this girl whose face looks like a cracked bell with a padded clapper.
  The show added the kids, and it stopped being about a cranky old man in retirement and started being a Cosby Show ripoff featuring the two primary players. Kids moving in next door, they pretty much served the purpose of plugging Kids Say The Darndest Things. Too bad Cos couldnt escape his schtick, the show was good in its infancy and he ruined his last shot at a huge hit sitcom.
  The first episode of "Cosby" that I saw was the "Hitchcock" spoof, and I have been watching in rerun ever since, without any real disappointment. I know that I am going to get reamed for saying this, but I like it better than "The Cosby Show" (TCS). First, it is more of a sitcom than TCS. You get the sense that with TCS, Mr. Cosby was trying to capture a slice of life in an upper-middle class black family. I think that this was the reason it was never all that funny. "Cosby" allowed itself to be a little less realistic, (the "Hitchcock" and "I-Spy" spoofs for instance) and thus was funnier. But still, the "I-Spy" spoof shows us that "Cosby" had not lost the post-modern edge of "TCS", since it raised the question of if the characters existed in a TV world or in the real world. Secondly, Mr. Cosby did not rely on his interaction with cute kids for his laughs. He had to hold his own with adults, which makes him less lazy. Finally, I think that the comedic interaction between Griffin and Hilton is better than that of Cliff and Theo. As an added bonus, the music used throughout the series is a great compliment to what is, overall, a hipper and tighter show than "TCS". Never jumped.
  JTS when Bill Cosby seems to think that we still just can't get enough of all the actors he hired for this show. The Huxtable nepotism is alive and well in 2004. It was bad enough when Phylicia Rashad starred on Cosby's creations 'Cosby' and 'Little Bill'. But wait! Now Sondra(!) of all people is coming back to life since Sabrina Lebeauf is going to play the mother on Cosby's new 'Fatherhood' show. What in hell has this woman done since TCS left the air??
  It was no longer entertaining for me when (A) Vanessa was engaged to Dabnus, (B)Cockroach came up missing, (C) Pam moved in and brought her friends with her, (D) Cliff stopped going to work, (E) Oliva was in every scene but even more than that, I found it unbelievable that Denise would marry someone, bring HIS child home and both Denise and her husband leave and the child is left with step grandparents-I thought this was downright STUPID!!
  Watched this on TV Land and can't believe I liked this show 20 years ago. I especially remember when Vanessa and Rudi were going to do laundry and Vanessa told her "Don't forget to separate the whites" -- she said this THREE times, just in case you didn't get the point. When Rudi got as tall as Vanessa, the brought in Raven Symone who was, of course, the kiss of death to this show -- which should have ended before her character even appeared. Just saw her on a Fresh Prince from 1992 and she's 7-1/2 years old in real life and Hillary and Will are carrying her around like she's Webster.