Puglovers remember . . .

Creepy 80s Sitcoms

Do sitcoms even exist anymore? Miss Ramona can only think of three – Two and Half Men, The George Lopez Show, and How I Met Your Mother – and to be honest, she is not sure if they are still on or what they are about. Ramona and Fonda LaFondue would probably be most inclined to watch How I Met Your Mother only because of Jason Segel, for whom an appreciation runs deep among our circle of friends. He totally got the best lines in Knocked Up which we quote all of time, namely “I’m gonna go make a protein shake now” and “Well, gynecology is just a hobby of mine . . .” Plus, we went to a New Years Eve party at his house once (where Ramona was sassed at the bar by Sacha Baren Cohen and was so unnerved – it was right after Borat came out and he is totally tall – that she started to ramble and then mid-sentence turned around and ran away) and he was a very gracious host, despite having no idea of who we were (acquaintances of the co-host).
We digress.

Thirtyboppers remember that back in the 80s, sitcoms were where it was at. Most of these thirty minute morality plays aired on weekend nights, back when getting a Friday or Saturday night primetime slot was a coup. Now, Friday and Saturday nights are kind of like the tuberculosis sanatoriums of television: places where things go to die while no one watches. Oddly, many of these shows revolved around depressing premises, usually involving a dead/absent parent or being orphaned by the deaths of both parents (Silver Spoons, Out of this World, Punky Brewster, Full House, Who’s the Boss?). Not content to be outdone by killing off a child’s parents, some shows (Diff’rent Strokes, Gimme a Break, Webster) threw in an interracial component that usually involved a poor, black person coming into a wealthy, white person’s home to provide comic relief with his or her ebonics-tinged speech. You have to wonder what possessed some television writer to think, I know, I’ll take a little black boy (preferably physically challenged so that at 15 he looks like he is 5), kill both his parents, and send him to live with one of his deceased father’s white friends where he will address the mother figure as ma’am for the duration of his childhood (Webster). That’ll be shits and giggles all around!

If you remember these shows, then it is very likely you also remember the “special” episodes that aired every once in a while that were supposed to teach the kiddies watching at home a lesson. The problem is, instead of serving their intended didactic purpose, they almost always ended up in traumatizing us. Ramona Narrow dares you to bring up Cherie from Punky Brewster to someone who watched the show without that person screaming back in enthusiasm over your shared dorkyness, “do you remember the refrigerator episode???” In a two-part episode remembered by anyone who religiously watched Punky Brewster, Punky’s friend Cherie hides in an old refrigerator meant to be thrown out during a game of hide and seek. Unfortunately, she can’t get out. Henry, Punky’s foster father (her dad walked out on her as a child and her mom abandoned her at – get this – a shopping mall with only her golden retriever, Brandon) and Cherie’s grandmother (her parents are also missing) Betty aren’t too concerned initially. I mean, I guess when a little girl disappears for thirty minutes or so in urban Chicago after playing in the yard, it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that it’s all good. However, we know that Cherie is stuck in the refrigerator, for we hear screams of “help me” coming from inside the refrigerator after everyone else goes inside after looking everywhere in the yard except for the absolutely most obvious place – the empty refrigerator. When Punky and the gang finally find Cherie, she is unconscious and collapses out of the refrigerator. Luckily, Punky paid attention to the CPR lesson at school during the first part of this dramatic episode and so is able to use her mouth to mouth skills to revive Cherie. This episode teaches us that, umm, CPR is important to know.



Webster also had a number of frightening episodes. One involved a teacher at school who touched the girls too much and another had the creators of Webster getting their Faulkner on and getting all "A Rose for Emily" with Webster finding a secret passage in his house to a hidden room that had a rocking chair with a doll in it that was supposed to serve as a shrine to the previous tenant’s runaway daughter. You need to check out the link below to get out creepy this was. Then there was the episode where, oops, Webster burned down George and Ma’am’s apartment, clearing the way from them to move to the house with the secret passage ways. However, the episode that really stuck with both Ramona and Fonda was the one in which, for the first time, Webster gets to stay home alone with a babysitter. After bragging about it at school, “robbers” who turn it out to be the bullies from Webster’s school, break into the house. Thankfully, there are those secret passages throughout the house and Webster is able to evade them. Nonetheless, it was terrifying and neither Ramona nor Fonda wanted to every stay home alone after that


Diff’rent Strokes was a show that had not one, but several “special episode” shows. In fact, when Arnold became convinced of the fact that kids were selling drugs at his upper crust prep school, Nancy Reagan herself came on the show to let everyone know that we should all “JUST SAY NO.” Alas, this lesson hasn’t stuck with Ramona and Fonda as much as the others. Diff’rent Strokes produced the two creepiest episodes of sitcom television ever. In one, Arnold and his pal, Dudley, get lured into the apartment of a man who owns a bicycle shop but who is really a pedophile. He gets Arnold to take polaroids of a shirtless Dudley riding his back like a bucking bronco. It's gross. Later in the series’ run, we learn the dangers of hitchhiking (because it is such an epidemic on the upper-eastside of Manhattan) from Kimberly and Arnold, who, frustrated by their inability to catch a cab after fifteen seconds, decide to hitchhike instead and get in the car with a guy who seems nice but then holds them hostage in his apartment with the intent of raping Kimberly and perhaps killing Arnold; he remains gagged and bound in the bedroom while the man forces Kimberly to slow dance with him while he serenades her with “Strangers in the Night.” Luckily, Arnold busts out the window, gets help, and Arnold and Kimberly make it home to celebrate Mr. Drummond’s birthday. Because who doesn’t feel like celebrating after an attempted rape?