These Are My JOTtings...

TGIF: Friday Night Comedy Shows on ABC in the 80s & 90s

Back in the 1980s & 1990s the ABC network had the best line-up of Friday night comedy shows from 8:00 - 10:00 PM, Eastern Time. (This, of course, meant the people in the Central and Mountain time zones had to make some adjustments because the network would usually reset the clock for the people on the West Coast.)

1. Family Matters - Carl & Harriet Winslow with their extended family and their scene-stealing neighbor, Steve Urkel, showed life in an imperfect but lovable family. It touched hearts across racial barriers.

2. Full House - What happens when a Dad of three young daughters loses his wife to cancer as I recall? His two best buddies move in and help his rear the girls in an unconventional and still loving family.

3. Perfect Strangers - Cousin Balki Bartokomous moves to the States from the fictional island of Mypos, somewhere off the coast of Cyprus, apparently, to barge in on his cousin, Larry Appleton, in Chicago. The whole show is the hilarious playing-out of the "What Ifs" of intercultural misunderstandings and how to fix the "mistakes." "Cousin! We do the dance of JOY!"

4. Boy Meets World - This is the coming-of-age story, featuring Cory Matthews and Shawn Hunter, who are a couple of sixth graders. Many of the interesting inactions occur because Cory lives next door to his teacher, George Feeny, who is probably in his last decade before retirement. Add Topanga, "That's a girl!" and you have the makings of funny dialogue and hilarious misadventures.

There were other shows added into the line-up as some of these were pulled, but these are my favorites from that era.

Bob Saget, the father on Full House, rode his fame into the beginning few years of America's Funniest Home Videos. (In my humble opinion he was the best host of AFHV.)

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