I forgot about Carol Burnett! Another one of my dad’s favorites (I’ve come to realize he had exceptional taste in TV shows)! It went largely over my head, but even then my little brain could tell there was something different about it.
The closing music, with the animation of Carol, reminds me of MST3K’s end theme music – a bittersweet moment at the end of something great.
(And I can totally see confusing Carol and Vicki, I did the same thing for many, many years.)
I agree with your take on the Love Boat. Worked at an ABC affiliate on weekends in the '80s. Our local 11pm news was preceded by the network special 2 hour Love Boat, at the end of the newscast we introed our next show: The Love Boat (reruns) Surrounded by three hours of Love Boat.
Some of the horror series in syndication when I was an adolescent, like War of the Worlds, Friday the 13th, and a little later Poltergeist: The Legacy blew my mind for how morbid and gory they were for free TV. (Evidently some of these were bundled with Start Trek: TNG so any network who wanted TNG had to show them.) My parents didn’t have any pay channels other than Disney, so the stuff I was exposed to was pretty tame. These were a revelation in a “censor’s asleep, let’s show someone getting their arm ripped off on primetime TV” way.
I rewatched the first season of War of the Worlds recently (second season reworked it to be tamer and changed the setting to a cyberpunk dystopia) and it holds up. Just as dark, disturbing, and mean-spirited as I remember.
I liked most of the stuff my parents watched, Dragnet, The Smothers Brothers, The Odd Couple - and later, even Barney Miller (I liked the characters, especially Fish. That episode where he accidentally ate hash brownies… my dad was in hysterics over that, and he had this big booming beautiful, infectious laugh… so that got me to laughing too).
But “Laugh-In” - that one I hated, though I’d watch it because I thought Goldie Hawn was cute (I was what, 8, 9 when she was on the show – was that too young? I dunno, but I don’t recall ever going through that ‘girls are yucky’ stage)
Anyway, when they aired on MeTV I gave it another try - maybe it would appeal to an older viewer - but no, I still thought it was dumb, the pun-like jokes were corny.
V is another one I recently rewatched that holds up. Some of it is hokey but it achieves some moments of greatness. Most of the VFX and production design still looks good (disregarding the super fake mouse eating scene) and the score maintains an atmosphere of dread. The series and V: The Final Battle were all downhill after that. Still, it was all the best thing ever when I was a kid.
For YEARS, I used to be terrified of South Park. This is because one night, my parents accidentally left the television on when they left to go to sleep. I (being about 8 or 9) woke up and crept to the living room to take advantage of the South Park episode that was playing, since my mom had told me I should never watch the show. Honestly, despite the adult content and the swearing, I was just fine for most of it. But then it started acting like a horror movie… literally, it was parodying a horror movie for this episode. It got creepier and creepier, but I was still OK.
… and then a man’s head was impaled.
I ran, screaming, to my room and hid under the covers. From that day on, until my dad showed me the South Park movie at age 13, I would cover my ears and leave the room if the South Park intro even STARTED on television. It definitely made my mom happy. Now, though, I’ve totally outgrown my fear and have seen almost every South Park episode.
So my mom always watched ‘Lost in Space’ which, even as a kid, I knew was a stupid show.
She had a long time crush on Guy Williams, which is why we watched that stupid show.
I remember seeing bits and pieces of Weekend at Bernie’s and seeing stand-up cardboard cut-outs for Weekend at Bernie’s 2 in Blockbuster and the entire concept of the movie, carrying around a dead guy and pretending he wasn’t dead, really creeped me out when I was a kid. I was baffled by it because I knew it was supposed to be a comedy but I was very young and the whole thing was just… unsettling to me.
That’s the closest thing I could think of that wasn’t supposed to be scary but scared me anyway.
How dare you!
My dad made sure to expose me to Monty Python’s Flying Circus as soon as I was old enough to appreciate the humor. Thing is, it was on one of the artsy-fartsy channels like PBS or A&E and they left the nudity in. It made for some awkward moments, and my little brain had a hard time parsing nekkidness on my own TV.
I remember Dallas and Dynasty being the adult shows people watched at my house. As a big fan of shows like Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, The A Team, and Knight Rider, Dallas and Dynasty looked pretty boring to me!
Later found out that Manimal, a show I definitely would have wanted to watch, was scheduled in the same time slot as Dallas so no way that would have happened. That got canceled before I ever heard about it. Thanks Dallas! 
I can still remember the theme song from MacNeil/Lehrer - my grandma watched that religiously.
I promise you, Lost in Space was only “TV for grown-ups” for a very few episodes. It turned into a kid’s show pretty quickly, as I can attest to because I was 7 or 8 years old when it aired.
The stand out memory at the moment is waiting for the Grandparents to finish watching Hee Haw so I could take over the TV. I never much got it or thought it was funny back then, but the song “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me… oo oo oooh” did stick with me over the years.
Unsolved Mysteries
I became obsessed with it once I got older, it was basically my gateway to true crime. I thought it was some sort of “scary stories show”, but the stories they aired aren’t anywhere close to that, and what they did show were incredibly tame, especially by today’s standards. But I never knew that growing up, because the theme music freaked me out so much. I never knew what the show was about until later in life, cause I’d hear the opening and nope out the room.
I remember years ago when living in Ridgewood of Queens, New York, I turned on the television to channel 5 (then part of Metromedia before it became FOX) to watch cartoons. Cartoons hadn’t come on yet and they were running the last part of the 1973 dystopian film Soylent Green. I watched it from the part where Edward G. Robinson’s character goes to that euthanasia center to die and Charlton Heston’s character follows the trucks to the factory to the very end.
It wasn’t until years later than I found out what that was supposed to be; seeing it as a little boy confused the hell out of me!
Oh lord, I remember that now. I have no distinct memory of watching it, but I remember it.
I also remember the plots in The Love Boat being both completely understandable and completely predictable to ten-year-old me.
My husband watched the launch with classmates. The teacher was in denial or trying desperately to prevent trauma in the children before he blurted out, “It blew up!”.
As a kid in the 1970’s, I liked the more “grown-up” sitcoms – The Odd Couple (a brilliant show which holds up well today), Bob Newhart, MTM, WKRP, MASH (pre-B.J, Hunnicutt), Maude (the only Norman Lear show I really liked), Room 222, Barney Miller – instead of the more “juvenile” comedies – Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, Mork & Mindy (I hate Robin Williams’ “comedy” with a fervent passion!), Welcome Back Kotter.
I liked Barney Miller as a teen. It’s a more relaxed pace comedy that dealt with issues of the day without being too preachy. I liked the Fish jokes back then and now that I am Fish’s age, those jokes are funny in a different way. I would really be interested to see a reboot of Barney Miller nowadays.
That hash brownie episode was one of the funniest of the series
“Mushy, mushy”
That was the ultimate “grown-up” show to me as a kid. I really wanted to watch it, but it was on against Gunsmoke and my dad was a diehard fan of that show, so there were very few chances to see it in a one TV household. I have bought most of the seasons on DVD and really enjoy watching it now. Some of the humor is topical, so one does need to know a bit about the politics/history of that era, but most of the show is simply jokes upon jokes upon jokes. Even if some of the jokes don’t hit the mark for you, they come so rapid fire (by the standards of that era), that one of the half dozen gags in the following minute will likely hit home.
I loved it when I was little. I thought the people opening doors, repeating catch phrases and the goofy characters were funny. When they showed reruns on TV Land many years later, I didn’t get it anymore. I think it was one of those things entirely of its time.