I just turned 60, which makes me a member of the last peer group to grow up with what Nick at Nite used to call “America’s television heritage.” When we were kids, some black-and-white shows from the 1950s and ’60s were still in syndication. We have been watching TV ever since. Or at least I have.
It is now unlikely that a younger person will even encounter those shows or any of the rest of what is now a good 75 years of cultural output. Most of it was tripe, of course, but some of it was great, and some of it was a useful lesson in social history.
I want my tween daughters to have at least a sense of what was on television in what they regard as antiquity, the 20th century. But I figure that with everything else they have distracting them, just one episode each of 10 shows is about as much of their attention as I can command. So I came up with a list of 10 episodes of 10 indispensable shows that they would otherwise miss. This isn’t a list of the best shows, per se, but the ones I think kids today should get a look at. I mean, “Hill Street Blues,” “The Phil Silvers Show” and “What’s Happening!!” were golden, but I’m OK with it if my kids never see them. Also, there are some shows from the later 20th century — such as “Seinfeld” and “Friends” — that are so iconic that I figure my girls will get at least a whiff of them on their own.
As I did last year with regard to old movies, I am sharing my list with you. It’s a highly subjective ranking, of course, so my intention here isn’t to lay down some eternal canon. In fact, half the fun of it is knowing that your list will look different from mine. So dive into my list, then come up with yours, and let’s compare.
1. “I Love Lucy.” The first big television hit that still makes sense. This show is also instructive in depicting an antique stage in gender politics. When I showed my ladies one episode, the younger one asked, “Why don’t the women go to work?” The episode with the candy conveyor belt, “Job Switching,” remains funny over 70 years later.
2. “All in the Family.” Kids should know that television, at a certain point, grew up and engaged real-world issues. Archie is openly bigoted in a way my kids will rarely encounter — but is still constrained, because of the broadcast standards of the time. The episode I would show is the one in which Sammy Davis Jr. kisses Archie, in part because the Louise Jefferson character appears in it, which would allow me to introduce the concept of the spinoff, such as …
3. “The Jeffersons.” Here were rich Black people on TV for the first time. Seeing them wouldn’t throw my daughters as much as it threw me back then, because “movin’ on up” is no longer exotic — “The Cosby Show,” “Blackish,” etc. But it’s instructive for my daughters to see characters exulting in the newness of that scenario and to understand that our comfortable life is only recently a normal one for Black people. It’s also instructive to see the Willises, the first interracial couple shown on a sitcom, and to understand what a big deal interracial marriages were even within my lifetime. I suggest the episode in which George meets the Klan, partly because it illustrates the ugliness of the N-word and does so without today’s pretense that to use it on a TV show or to refer to it as a phenomenon is the same as using it as a slur.
4. “The Amos ’n Andy Show.” My girls should drop in on a time, in contrast to when “The Jeffersons” ran, when the only portrait of Black people on the air was about buffoonish underemployed shysters, originally played by white men on the radio. Plus, I am going to take a certain liberty and say that, regardless of how tacky it was, “Amos ’n Andy” was easily as funny as “I Love Lucy.” (For more on that, I recommend watching “Amos ’n’ Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy.”) Which episode? Doesn’t matter; the show was utterly uniform. Drop in on any one.
5. “The Golden Girls.” By the 1980s, sitcoms had evolved a clear grammar, complete with the highly unnatural lighting conventions, the formulaic theme songs and transitional music and a bent for the occasional Very Serious Episode. This show was a paragon of the genre and starred three spectacular performers younger viewers should become familiar with. I also always found the show a joy to look at, with the ladies’ color-coordinated outfits. I choose the episode in which Blanche begins menopause, but almost every episode is perfect.
6. “Cheers.” Kids should see a pioneering workplace sitcoms, an ancestor of “The Office.” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was mother’s milk to me, but it was really all about Mary. “Cheers” was truly an ensemble. I found the relationship between Sam and Diane richer than the one between him and Rebecca, but any episode before Shelley Long left will do, especially after the first season, when the show was still getting its sea legs.
7. “The Twilight Zone.” This show, with characters ending up in a parallel universe or confronting an alien sensibility among people they thought were ordinary, packaged a meme: that there is a realm deep down somewhere, beyond what we see and feel. This was Freud and Jung on TV. Plus the cinematography is exquisite, with many of the episodes shot on the same lots that films were made on. I showed my girls “Walking Distance,” in which a man tries to visit his hometown but ends up going back in time and getting a surprise.
8. “Mannix.” Weird choice, I know. But my girls should know the conventions of the once ubiquitous hourlong private-eye genre, including the way it reduced female characters to just dolls. I found that weird even when I was a kid, and I want my girls to see what we have gotten at least partly beyond. Plus, the look and sound of “Mannix” were a delight. The fashions, sets and even jazzy three-quarter waltz time theme song are groovy. Especially after the first season, when Mannix has left a detective agency and goes it alone, the episodes are pleasingly interchangeable; choose the one with your favorite guest star.
9. “The Carol Burnett Show.” The kids should catch at least one episode of the grand old genre of variety shows. Burnett’s makes for a useful example for a few reasons: It was in color, she was especially good, and her work still holds up. (I’m not sure how much my girls would get out of Milton Berle.) The musical spots are educational, too, examples of good music that didn’t require screaming, sexual energy or shocking the bourgeois.
10. “Fawlty Towers.” Time was that the Britcom was an exotic bird, with different pacing, humor and language from what Americans were used to. Less so now: “Fleabag,” in its fourth-wall-breaking winkiness, was in a similar universe as “The Office.” “Fawlty Towers” was definitely of the earlier era — weird, brutal and perfect, a great introduction to Brit wit. I’d choose the episode in which Basil tries to venture an American expression and yells at his chef, “I’m gonna break your bottom!”
OK, fine, my list is actually a little longer. I have also slipped my daughters the episode of “The Honeymooners” with the “Chef of the Future” sketch and the occasional episode of my very favorite old Britcom, “Are You Being Served?” But to me, the 10 above are Common Core TV. To you?
John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” @JohnHMcWhorter
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