TV: Guilty pleasures

There are some TV shows that you don't mind admitting you're a fan of - MST3K, Star Trek: TNG, I Love Lucy, etc. Then there are the TV shows that you know you should hate but that have a certain special meaning for you, so you like them anyhow.

"Full House" is one of those shows. I grew up with this stuff - it was on in primetime when I was a kid, and even when I was a teenager, syndicated reruns would pop up thirty or forty times a day. The comedy was bland and inoffensive, the characters were picture-perfect, but by golly, if you needed to kill half an hour, "Full House" was there for you. Here's some outtakes:


Next up is "Mama's Family." Now, one thing you have to keep in mind about this show is that the main character is a spinoff from "The Carol Burnett Show" - imagine "Father Guido" from SNL getting a sitcom that lasts for six seasons, and you see how much of an oddity "Mama's Family" was. Vicki Lawrence, who bares more than a passing resemblance to Carol Burnett, stars as the irascible Mama, and various hijinks ensue.



Finally we have the biggest guilty pleasure of them all, "Barney & Friends." Now, I used to be a "Barney"-hater, but my sister loved the big stupid purple dinosaur as a kid, and she bought a Barney singalong tape ("Barney's Magical Musical Adventure" - Jesus Christ they have a Wikipedia page for it) that featured so many infectious nursery-rhyme based songs that I couldn't help but get it in my head (the fact that she played it several dozen times in my youth probably played a role in that, too). "Barney" may not be as cool as "SpongeBob," but I dare you to find anything sappier on mainstream television.