Top 5 worst TV Shows or TV Specials...

[Zannon]

Everyone has favorite TV show or special from when they were a child that they end up finding on DVD or video. Nostalgia kicks in and you end up having to buy said DVD or video, only to get it home and figure out that the show was actually more idiotic and mind numbing than Carrot Top. So, without further adieu...


5. Banana Splits

The original Children't variety show. Ok, as a child, I remember gettitng up at 7am just to catch this Gem. It had such a great line up...people in big animal suits...A three musketeers cartoon...the Arabian nights cartoon...and, it was a particularly good morning if the episode included Danger Island. Other than Danger Island being Richard Donner's (of Lethal Weapon fame) writing and directing debut and the fact that Jean Michael Vincent stared in it, this show really had nothing going for it.

4. Herculoids

If you're gonna go back and watch this show..keep a hammer handy...you'll need some anestetic after about 5 minutes.

3. Clutch Cargo

THIS was a personal #1 favorite of mine as a child....and proof that kids will watch anything if it's animated. Well...actually..this wasn't really animated. It was just plain creepy. What kind of sick bastard makes a cartoon of still frames with REAL HUMAN MOUTHS superimposed on top of the frame to make it look like the characters are talkind? Other than the mouths, nothing ever moved in the whole cartoon. If you have ANY fond memories of this show from when you were a child, don't go back and watch it....10 minutes in, you'll be looking for a bat so you can reach into the TV and drag that Eskimo kid into your living room for a good old fashioned seal clubbing.

2. Land of the Lost

GOOD GOD WHAT DRUGS WERE MY PARENTS SLIPPING ME WHEN i WAS A KID?!?!?!?!?!? This show just sucks. If you go back and watch it, you realize that the producers really wanted the characters from The Brady Bunch in a sci-fi dinosaur show..but they couldn't get them, so they settled for look alikes for Mr Brady, Gregg, and Cindy. I mean..the Gregg Brady look-alike was so ashamed with the show he just went by Wesley in the credits and didn't give anyone his last name!!! And the special effects...whoa...I know it was the 70's, but I made better looking dinosaurs out of my Play-doh when I was 6!!

1. The Star Wars Holiday Special

I picked this sucker up about 4 years ago at a convention after not seeing it since 1978. I had a lot of great memories of it...and I wish I would have kept them as memories. You get to see Chewie's family, Han, Luke, Leia, and the Droids were in it, there was a Boba Fett cartoon, AND I always wanted that cool furry stuffed bantha that they stormtrooper tears the head off of. Sounds good eh? Well...anything can sound good...Chewie's Dad is named Itchy, the cartoon is lame, Harrison Ford seems stoned the whole time, all the cool special effects clips I remembered ended up just being re-hashed and re-edited shots form A New Hope, and Carrie Fisher sings a Christmas song set to the Star Wars main title music...and she sings it badly. Well, at least the bantha was still cool. At least SOE got some use out of this turd for "Wookiee Life Day" last holiday season...because Lucas won't even acknowledge that it even exists.

[Jabe Adaks]

Dude, seriously - if someone could post the Star Wars xmas special on some format I could download that would rule. I was 2 years old in 78, even if my family watched it I wouldn't remember. I am dying to see this "abomination".

Jabe

[Zannon]

I have it on VHS somewhere...I'll give the steaming pile of wookiee crap to you.

[Jabe Adaks]

I have it on VHS somewhere...I'll give the steaming pile of wookiee crap to you.

You know how much I love steaming piles of crap...

Jabe

[Keer]

I have it on VHS somewhere...I'll give the steaming pile of wookiee crap to you.

You know how much I love steaming piles of crap...

And so... without further ado to doo-doo....

http://www.stomptokyo.com/movies/star-w ... ml#gallery

SWG SOE Smuggler Forum's Take on the Star Wars Christmas Special:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/boar ... rom#M71665

{and someone please un-boobytrap Mess'Tar's name. If you type "d-o-o" then it posts as "Dooo". Capital 'D', extra 'o'. And that's just cold-blooodeddd :lol:

[Keer]

And Zannon, I think our childhood TV programming sufferd from the same narcotics. With the exception of Clutch Cargo, you posted exactly what I probably would have.

So I'll add on some more...

5. Electra Woman & Dyna-Girl - this live action Saturday morning adventure featured Deidre Hall as Electra Woman (she would later become a Soap Opera phenom off of Days of Our Lives and later the good but not forgotten nighttime drama Our House with Wilford Brimley (the Quaker Oats old guy). Dyna-Girl, who knows what happenned to, but they were a crimefighting team with these large pushbutton consoles strapped to their wrists and a motorcylce disguised a car (don't ask).

4. Bigfoot & Wildboy - if the title isn't enough, you are a masochist. During the late 1970's there was a big resurgence in Bigfoot lore. The producers of this show decided to add a human element to it by casting some feral looking kid to run around and snarl with Bigfoot, getting into misadventures. But you couldn't pull me and my brother away from these shows.

3. Danger Island - I have to add this again, for the simple fact that if I go "Uh-OHH, Chon-GO!" I now know at least one person on this Forum will know where the hell it comes from. There was this jabbering monkey-guy named Chongo on Danger Island that would go ballistic when his partner shouted out his name. So f***in hilarious now! :lol: :lol: :lol:

2. Shazam! - A '70's teen named Billy Batson, a Winnebago, and the Greek Gods of Mythology that appeared in the 'bago's headlights to talk to Billy a la' Obi-Wan to Luke. In times of need, Billy would say "Shazam!" and be transformed into the comic book hero Captain Marvel (DC not Marvel). I know this show happenned in my reality, but it just seems like one baaaaad trip.

1. Doctor Shrinker - {sing it with me now} "DOC-TOR Shink-er, Doctor Shrink-er....he's a madman with an evil mind! Doctor Shrinker...Doctor Shrinker...He's as crazy as you'll ever find!"

Doctor Shrinker was another Sid & Marty Kroft production as was Land of the Lost in Zannon's post. Here, I wont even try. Read for yourself:
http://thehub.capcollege.bc.ca/~sstubbs ... inker.html

[MrDooo]

I LOVED these shows as a kid:

5. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
Loved it so much in 5th grade that I teamed up with my best friend to collect all the figures. And if you know me in RL, you know I don't collect.

4. Land of the Lost.
No need to say more about this gem.

3. Scooby Doo.
Not much better on a Saturday morning in 1979, except...

2. Superfriends.
I kinda wondered why they didn't just send Superman to do everything, since he was The Man. Unless you needed to talk to the fishes, then ya gotta send Aqua Man, but everything else...well, you know.

1. The Dukes of Hazzard.
I painted my runner sled orange with the stars and bars and a big 01 (I was a kid, damnit. I didn't know what that crap really stood for!). And yeah, I built the biggest jumps (ya see, you had to ice the jumps over pretty good so that the runner sled didn't cut right through em). And man, I hated that Dallas followed The Dukes. I was always pumped and ready to jump, and Mom always had to watch that boring stuff. At least she made good with the pan cooked popcorn.

[Dwilah]

We never had cable growing up, and I wasn't much of a TV kid...
-Brady Bunch reruns
-Power Rangers (yeah yeah...everyone at school watched but nobody admitted it)
-Reboot (original seasons...season 3&4 came out few years ago and I loved adding to one of my late childhood passions)
-gems like Family Matters, Step by Step, and Full House
-America's Funniest Home Videos (groan)


...and the best one of all...the one everyone in my high school could sing...the one that should have practically had the theme song be our graduation walk...



Earth! Wind! Water! Fire! Heart!

Captain Planet, he's our hero, gunna take pollution down to ze-ro, gunna help him put asunder, bad guys who like to, loot and plunder! We're the Planeteers, you can be one too! Because saving the planet is the thing to do! Looting and polluting, is not the way, here's what Captain Planet, has to say! THE POWER IS YOURS!!!!!!![/img]

[Seret Sajet]

Looks like this topic went from worst show lists to best show lists so I'll do both.

Worst Shows:
5. Land of the Lost (Did every episode have them getting trapped in the cave with the bad stop motion Tyranasaurus Rex barking outside. Not much substance there.

4. Yugi-Oh - Hey nothing against the manga, thats actually pretty decent but the show is god awful. Nothing but "You may have the upper hand, Kaiba, but MY BLUE EYES WHITE DRAGON IS NOW IN PLAY." and trash like "No, Yugi had the DARK MAGICIAN, how did he obtain this card! He cannot defeat me, I will not let him!" C'mon people their trading cards not weapons of mass destruction.

3. Silverhawks - Sure they looked cool but using the he-man/thundercats premise in space was just bad.

2. Snorks - Excuse me? Smurfs underwater? Someone get me a net and Red Lobster on the phone now!

1. Droids/Ewoks - Way to lame up and sissify the SW universe folks. Thanks for the nightmares.

Now my favorite shows. (notice I'm only doing kid shows? Good, glad you noticed).

5. Thundercats - Mumm-ra scared the crap out of little kids. For that alone I applaud them.

4. He-man and the Masters of the Universe - yes it reused footage and had bad dialogue but dammit if those characters weren't cool as hell.

3. Superfriends - Silly but I still love 'em. (Plus wonder woman was hot!)

2. G.I. Joe/Transformers - I lumped them together because I always watched them back to back. God they ruled.

1. Batman the Animated Series - Still the best cartoon ever written and animated in my book. Nothing has ever topped this show for me. (the Superman cartoon and Justice League fall right behind this show but get lumped together because of the same creative teams)

[Dwilah]

Looks like this topic went from worst show lists to best show lists so I'll do both.

Mine was just what I watched as a youngun'...they are simultaneously the best and worst. I mean, Captain Planet? Come on. Green mullet.

Batman the animated series and X-Men the animated series were also big big favorites of mine...Spiderman animated series. Batman animated series though, hot hot HOT!!! Thanks for reminding me, Seret. That show convinced me Batman was the shizz.

[Ringo Montgomery]

Well, in my childhood I liked almost every show I watched; I wasn't exactly a TV critic in my junior years. As such, I'll make a list of my top five most watched shows as a youngun.

5. Ghostwriter


I think there was only ever like 5 episodes of this show that cycled through the weekday but for whatever reason, I still loved watching them. Besides, there was a girl named Gabby that I had the hots for...she made it worth watching.

4. Batman


Yep, this oldie was watched quite a bit after school around my house. Looking back on these episodes, they were pretty lame and predictable, but my 10 year old brain thought this series was pretty damn good. Besides, the suspenseful "same Bat time, same Bat channel" endings always left me wanting more.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


A classic, but I didn't watch it as much as most kids. I know, I know, I probably should have BUT I DIDN'T SO BACK OFF ALREADY.

Ahem.

2. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego


This was more like a kids game show but I'll be damned if I wouldn't have given my soul to the devil to be on this show. I was such a geography nerd in my youth that I could have told you the only Asian country to begin with O or the monetary unit of Norway before my 10th birthday. It bugged me because I knew most of the answers that these 'smart kids' on the show couldn't get. Damn I wanted to be on that show.

1. Tintin


This show thumped every other show that even tried to be a show. Being the aforementioned geography nerd, I loved how he went all over the place and how Herge (creator of the comics) actually placed some emphasis on culture but kept it simple enough that kids could be taken away by the story. I still love this show and the comics, its the only real show that as I child I watched, and still love. Herge, I salute you for making my ideal show, I couldn't imagine it being any more perfect.

[Keer]

For worst TV specials I have to add:

Geraldo Rivera Opens Al Capone's Vault:

After the movie THe Untouchables came out, America went through an Al Capone/Eliot Ness infatuation for a bit (despite the horrible depiction of actual events in that movie). Geraldo Rivera, who believe it or not, was at one time one of the most respected investigative journalists in America (late '70s early '80s) "tracked down" what was allegedly a long lost treasure of riches cached away in urban Chicago by the legendary gangster.

Through an hour of background info and interviews with mostly second and third hand sources, the time finally came to un-earth the "vault". Even Rivera dug with his free hand at the wall of old bricks and mortar that hid the treasure.

Well, the treasure turned out to be one of the biggest "wa-wa-waaaa's" of TV history. There was nothing but glass bottles filled with dirt behind that wall. In some way I think this presaged the rest of Geraldo's carreer. He did get insanley rich from his daytime show a few years later, but no one ever really took him seriously again. Nationally, he was the first in a long line of "Shock/Trash TV" hosts that culminated in more recent times with Jerry Springer.

[E-bo Obi]

Wow, I am in awe of this. I must have slept in on weekends my entire life because I have no clue what 90% of these shows are. But out of the bad shows listed here, Scooby Doo is one of the shows I hated most. I was forced to watch it on occasion at my friends house.

[Zannon]

Wow, I am in awe of this. I must have slept in on weekends my entire life because I have no clue what 90% of these shows are. But out of the bad shows listed here, Scooby Doo is one of the shows I hated most. I was forced to watch it on occasion at my friends house.

Scooby Doo was a great show...until that added that ass-clown of a cousin, Scrappy Doo. That fact that it was great up until that point kept it out of my top five worst shows.

[Keer]

Wow, I am in awe of this. I must have slept in on weekends my entire life because I have no clue what 90% of these shows are. But out of the bad shows listed here, Scooby Doo is one of the shows I hated most. I was forced to watch it on occasion at my friends house.

Scooby Doo was a great show...until that added that ass-clown of a cousin, Scrappy Doo. That fact that it was great up until that point kept it out of my top five worst shows.

Agree here. Except I'd even narrow it down to before the Scrappy Doo era. My guide to know whether it was from the better episodes is the opening music. (not sure of the seasons)

If the opening theme is the original one (the one sung by the one lead male vocal and sounds like it belongs in the late '60s) I'll sit down for a few minutes of nostalgia.

If it's the theme sung by a chorus of voices...crap episode, Scrappy or no Scrappy. For me, at least.

I use a similar method for judging my Happy Days episodes. If it starts off with Halley's Comet's scratchy vinyl hissing version of "Rock Around the Clock", then it's a well produced episode (before the show got really silly).

Also, if you miss the song, but The Fonz is wearing a pink leather jacket, it's among the best of the series' episodes.

(Originally, the Fonz wore a pink leather jacket. Don't hate. It was the shizz and the show was more of what it started out as. A small screen version of American Grafitti. Annnnd with that we're back full circle to Geroge Lucas who directed that very good film so..../TVgeek off }