What are the Top 3 TV Shows that define your (personal) youth?
Please try your best to narrow it down to THREE! Can you recall which shows on TV feel synonymous with your youth? Can be your childhood phase, your adolescent phase, etc. - whatever you define as your youth!
For me:
Jackie Chan Adventures,
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,
Pokemon
This is actually a pretty hard question. At first I couldn't think of any show but the more I thought about it the more came to my mind.
I narrowed it down to these three:
MAS*H
Hogan's Heroes
Dinosaurs
Not because I'm so old but because they where first aired in my home country in the early and mid nineties when I was at my granny's place a lot of afternoons.
Later I moved town, kinda lost touch to my grandma and wasn't really there when she got very old and then died.
Looking back it's really sad that I wasn't there for someone who spend a whole lot of my childhood with me and in fact was always there for me.
Honestly, I read a lot more than I watched tv. There are tons of books that shaped me, but I had to struggle to remember the shows that helped me along.
The Simpsons: From seeing Season 2 episodes someone had recorded from Sky TV on VHS before it was on terrestrial TV, through to Season 9 when it stopped being good many years later. It was on all the time and we never got bored of it.
Red Dwarf: The first TV show I was allowed to stay up “late” for, when it broadcast at 9pm. Felt like I’d entered a new stage in my life watching a late-night comedy show.
The X Files: Similar to the above, this was the first serious, “grown-up” TV show I watched, and I was hooked. I thought anything with a paranormal tinge was awesome at that younger age (I guess I still do, although through an admittedly far more sceptical scientific lens these days).
Hilarious, because it appears as though none of you were alive in my youth...
My parents were too damned smart to let me watch the "Boob Tube". Turns out they had wicked foresightedness - now you have hundreds of streams and almost all of it $hit.
So this is what I did see:
Howdy Doody, only at my friend's house
Captain Kangaroo which I could watch when I was sick
That Was The Week That Was (TW3) which I could watch because it was intelligent, political satire.
I'm no worse for the deprivation, and probably better.
I'm not THAT old, but New Zealand didn't have television until late in the day, so we got cheap, years-old US kids' shows. I was ten before our region got TV and it was a few years after that when we got our own set. The first TV I ever watched was coverage of what must have been one of the early Saturn rocket launches. We went to my older sister's boyfriend's house to watch it. Very exciting!
I liked Lone Ranger best. "Hi ho Silver, and awaaaay!"
Great question. I could list dozens of shows that were favorites, or have special meaning to me, or that I watched the most, or ones that had a more longterm impact on who I am. But, specifically about impacting my world as a young person, I'll say these three.
Honorable mentions: Looney Tunes, Cheers, MASH, Family Ties, The Young Ones, Doctor Who, You Can't Do That on Television, Ren and Stimpy.
Considering I forgot about it and got back into it, bringing back memories, first slot definitely goes to Franklin.
I'd definitely say second would have to go to a show like Ed Edd n Eddy since I used to watch way too much of it, I think...
And third would absolutely be a toss up since I watched way too many cartoons growing up. So I'd probably have to go with Death Note since it's the first anime I recognized as anime instead of just a cartoon back when I was in freshman year highschool.
Edit:
Someone mentioned Invader Zim and that would definitely be a contender because that show made me start to like weird and sometimes disturbing things. Here's looking at you, Dark Harvest. Also saw an Angry Beavers mention. Definitely a close 3rd since beavers are my favorite animal thanks to that show and Franklin.
While the first two are probably fairly generic choices. The last one is the first anime i watched ( i dont count pokemon as anime ) when i was a teeneager ( naturaly it is a crazy schol fantasy harem anime , they were kinda trending at that time and they mostly sucked , similar to iseaki today . This one is probably no exception but i kinda look at it with rose tinted glasses and i havent watched it for a long time . ). Mostly because crunchyroll was an app on ps4 and i installed it and at that time everything was for free after a week.
And boy o boy that was a start of journey through a very very deep black hole that im still very deep in.
The Simpsons was sacred in my house, we watched every new episode as a family, and taped them all on VHS to re-watch. I can quote from the first 12 seasons endlessly.
Seinfeld was my introduction to stand-up comedy, which has become a life-long passion and a personally fulfilling hobby. I liked the show, but I loved watching his stand-up bits.
Friends was a show I would watch with my mom whenever I helped her in the kitchen. I was always hanging out in the kitchen, and Friends was a staple on TV at the time. I connected very much with Chandler.
South Park was the show my older brother watched, and I only ever got to catch once in a while, but the show was groundbreaking in its concept and execution. While being vulgar, it also succinctly expressed complicated ideas that resonate with me still to this day (When Randy talks to Stan about marijuana is one of them).