20 Classic TV Episodes That Haven’t Aged Well
Recorded media is necessarily a product of its time, and that was especially true for TV until maybe 30 years ago. Any given episode was meant to be watched once and never thought about again except maybe by a handful of unemployed losers who catch it in a midday rerun. And lo, the nostalgic reexamination movement was born.
That means that a lot of jokes and plot points committed to videotape as perfect comedy fodder 50, 40 or even 20 years ago would never fly today. As exhibit A, Redditor Kelvin_Inman pointed to “Seinfeld’s ‘The Beard,’ Season Six, Episode 15,” in which “Elaine tries to convert a gay man to heterosexuality.” (It gets worse: Elaine actually succeeds at sleeping with her target, only to conclude that she could never be as good at sex “as people who own this equipment and have access to it 24 hours a day their entire lives.” You’d think, in that case, all men would be gay, but we digress.)
Kelvin_Inman then asked r/AskReddit, “What classic sitcom episode does not hold up due to changes in cultural understanding?” and their fellow Redditors quickly cited all kinds of dated material.
Happy Days
Everybody Loves Raymond
Just Shoot Me!
That ‘70s Show
WKRP in Cincinnati
Cheers
Blackadder
30 Rock
Batman
Diff’rent Strokes
Growing Pains
In Living Color
The IT Crowd
The Andy Griffith Show
Futurama
Friends
Malcolm in the Middle
The Office
Seinfeld
I Love Lucy
