Whether you could see the strings or they switched the voices, kids aren't nearly as dumb as the network people would like to think. (Sometimes they have the audacity to pull this stuff even on adults, but that's a whole nother topic.) If there was something Little You was clever enough to catch even on a non-kids' show, we'd love to hear about that too.

Discuss!

Michelle's brattiness on "Full House".

Adam West's campiness on the old live-action Batman series.

The preposterous amount of tragedy on Little House on the Prairie.

An episode of Growing Pains where horny teenage Mike turns down sex from a slutty girl who hits on him. Even at 10 I thought that was unbelievable.

The idea that the Moon could sustain an explosion big enough to knock it out of Earth's orbit, and be sent careening between the stars, yet not be blown into a trillion tiny little meteoroids. (Space: 1999)

On Pee-Wee's Playhouse, I totally knew Jambi wasn't actually a floating head, since I could see the black on black fabric. Of course, it took me watching for a few months to realize...

I guess I was too gullible as a kid, because even the "operas" they did in Make-Believe on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood traumatized me. Especially the one where Lady Aberlin and what's-his-face got turned into snowmen.

It used to always annoy me as a kid when characters would call their dogs by male names when the dogs were clearly female.

It creeped me out a little that Gonzo had such a thing for chickens. What was that about??

Yeah, that was always wierd. But what was really disturbing to me was knowing that Gonzo had a "girlfriend" named Camilla on The Muppet Show who was a chicken and then seeing Gonzo on Muppet Babies carrying around a stuffed chicken that he called Camilla. It was like he had the Muppet eqivalent of a blow-up doll. Icky.

Oh my! Bwahahaha!

I watched a lot of Murder, She Wrote as a kid, and even then it seemed ridiculous to me that Angela Landsbury was acquainted with all these dead people. It seemed wierd that, first of all, she was friends with literally hundreds and hundreds of people all over the country who she went to visit, and secondly that these people were happy to see her. Why wouldn't some of them think of her as the creepy lady who death follows at every turn? And why would the police regularly be happy to have her assistance in investigating the case? I mean, a person's cache as a famous mystery writer would only take them so far.

In retrospect, this show was probably my first guilty pleasure TV watching, because even as a kid I felt like it wasn't a particularly good show - in that it required too much of a suspension of disbelief, even to a 10 year old - but I still watched it unfailingly.

Okay, I'm old and the average sitcom in my day stretched credulity to the breaking point, so even the kids weren't fooled.

- The fact that everybody brought all those clothes and supplies for their three-hour tour on Gilligan's Island.

- That Major Nelson wouldn't let Jeannie do her genie thing and make him a zillionaire with a mansion and sports cars and everything else. Give me a frikkin break. Same for Samantha Stephens and that bozo she was married to who didn't let her do any witchcraft on Bewitched. What's with all this bizarre integrity? Maybe they could cure cancer, ever think of that, you jerks?

- Nobody ever once walked in on Mr. Ed talking with Wilbur, making a phone call or reading the newspaper? What are the odds? They lived in the suburbs and had nosy neighbors.

- Not a sitcom, but Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White never figured out that Clark Kent and Superman were the same person. His disguise consisted of a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. With these ace reporters nosing out the news, I'm sure the Daily Planet was scooping all the competition.

- The whole concept of The Flying Nun. If her hat, or wimple, or whatever you call her particular kind of headgear, was what gave Saly Field lift-off, how did her whole body become horizontal while she flew? Seemed to me she should have risen straight up in a standing position, like a helicopter, if it were even remotely possible the event could ever happen in the first place. And I was no astrophysics prodigy.

Even when I was really little, I wondered how on earth doing all of the housework and cleaning was virtuous.
I still clean my house and daydream about how fun it would be to clean (and remodel) using Sam's skills.
Wait, I'm doing it now.

Every time Captain Kirk landed on some planet, there was always some babe who'd never heard of "love".

So every time Kirk hit on some chick, we'd yell out "LOVERBOY!" and laugh hysterically.

Oh, and that he'd always explain to them "I come from one of the lights in the sky." Sheesh! No one on these planets EVER knew what stars were.

Shnuglet, I totally agree with your whole post. My peeves off the top of my head? Two sets of TV families: The Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family. The former was too saccharine to be true and the latter too good to be true.

And don't get me started on Doogie Hawser or Diff'rent Strokes.

Steve Urkel on Family Matters. I always wondered why the hell the family didn't just get a restraining order already. At the very least, Steve should've stayed at least one hundred meters away from Laura at all times.

How is this thread really different from Show Concepts Too Stupid to Be Believed?

I was a kid in the 50s and 60s (I'm old), so I watched a lot of westerns. I always thought it was bogus that the Cartright boys and the Barkley offspring never married and left home (except for those very special episodes when the wedding and the funeral occurred in the same hour). Also, why did the men in those 2 shows always wear exactly the same outfit in every show?

On westerns in general I wondered why hitting someone in the head with the butt of a gun always knocked the person out cold every single time. Socking them in the jaw often had this effect, too, which seemed really unlikely to me.

I also always wondered why people thought Red Skelton was funny, but maybe that goes on another thread.

I think this thread is more for stuff you saw through as a kid that one wouldn't imagine a kid would be able to see through. There are plenty of shows that you watch years after having enjoyed them as a kid and immediately see plot holes in that escaped your notice back then. This is for stuff that was obvious even then.

I dunno if anyone remembers the show Burke's Law, but I used to watch it when I was 12 or 13 and it had a murder mystery in every episode. At the end of the episode, they would gather all the suspects, the butler and the gardener and the jealous girlfriend and everyone else, into one room, and then explain to all of them how they came to the conclusion that one of them was the killer. Then that person would be taken away by police. I remember thinking, why do they need to have all the suspects in the same room to reveal the identity of the killer? To quote Eddie Izzard, "It makes... NO sense."

Caffeine pills couldn't possibly do what it did to Jesse Spano.

Barney Rubble's voice change on the The Flintstones.
Andrew Keaton suddenly aging 4 years in a matter of a few months on Family Ties.

I didn't realize Batman was supposed to be campy until he pulled the Bat Alpha-bet Soup Container from his utility belt. Always thought it was unbelievable that the professor would not appreciate Ginger's charms or that, because she was so glamorous, no one noticed Mary Ann in her cutoffs.

Always confused when any male charactor shuns the girl next door who loves him because of the hotter girl who doesn't. Especially since they always used a better looking actress for the GND. Never understood why the blonde was always the pretty one and the "plain" one a brunette. Which two charactors defied that convention? Anyone? (not necessarily TV)

The Gilmore Girls and Charmed have good looking brunette heroines, right?

The Cosby Show: Olivia. I mean, come on. Denise goes away and suddenly comes back married and with a kid? And Olivia was so smart and everyone was so excited about her and it was way too obvious, even for a 12-year-old, that she was the new "cute child" of the show now that Rudy had outgrown her role, and that we were supposed to love her.

Beverly Hills, 90210: Why should Brandon always win everything? Why was he supposedly so great? Dylan was much cuter and more exciting. And there was a lesson in every episode. Why would Brenda and Kelly fight over Dylan and then Kelly would fall in love with Brandon? Were they the only guys in LA?

And Andrea was supposedly 7 months pregnant and gave birth to a small baby prematurely. Yet she had a HUGE belly. You could really tell she was 9 months, even if I was 11 at the time.

Daddy's Girls: Keri Russell's character didn't go to school because she had a zit. Does that actually happen in the US? All I know is my Mom would never have let me do that.

The Bold and the Beautiful: When it started out, I was young, but not too young to realize that every scene only had two people at a time, the sets were really cheap, and the dialogue was more stale than anything I had ever seen before. Also, the plots didn't really convince me. Caroline has cancer and is dying, yet spends the evening dancing and having dinner with the family? Ehhhh. She didn't look too sick either.

Betty and Veronica spring to mind!

This was probably more personal to me, but it bugged me that the Brady kids had to call their parents "sir" and "ma'am," which we certainly never did. Sometimes, just to be snarky, we even called our parents by their first names, a la Bess to Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and occasionally, the endearing nicknames my mom had for my dad (only behind closed doors, though--that REALLY bugged him! One was "Joeyface"). And I would even call my grandma "aged relative," which I got from the Bertie Wooster & Jeeves books.

I liked that the Patridge kids would insult each other and have petty fights, which seemed more realistic (but true, for the most part their lives were too good to be true and the show ignored the fact that the dead father should have had a negative impact). I even had a favorite insult: When Danny came up with some stupid plan, Keith said now he knew why Danny's hair was red--because his brain was rusty. That was the kind of idiotic thing my brothers and I would say to each other constantly. Ha, and still do, in our 40's.

When Greg Kinnear still had his late night talk show, Teri Hatcher was a guest once (during Lois & Clark years). He had this thing where the previous night's guest would write a question to be asked of that night's. The question:

"Do you even think that it's not Clark's glasses that are the problem in realizing he's Superman, but your need for glasses?"

I always thought the Brady's got along too well for a step-family. I don't think I ever heard any one of them say "You're not my dad/mom!"

Even in elementary school I knew that Power Rangers was cheesy and a mash up of Japanese action and American actors (WAY too old to be in high school, by the way)

But I still played it during recess. Oh yes, I sure did.

Oh, geez, I watched one episode of Power Rangers way back when, in (I think and have zero interest in checking) their first season. The Random Monster Of The Day was trying to eat the Power Rangers, and every time he would, their face would show up on his stomach. What did I call out? Those pictures were decals. Also, if everything you ate showed up as a picture on your body, after a week or two you wouldn't have any exposed skin left. Oh, and everything sounded like dubbing ala a Godzilla movie.

The first season of Dragon Ball Z in the American dub went to Herculean lengths to assure the kids that no innocent people were ever hurt, hence things like Radditz blowing up a section of the city that we're assured is completely unoccupied, and Nappa destroying a pair of news helicopters and Tien saying he sees their parachutes, which are nowhere in evidence in what WE see. I saw through it all.

Also on Power Rangers, in the Japanese show that all the Ranger footage was taken from, the Yellow Ranger was a man. Hence, Trini's breasts suddenly disappeared when she was in costume.

On Lost In Space they always conveniently landed on planets that had breathable atmospheres. Sometimes they didn't even bother to check before going outside, but when they did, it was always the perfect oxygen/nitrogen mix and they never sounded surprised. I, already having learned in school that none of the other planets besides Earth in our own solar system had breathable atmospheres for human beings, found that concept to be one humongous crock.

Blossom: the moment she falls for a boy, he also falls for him. I found that unrealistic. I didn't date until college, and lots of my fríends only started around they were 16-17, so Blossom finding a boyfriend at 14 or something irked me. Well, maybe that's just me.

Friends: this is perhaps one of the smallest problems with the show's credibility, but I hated how they always cooked without washing their hands or tying their hair. I would bake with my Mom sometimes, and she always told me to wash my hands properly and wear a hat, because it's not hygienic otherwise. Monica the chef obviously hadn't learned this lesson.

Also... For the lesbian wedding, they prepared all the food in that tiny little kitchen of theirs! How is there enough space there? And was it even sanitary? It's always the small things that irk me the most.

There was a time in this country when one of the top programs featured a ventriloquist ... on the RADIO!

I never bought the fact that Capitan Kirk was always hooking up with alien women and not one of them ever got pissed off that he went off and left them, never to be heard from again.

I never got Alice the maid. First of all, how can a family of 8 with one income afford a full-time maid? Make the damn kids do some of the chores. Also, why was Mrs. Brady always cooking, setting the table, etc.? What's the point of having a maid if you're going to do the housework anyway? Seemed ridiculous to me.

I was a HUGE Scooby Doo fan, but I always wondered why in every episode, Scooby and Shaggy always thought the ghost/zombie/mummy/etc. was real. Duh, this has happened to you like a thousand times, why can't you get it that it's just a guy in a mask/hologram? This happens every time! Did they have some sort of short term memory loss where they didn't remember what happened from one day to the next?

I also always knew that there were more than 15 people in a high school, no matter what Saved By the Bell said.

Heh, radio ventriloquist? Wish I'd been there to see, eh, hear that.

Someone upthread mentioned Murder, She Wrote. Well, how about Matlock? This is another similar classic. How come Matlock only has friends and relatives who get framed for murder? How is it possible that each and every time, he can figure out who really did it? He's this old veteran guy, most of the time a little loveably dim. He's no Sherlock Holmes. Yet, he picks up these things that no one else can see.

I also watched LA Law, and I always wondered why the prosecutor never yelled "objection! Leading the witness!" when Matlock launched into one of his monologues. "You went there that night, didn't you? And you knew she was gonna be there, didn't you? And then .. you TOOK THE KNIFE AND STABBED HER!!" Those aren't real questions anyway. He's just telling the story for the audience.

It's an entertaining show, but it's pretty difficult to believe.

What annoyed me the most about Olivia was that they had her call Clair & Cliff by thier last names... I imagine now it was because "Dr. Huxtable" sounds really adorable when a 4 year old says it. Maybe it was because I had lots of "step-people" in my family--whom I either called by their given names or the same titles as everyone else. But that always rubbed me the wrong way.

If any of my step-nieces had called me "Miss Simplyperson"--well that'd just be weird.
(Pam calling Cliff cousin Cliff also sounded stupid to me. And how was he her cousin? And who the heck was "Gram-T"?)

You can still find recordings of the show out there. Look for "Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy". It's funnier than you might expect - and on purpose! :)


Well, heavy marijuana use can have that effect - I wish I could remember who told me that...

Bradys, No toilet in the bathroom.

We called this "Weird Barney" in my house.

Back to the Bradys, I remember thinking when I was a kid how inadequate that family made me feel, and if it made this white girl from the suburbs feel inadequate, imagine how it made non-white kids feel.

R.I.P. Bob Denver. God speed, Little Buddy.

I never bought into the types of meals the castaways served/prepared on the island. If professional chef Keith Famie couldn't master rice gruel in brackish water, how did those coconut cream pies get baked and served without dairy, wheat or especially an oven? Why did the castaways never chow down to grilled fish, with a side of grilled fish?????

Survivor: Gilligan's Island.

Speaking of toilets - why is it that no one ever has to go on TV? People only go to take pregnancy tests.

Probably not, and additionally illegal. In most states, if you are doing commercial food prep, you need all kinds of special things in your kitchen - three-part sink, special valves on the sink drains, etc. I have a friend who does wedding cakes, and she had to add this whole new bit onto her house.

What bugged me about the Power Rangers is that the MotW always started out small and then got big so the Rangers had to get in their robot things and merge together and all that. Why didn't they just get the robots to begin with? So much more time efficient.

Well, then you have to add Kate & Allie and their catering service. They never washed their hands or tied their hair either.

Even as a kid, I knew sex scenes on TV weren't realistic. In movies, the people at least "hunched", but on TV, they just lay there naked and kissed. Yeah right!

In memory of Bob Denver, AKA Gilligan of Gilligan's Island, who passed away today...let's start a list of all the called-out stuff:

1) a three-hour tour, yet some folks evidently brought their entire wardrobes and fortunes with them
2) the professor could make all sorts of potions, inventions, etc., but couldn't fix the boat, or even build one later on after the boat was destroyed
3) Gilligan was always causing problems (at least one per episode, it seemed), and yet they still let him hang around
4) Ginger and Mary Ann were always cooking (coconut cream pies, anyways), but with what?
5) Ginger wore that evening gown and heels forever, on the sandy, hot, sweaty island, and it stayed lovely and clean
6) Their radio batteries lasted forever!

Not to mention, the women had flawless complections.