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Remember back in the 80s when every sitcom had that one "special" show where a serious topic was at hand? Then at the end of the show the whole cast would do a "now you know" routine...for example;

The Saved By The Bell where Jessie becomes a caffeine pill addict.
The Silver Spoons episode where Ricky goes hunting and cries when he shoots a deer.
I think there was a Webster episode when he accidentally walked in on his teacher molesting a classmate.

 I wanted to see what everyone's least favorite was seeing that they all were kind of lame in their own "special" way. 

It p**sed me off when they killed off Henry Blake on M*A*S*H.All for ratings. "A very Special episode of MASH>" f**k that. Aratings prop. I hate commercial,TV with a few exeptions. GUNSMOKE didn't need "a very special episode to make it great.Or TWILIGHT ZONE. Or the original STAR TREK.The writing was excellent in every episode. Lame b.S. TV needs "special " tagged on to it to boost ratings of crappy,monotonos swill,(like CHEERS or FREINDS). APPLES WAY (Barf!) or TOMA could have benifitted from a Very Special episode.Or not.

I'll never forget the episode of "Fresh Prince of Bel Aire", wherein Carlton accidentally took some speed --
He went on a dancing spree, and it was pretty funny when people were chanting "Go Carlton!  Go Carlton!".
However, when he found out what had happened, and his mom & dad & the rest of his family -- Will Smith -- found out too -- Well, my word, you'd have thought they'd discovered his secret life as the commandant of Auschwitz.
Such moaning and screaming, and Carlton bowing down -- literally -- to James Avery, screaming and sobbing and weeping how sorry he was.
For sheer over-the-top blithering anti-drug stupidity, I've never seen anything else that comes remotely close.
A Very Special Episode indeed . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

If anyone recalls the short lived Dinosaurs TV series, they once did a hilarious take (to me anyway) on the antidrug PSA. At the end of one episode, I believe it was the teenage son dinosaur who came on and did a quick 'just say no to drugs', but the ringer was that they gave an even better reason to just say no to drugs along the lines of (very paraphrased) 'do your part to put an end to public service announcements like this'.

Yeah, Saved by the Bell nailed this.  "I'm so excited...I'm so excited...I'm so...SCAAAARED!"

I'm sitting here trying to remember the episode of Diff'rent Strokes with Nancy Reagan now, though...

The Family Matters Steve Urkel where he shows that dancing is better than drugs.  Call it the precusrsor to You Got Served...

The only one that springs to mind is when Tootie considered giving it up for her boyfriend on The Facts of Life.

Oh, there was the one where Arnold and Dudley encountered the child porn purveyor on Different Strokes.

And let's not forget the lesson about drinking and driving when Carol's boyfriend - played by Matthew Perry - dies on Growing Pains.

The one that comes to mind is an episode of Silver Spoons in which Ricky (or whatever his character's name was) finds out that his best friend -- whom I don't think had appeared before -- was being beaten by his father.

Ricky's dad talked to the abuser and convinced the Dad to go take anger management lessons or something.  And, yeah, that was it.  The dad just promised to get help and they took it on good faith that he would do so.  No contacting child services, or talking to the kid's mom (she may have been dead or otherwise out of the picture, I don't remember).

The first episode of Family Ties I ever saw, was the one in which Tom Hanks plays a relative with a drinking problem.
The lush, in this case, is depicted as a jolly soul who takes everything as a joke, & then thirty minutes later admits he has a problem & accepts help.

Most of the lushes I had known before then, were generally unpleasant & uncooperative, with gross misconceptions about themselves (the one in the mirror being no exception).

The festival seating episode of WKRP. "It's that damn festival seating!" Love the series, glad it's coming out on DVD finally, but hate that episode.

The busing episode of "Diff'rent Strokes".

Kind of funny about the "Silver Spoons" hunting episode since Rick Shroeder has become quite the avid sportman/hunter in real life.

On the other hand, every episode of "Good Times" made you feel like it was a special episode. That show could have used a light hearted episode every once in a while. But I'll throw in JJ's fiance' the heroin addict ODing.

At least on Saved by the Bell, The College Years, they had an episode where the girls where chatting about how they used to have teenage crushes on the actors in those sitcoms, and they started talking about how they loved those shows, "Except for the 'very special' episodes, they sucked".  So they sort of atoned for their sins a little bit. :)

Dif'rent Strokes went on a RASH of special episodes. Kimberly being bulimic was probably the most disturbing thing I ever saw, with her shoving a handful of chocolate cake into her mouth and puking it up 10 minutes later.

I also recall one where Kimberly and Arnold were kidnapped by some kind of pornographer pervert or something, Arnold escaped and couldn't remember where Kimberly was being held and the cops hypnotized him into remembering the license plate of the van.

Family Ties had that one with Alex taking diet pills or something to keep awake for his tests.

7th Heaven had one of those every week, my fave was the kid who threatened to shoot Simon in school and was expelled for his threat. He stalked the Reverend and shot him in the shoulder. The kid was sentenced to a juvenile facility until he was 25 and showed no remorse for what he did...probably the most realistic of those "special" episodes.

most mainstream tv shows dealing with drugs suck because they have to have the same canned message.  I thought the GIJOE episode dealing with drugs was bad in particular.  The ended up teaming up with cobra to fight drug dealers.  So in essence it is saying that drugs are worse then world domination.

GI JOE and COBRA vs.DRUG DEALERS!?! WOW! I love to see that one!

There was: An episode of the Jeffersons that dealt with gang violence
                   An episode of WKRP in Cinncinatti that dealt with guns
                   An episode of Facts of Life where Natalie was sexualy assaulted
                   AN episode of One Day at a Time where the Grandmother was revealed to be a Kleptomaniac

                   An episode of Happy Days that dealt with adultery
                   All in the Family tackled a few like rape,racism,domestic violence

I remember a "Special" episode of Full House that involved Jesse's Greek Grandfather coming over to visit, and then dying suddenly while he was in the house.  Three things I remember from this episode...after the old guy croaked, Danny bought a boat...the usual sap between Jesse and Michelle at the end...and Stephanie wouldn't stop crying.  She was like Veronica Cartwright in Alien. 

     Hmm -- I think we're starting to beg a few questions here --
     Like, just what IS the nature of a "very special" episode?
      I would contend that shows like "M.A.S.H" or "All in The Family" couldn't really count in this category -- with the exception of the crushing "Death of Edith" episode -- because the very raison d'erte of shows like"All in The Family" and "M.A.S.H" was to constantly address social issues and problems of all sorts.
      What makes a "special episode", I think, is wherein a usually dumb show that relies on dumb sitcom stuff -- re. "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire" -- suddenly out of the blue has its characters addressing a social issue in a clumsy, overwrought manner.
      I didn't watch enough of these other shows to know if this is holding true or not, but if "Different Strokes" usually dealt with kids swiping pizza from each other & the usual school stuff, and then -- BANG! -- it's kiddie porn time, then I'd say, yeah, this is a great example.
     That Tom Hanks as a lush thing sounds just terrible, for instance, and a perfect example of the genre --
peter johnson/denny crane

The reason i did feel certain All in the Family episodes belong here is because the ones i mentioned really stood out and weren't addressed very well imo the rape episode was completely unexpected and while it did demonstrate a few important issues it didn't resolve itself with much of a PSA, the racism episode that stood out was the one where the kids sprayed the swastika on the front door again it was a shocker but wasn't resolved very well and the domestic violence one happened toward the end of the shows run after Edith had passed and there was a young hispanic woman staying at the house helping with things and she was being abused by her boyfriend, her brother showed up to try to talk to her and Archie thought he was the abusive boyfriend and punched him out.
I feel they count because as most sitcoms plod along there are few episodes that really stand out and stay with you and i feel All in the Family was relevant in the way that it wasn't the candy land cookie cutter sitcom of the previous decade gone was the nuclear family and thier Norman Rockwell ideals now we were dealing with the older generation versus the newer more socially conscious generation (Mike and Gloria) all in the the same house, All in the Family was the bridge between the old and new shows and while their "very special" episodes may be debatable i feel they were the precursor to the modern sitcom PSA shows.

I forget the name of it, but there was this sitcom back in the early/mid '90s that starred Suzanne Sommers.

The thing that really bothered me, was this running theme about the youngest daughter suffering depression, which is limited to her wearing dark clothes & a surly expression for an episode or two, then she is put on anti-depressant medications which turn her into some sort of stoner hippie who thinks she's a Jamaican reggae singer.

And this was intended as comic relief for the serious scenes. :hatred:

As someone who's suffered from mental illness, & now uses their own experience to support others, I must say that this particular character served as a gross misrepresentation of mental health consumers, recycling old stereotypes that were already worn out for their day. :hatred:

I should know, I've known some pretty crazy people, those who "think" they're normal not withstanding. :wink:

We're everywhere, and you may already be one of us and not even know it! :buggedout:

It was probably Step By Step:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101205/

Yeah "Step by Step", or "The Brady Bunch - the Remix" as I always wanted to call them. Until I read the whole post I wanted to guess "She's the Sheriff" for some reason.

Saw too many episodes of SBS during my depression lows, crashed on my couch unable to sleep during the day I passed way too much time with daytime cable programming and lots of sitcoms. How did I miss this one? I'm surprised they didn't make her bi-polar and have the wannabe reggae singer act be her manic state.

Is there any network show, especially a sitcom, that has dealt with depression in a believable way. The first two seasons or so (before they ruined the whole series)of "The John Larroquette Show" did what seemed like a good job with recovering alcoholics and still remaining smart and funny. But I'm drawing a blank on to depression related shows.

Unless I missed it, no one has griped on the weekly "special" episodes of "Blossom". Guess they figured calling each episode "special" would make 14 year old girls love the show even more.

Saving Grace?



I actually liked that show. If asked why, I don't know if I could give an answer. If someone just saw the ads for the show, they would get the impression that it was a flowery, cutesy show, but Blossom herself had a tendency to be a dark and pessimistic character. I was also glad to see Barnard Hughes in something which did not involve the word Merlin.

You know what always bugged me about Full House was the whole unbelievable nature of the show.  Not saying shows have to be based 100% on real life.  Still, I recall one episode where Stephanie drove a car through the kitchen...in real life many kids would have faced a huge wrath from their parents.  In that show I think they solved it with a hug and a talk. 

Heres another one I thought of, the Family Ties episode where Alex's friend dies in an accident.  The whole show was Alex on a dark set talking to presumably a shrink.  Recall him busting into a rendition of "born to be wild" when he became emotional.  Anyone ever see this one?

I should remember the Family Ties one you mentioned since I watched during its first run, but grew to hate it in reruns and have blanked out most of them.

Maybe Full House should do a very special reunion show since the actress who played Stephanie has admited to becoming a meth addict in her post-sitcom days. Then again now that I know Bob Sagat is apparently one of the filthiest comedians around (watch The Aristocrats for proof or see his standup act), I still hate the show with a passion, but don't loathe him so much.

Menard, I see your point on the Blossom character, and I did like when Miyam Bialik guested on Larroquette's show a few times, but she was still surrounded by some of the dumbest and most annoying characters on TV. Although I did think Jenna Van Oy was cute. What is it with that girl and annoying shows? She was the token white friend on the even more annoying show The Parkers.

Damn!  That's the one where he drinks vanilla extract.  I had forgotten that one!

The episode of "California Dreams" when Jake starts smoking to be more like his cool Uncle, and the rest of the band are totally mortified.

Pales in comparison to the towering achievement that is Jessie Spano's pep-pill addict from "Saved by the Bell", but worth a mention, I thought.

I remember I saw a episode of the Jeffersons dealing with racism. James Karen (!) was a racist.

The Saved by The Bell with the pill-popping used to scary me because I thought high school was going to be so hard. Yeah right.  :wink:

Menard, was it the one where it was people walking around in dinosaur costumes???

I remember that as being pretty good for some reason. I was young at the time, so i'm not sure.

Yep; Dinosaurs wasn't animated, just people dressed as dinosaurs (though some of them, the baby for instance, were probably animatronic).

WOW!!!!

How can ANYONE in Gen-X forget about the "Special" episode of SESAME STREET where Maria & Co. had to explain to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper died and was never coming back. I was bawling along with Big Bird. Come to think about it, it still makes me sad that I want to cry.