I like "Freddie"

Louren Tivos "Freddie" for me. I thought that the show would be a guilty pleasure as it starts Chico's son, David from 9-0, and Shelly the waitress from "Twin Peaks" but once I got over the stunt cast, I realized that I was watching a bona fide good show made for people who are about my age who regard sitcoms with some disdain for the assumption that if they hype it enough we will like them out of submission (see Friends) and are generally suspicious of the low quality hacks who write by commitee to produce dismal luke-warm awfulness (see Full House, Home Improvement, Growing Pains, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, The Bonnie Hunt Show, The Jim Belushi Show, the Damon Wayans Show, etc.) What's the difference with "Freddy"? It's the "Happy Days" qualities 1. Funny details. Sometimes people say stuff that is funny without specifically being a joke. This happened a lot on Happy Days (and generally tended to happen more in 1970's era sitcoms)

HOWARD: What's this Marion? MARION: Oh Howard, its more sweet sixteen gifts from out of town relatives. This is from the Timsons HOWARD: The Timsons eh... MARION: Oh what's wrong, Howard? HOWARD: Well, I hope its something good because we got them a very expensive gift last year for their daughter's confirmation MARION: Howard, you got them an electric drill HOWARD: It's the thought that counts, and anyway, it had four speeds!

Gary Marshal was always throwing in implicitly critical middle-class observations like that which would connect with the audience. I would butcher the line in the recent episode of "Freddie" that does the same thing but essential the observation is that when he and his sister were young, they were poor and the thing that they were deprived of was COLECOVISION (check out their website, its so ironic that it crosses the line and actually is awful, unless the irony is unintentional, so hard to tell with these kids) so Sarah (the sister who apparently was on NYPD blue, whatever) made Freddie paint himself blue and jump over mushrooms because they couldn't play Smurf Rescue (you can actually play the game here) which is hysterical if you've ever seen or played the game. It's also funny on the level of speaking somewhat more candidly about "want" means today as opposed to during the Great Depression. This gets to my second point 2 I have some further opinions about why "Happy Days" is funny and how I see the same things in this show but I need to get back to studying.