Cosby Show - Classic or Dud?

http://www.raquenel.com/different/bonet1b.jpg

Exhibit A

http://www.serieslive.com/img/series/casting/cosby_show.jpg

Exhibit B

Claire looks like that chick from the "Black and White" morphing scene.

(Granted, Vanessa's hair kind of eclipses everything else in the picture but Denise's do is just not particularly flattering.)

eh, regardless, as a thirteen-year-old, Denise, YEAH!!; Clair, WHATEVER, she looks like my friend's mom, etc.

There was a brief time when Theo had a ridiculously tall fade. I wonder if 89-90 hairstyles will ever be repopularlized among black men.

I HOPE NOT

What's wrong with her hair in that youtube clip? It's fairly standard for, like, late-20th-century late-30s/early-40s middle-class black woman hair.

I get defensive about Cliff and Claire sometimes because my parents are weirdly like them. (It's possible this show was a formative influence in their US cultural assimilation, I dunno. There are certainly a few picked up mannerisms driving home the "my mom" = "Claire" part, but that might just be general haughtiness.)

I was in a class of all-white Idahoans once accusing the Cosby Show of being all Uncle Tommed out and I was like, stfu, you're the people who told the Murphy's (mom of Yo was English teacher at my HS) where the KFC was when they first moved to town.

The only character that seems insufferably smug in retrospect is Sandra (I always wound up sympathizing with poor misogynist, confused Elvin), but then again she had burden of having named her children Winnie and Nelson.

Her one great moment is the episode in which she and Elvin tell the Huxes that they're dropping out of their Ivy League grad school programs to open a "wilderness store."

It was more like, "Why are they saying that black people should MAKE MONEY and HAVE NICE HOUSES and GOOD JOBS?"

Sandra's greatest moment was when she was sick and Claire and Elvin's mom took the babies for the day. She got worked up later and hunted them down feverishly with a surgical mask on.

Oh man, you want Cosby fashion amazingness: there is a later episode where they're having a barbecue, and Elvin and Theo are planning a bachelor party for Martin (who's about to marry Denise), and talk of a stripper creates a massive argument between every male/female pairing in the whole house (down to Cliff's parents) -- and through it all, Sandra is wearing an outfit that will BLOW YOUR MIND like PA-DOW like MINDBOGGLING YOU HAVE NO IDEA

(short version: umm, tight yellowish patterned pants, but they're not pants, they come up to an extremely high waist and then become a cross between built-in suspenders and overalls, and amazingly enough for an item of women's clothing require the wearer to have zero breasts whatsoever, and show it; it's like the equivalent of a low-cut top and corset in an alternate universe where you grandly show off that you're extremely flat-chested, rather than the opposite -- and then there is this crazy hip stuff going on that just ... it's mindblowing, so much so that the mere fact that she's pulling it off makes it seem awesome and hot)

There was a brief time when Theo had a ridiculously tall fade. I wonder if 89-90 hairstyles will ever be repopularlized among black men.

-- Johnny Fever, Monday, September 17, 2007 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

fwiw Yung Joc is trying to bring back the Gumby-style Bobby Brown slope. I'm not even kidding.

Wait, Martin was already married to Denise when he first showed up, wasn't he? They must have been planning a retrospective bachelor party. Anyway, Cliff's dad demonstrates how fan dancing works.

Martin was on a few years prior to actually playing Martin as well...he was one of Cliff's med students who ended up being mistaken for Denise's date.

"Elvin is the fellow that she LIKES."

"Oh. So why am I here?"

"Cuz you're the fellow THAT I LIKE."

Oh right! It was Sandra!

There was a brief time when Theo Sandra had a ridiculously tall fade wore suspenders. I wonder if 89-90 hairstyles suspenders will ever be repopularized...

...among women

Or did electroclash do that? I slept through the first couple years of this decade.

Umm, no. Suspenders are back nowish, and more among men. Usually for a kind of urchiny look.

Urchiny and/or farmhandy, with the occasional formal

Are you serious? Like, Dexys' urchiny?

(I gotta know).

MORE COSBY.

http://img370.imageshack.us/img370/8594/new125qx7.gif

pls delete or I do vangogh on both my eyes...& please braille me the name of a prostitute who might be flattered by such a gesture (NB, momus not included)

i actually kinda like sports in theory... i just don't really have the attention span for games, i always get distracted!

this = me

in fact i LOVE reading about sports, espec baseball, but can't remember the last time i watched a game on tv (going to one is fun now and then).

I think one of the better things my father did in raising me was not impressing that I should have a favorite NFL team. We always rooted for the team that beat the spread. I wish I could even be that impartial in politics, but I'm not.

That said, I'll be a Cardinals fan til I die even though Budweiser gives me the worst hangovers.

Yes, Dexy's urchiny.

Greatest monologue in TV history at 2:15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfVsmAok-jQ&feature=related

Really? I love The Cosby Show, and I love his occasional monologues on the show, but that one in particular seems really minor.

"For twenty years you and I have had constant battles with these people, and the question always was, what were we fighting about? It's about the house. They want the house."

so much hate! i thought everyone liked this show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srRec16PfpA

I don't see a lot of hate upthread!

i was suprised there was any! for me it's like hating Warners cartoons or whatever. i'm just too sensitive about it i guess cause i can't think of any other show that my whole family watched together and liked as much.

Cosby Show is very divisive but it's mostly argued about by a) people who want to talk about racial politics, not the quality of the comedy and/or b) people who don't actually know why the show was funny and are judging Cosby off of pudding pop commercials and that Simpsons parody

anybody who hates the Cosby show can get the fuck out of my house

"that is the DUMBEST thing I've ever heard! No wonder you get Ds in school!"

didn't realise until v recently that Bonet was fired from the show twice for not falling in line with the shows values etc. i recall reading he was cool with the nude Angel Heart scene and whatnot. not so!

how would you feel watching your daughter fuck mickey rourke

You can tell Cosby had problems with Bonet from her chronology. At the end of the first season, Denise is thinking about going to Hillman. At the end of the second, she's finally decided to go yet keeps making intermittent appearances (coinciding with Bonet's movie career and "A Different World"). Then she comes back for a few episodes in the fifth season before leaving to Africa to study the Pygmies. She's gone for another year before returning with Martin and Olivia. By this point Cliff and Sandra barely share scenes, and it's obvious there's tension.

*Cliff and Denise

sometimes the show had so many characters I didn't realize who was around and who wasn't.

Cliff and Claire would agree!

Just watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvzOSZjSsSw
Kind of beautiful.

(That might be a totally middling ep for all I know. I just hadn't watched the show in forever.)

"Who is it?"
(Rudy and Denise enter)
"No no no...when someone says 'who is it', you're supposed to say who it is. Go back out, let's try it again."
(Rudy and Denise leave, knock again)
"Who is it?"
"WHO IT IS"

This is the funniest bit of the entire series for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crnPfls0fHw

MJW in that shirt is never not funny.