If you don't remember anything dark happening
in Full House, you're probably suppressing the horror of everything that could go wrong
in the terrifying world of '90s TV shows. Death, disease, and sci-fi satanic visits
were the least of your worries in 1990s primetime. In each episode of Quantum Leap, Dr. Sam Beckett
jumped into a different person's body at different points in history… "...striving to put right what once went wrong." Once the historical catastrophe was averted,
he'd leap to someone else, say his famous "Oh boy" catchphrase, and begin the next adventure. “OH BOY!” Along the way, he was aided by his best friend,
Al, a hologram from the future. Due to its time travel format, Quantum Leap
jumped freely between many genres. In one haunted house episode, Sam leaps into
the body of a horror novelist. While he's usually there to save lives, he's
unable to prevent people from passing all around him. But then, it's also revealed that Sam's holographic
buddy Al has been possessed by the Devil… who then tries to murder Sam. It gets intense, but don't worry. Because it's Quantum Leap, things turn out
okay in the end. The show even throws in a fun Stephen King
reference. "Stevie?" "King." "Hey Cujo!" The heart of Roseanne was always the working-class
relationship between the title character and her husband, Dan. That is, until the final season, where a surprise
lottery win turns the family into millionaires, leading to bizarre wealthy celebrity hijinks. The series finale hits viewers with the biggest
plot twist of the series: the whole last season was a novel written by Roseanne, who never
won the lottery at all. Apparently, Roseanne's fiction writing habit
is her way of coping with the loss of Dan, who had actually passed of a heart attack
in the previous season. "My writing's really what got me through the
last year after Dan passed." In about two minutes, the entire run of show
goes from comedy to tragedy. For what it's worth, the 2018 Roseanne revival
showed Dan to still be alive. Of course, then Roseanne herself was written
off the show due to her own questionable comments. That's a different kind of dark. From start to finish, Seinfeld was snarky
and witty, and treated every situation like a joke. However, in one episode from 1992, the show
got a little too real for comfort. "The Opera" is all about Crazy Joe Davola,
who'd seem more at home in Silence of the Lambs than Monk's Cafe. The insanity starts when Crazy Joe phones
up Jerry, leaving a message where he threatens him. "Now I'm gonna put the kibosh on you." Crazy Joe has also been stalking Elaine, plastering
countless photographs of her face across his apartment walls. From there, he spends the rest of the episode
acting like a genuine serial criminal, finally disguising himself in a clown costume and
scaring Kramer. The laugh track only makes the whole thing
even more disturbing. The worst part? At the end of the episode, Crazy Joe is still
at large. Frasier, one of the most low-key sitcoms of
all time, found fancy and erudite Frasier Crane living in quiet, rainy Seattle, working
as a psychiatrist on a radio call-in show and hanging out in a coffee shop with his
even fussier brother, Niles. Frasier may have been middle-aged, divorced,
balding, and self-absorbed, but none of that was going to stop him from trying to bed as
many beautiful and intelligent women as possible. In the 1994 episode "Slow Tango in South Seattle,
an old psychiatric patient played by John O'Hurley, who Frasier helped to conquer writer's
block, has apparently lifted the story of Frasier losing his innocence and turned it
into a best-selling work of romantic fiction. At first enraged by this violation of privacy,
Frasier instead sets out to track down his first partner and thank her for making a man
out of him. It turns out the woman was his 40-year-old
piano teacher, and she seduced Frasier when he was 18. "I wasn't interested in 40-year-old men then
and I guess I'm still not." Friends is a TV show that purported to depict
the life of single twenty-somethings in, well, a group of friends… but it was a pretty
weird show during its first season. For example, Ross had a pet monkey, which
is not a normal thing people did in the go-go '90s. Also, there's that episode where Monica deflowers
a person. At least producers knew they were getting
weird. They titled it "The One with the Ick Factor,"
after all. Monica, years from finding true love with
Chandler, dates a younger guy named Ethan. He's a "senior" in what Monica thinks is college,
and so she lies too. "It's not even an issue. 'Cause I told him I was 22." She's actually 26. They soon physically consummate their relationship,
and after the deed is done, Monica tells Ethan her real age. That's when he admits he told a lie, too. He's a senior in high school, and also he's
17. That's a dealbreaker for Monica, who somehow
avoids prison. The Golden Girls is a cult classic about Miami
housemates Dorothy, Rose, Sophia, and Blanche, who dated, dealt with the perils of aging,
sass-mouthed each other and ate a cheesecake in the middle of the night. The show also delivered an episode about the
AIDS crisis. The 1990 installment "72 Hours" found Rose,
played by Betty White, grappling with the news that the blood transfusion she'd received
during a surgery years prior may have been tainted with HIV. She gets tested and has to wait 72 frightening
hours for the result. Rose endures mental and emotional anguish
throughout, and at one point declares that she's a "good" person and doesn't deserve
to get AIDS. Blanche thoughtfully replies, “AIDS is not a bad person's disease, Rose. It is not God punishing people for their sins." Powerful statement made. And of course, Rose didn't get AIDS after
all. It was a comedy show. The 1990 Full House episode "Shape Up" nobly
demonstrated eating disorder warning signs to parents of teens and tweens, framed around
D.J. Tanner's invitation to her best friend Kimmy
Gibbler's pool party. Realizing she'll have to wear a swimsuit in
public, D.J. feels some toxic body shame and becomes obsessed with losing weight as quickly
as possible. She posts photos of rail-thin models on the
fridge to discourage herself from eating, eats "ice on a stick," feeds her sandwich
to the dog, and then stops eating altogether. The family realizes she has a serious problem
when she collapses after working out too hard on a treadmill. Rather than seek treatment for D.J.'s eating
disorder, dad Danny Tanner talks to her. "How a person looks on the outside isn't nearly
as important as who they are on the inside." Because things had to wrap up in 30 minutes,
she's immediately cured and announces her intention to attend the pool party and just
have fun. Problem solved? The 1995 movie Clueless was so popular with
'90s teens that ABC, and later UPN, adapted it into a TV series. Stacey Dash, Elisa Donovan and Donald Faison
reprised roles from the movie, while Rachel Blanchard took over for Alicia Silverstone
as Cher Horowitz. The movie was based on Jane Austen's Emma,
so the show ran out of source material pretty quickly, but a "very special episode" in 1999
tackled the perils of drunk driving. Cher's friends throw her a huge 18th birthday
party. It's so '90s that *NSYNC even shows up! Cher, Murray, Sean, and Cher's boyfriend of
the moment, Adam, party hard and get drunk. Everyone but Cher tries to drive home. "Look, Cher. There's been an accident." While Murray walks away, Sean and Adam get
hospitalized, and a short time later Adam dies from undiagnosed internal injuries. That sure doesn't happen in Emma. Before it became a soap opera about young,
sun-kissed Californians, Beverly Hills, 90210 was about goofy high school kids who happened
to have excellent haircuts and designer clothes. One plot thread involved cool and popular
David Silver still hanging around with his sort-of-nerdy pal Scott Scanlon. During Season 2, Douglas Emerson, who played
Scott, wanted to leave the show, so the writers wrote him out in a very big way. Scott's mom asks David and Donna to plan Scott's
big 16th birthday party, and they throw a big bash. But Scott, ever the misfit, sneaks away and
rummages through a desk drawer where he finds a gun. He plays around with it, and, shockingly,
accidentally shoots himself on his birthday. The "Boy" of Boy Meets World is Cory Matthews,
a Philadelphia tween who learns something new about the world each episode. The sitcom series tracked the development
of Cory's relationship with Topanga from classmate to crush to girlfriend to wife. But it's really a series about the bromance
between Cory and his ride-or-die best pal Shawn. In one episode, Shawn gets mixed up with "The
Centre," a live-in church led by the charismatic Mr. Mac, where adherents spout creepy platitudes
like, "A hug is a burst of pure love!" Shawn gets hopelessly brainwashed into The
Centre's way. Before long, Cory is struggling to find a
way to deprogram his best friend… but the universe takes care of things. After Shawn's favorite teacher gets into a
gruesome motorcycle accident, he snaps out of it. Perhaps the most shocking thing in this 1996
episode of Home Improvement is that bumbling dad Tim "The Toolman" Taylor has to stop grunting
like a caveman and act like a sensitive, modern man for a hot minute. In "The Longest Day," Tim's son Randy goes
in for a routine medical checkup. The doctor's office calls and tells Randy's
parents that there's a possibility their boy may have potentially fatal thyroid cancer. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think
I was dyin'." The family has to wait for test results to
come in while the two frightened parents contemplate the death of their child, and Randy worries
that he's going to die. Everything turns out fine, of course, but
"The Longest Day" feels like the longest Home Improvement episode. Saved By the Bell exists in a bizarro version
of the '90s where teens experienced zero repercussions for constantly scamming their principal, who
is also their best friend. Bayside High was a strange place to be sure,
but it was nearly torn asunder by the cold claw of addiction in the November 1990 episode
"Jessie's Song." Overachiever Jessie bites off more than she
can chew trying to balance her high level of commitment to school and singing in Hot
Sundae, the cover group she's formed with Kelly and Lisa. There aren't enough hours in the day, so Jessie
turns to caffeine pills for energy. In a terrifying TV moment, she experiences
a panic attack and scream-sings "I'm So Excited." “I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so… scared!" A caffeine binge would result in agitation
and a headache, not a full-on freak-out, but it's all because standards and practices wouldn't
allow what the writers had originally plotted: an addiction to speed. Still, the show does make a point about how
kids like Jessie can easily burn out trying to meet high expectations. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about TV shows
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