The Cosby Show - a REAL 80s Classic Sitcom (The Cosby Show - Season One (DVD))

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	The Cosby Show - Season One (DVD)
Date:	18/09/09 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: still funny today

Disadvantages: some continuity issues

Hands up if you've never heard of The Cosby Show? No? Really? Well if you like 80s American sitcoms, you probably will find that you missed out a great deal if you never caught any episodes of this show.


WHAT IS IT?

The Cosby Show was first aired in the US in 1984 and starred the loveable and talented Bill Cosby in the lead role as Dr Cliff Huxtable with Phylicia Rashad as his lawyer wife Clair. The well to do couple had five kids Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa and Rudy played by Sabrina LeBeauf, Lisa Bonet, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Tempesst Bledsoe and Keshia Knight Pulliam respectively with other recurring characters over the show's airtime of 8 years. You might recognise some of these names or you might not but I'd be surprised if you were over the age of 30 and had never heard of the show or even one of its stars. Unless, of course, you never had a TV growing up?

The Cosby Show was created by Ed Weinberger, Michael J Leeson and the star of the show himself Bill Cosby (a.k.a. William Cosby Jr). The story focussed around the African-American family, the Huxtables, who were based in Brooklyn, New York and deemed as upper-middle class. Strangely enough in the opening episode the credits show the Huxtables family as having just four children, which I'll come back to later. Their house has a name plate which reads "Clifford Huxtable M.D." which I'll also come back to later...


EARLY EPISODES/CHARACTER ANANLYSIS

Clifford (commonly referred to as Cliff through Season 1) is the main character in the series. The funniest parts of the show are scenes in which he appears and of course being the lead and the creator of the show, I guess the best gags had to be written for him. He was hilarious in many of his scenes and watching this show more than 20 years after it was first aired, it was amazing how I could laugh till I had a stitch at some of the funnier scenes in the season. Bill Cosby just came across as a really amicable character throughout this whole show and his facial expressions in many of his scenes are just hugely comical.

One thing I noticed during this season recently which I didn't pick up on when first watching it back in the 80s was that each episode seems to try to teach the viewer a lesson - more often than not, it's to do with one of the 3 younger children but also it deals with difficult decisions needing to be made about choosing which college to go to - should a child go to the best college or the one their parents went to. Not always the best decisions are made as far as I can see. Personally I wouldn't encourage my child to go to a college just because it was specifically for "black" graduates rather than choose the one that would be academically better for my child in the long run.

Initially we see the Huxtables as having 4 children living with them at home with Denise being the eldest. She's dating boys and wearing makeup which her father finds bizarre to say the least, especially when she has just one side of her face made up with very extreme colours and the other side of her is left bare. When leaving the house for a date Cliff tells Denise to change out of her "tight" pants to something that will let her breathe. Oh dear, the pants didn't look in the least bit tight to me. If his character saw what we call "skinny jeans" these days, he would have a heart attack on the spot. Denise doesn't get a lot of airtime in the series, she seems rather vacant, not unlike some other16 year old girls I guess but the few lines she does have seem rather fake or forced. I was probably the same age as Denise is supposed to be when this was initially aired and I don't recall having her laid back attitude about life and considering she's supposed to be the daughter of a doctor and a lawyer she doesn't seem very bright. There are some funny scenes when Denise's boyfriend waits for her downstairs whilst she's getting ready and Cliff tries to give him the third degree but it doesn't quite pan out the way he expects as the boyfriend is not in the least bit intimidated by him, rather he admits that he's had to drop back in school 2 years, so he's in a lower year to Denise and that he spent time in a Turkish prison. Lisa Bonet went on to star in A Different World which was set in Hillman, the fictional college that both her on screen parents graduated from.

Theo is getting poor grades at school; he's about 14 in this season. Clair tells Cliff to have words with him as she will end up "killing him" if she has to listen to him say "it's ok, I'll try harder!" So Cliff sits Theo down and tells him to pull his socks up, Theo's response is that he wants to be "regular people"; in his mind regular people work at gas stations or drive buses. Cliff breaks it down for him, for starters he still has to do better than D grades to be "regular people" and if he earns say $1200 per month, he will have to pay a certain amount for rent, travel, clothes, food, etc. Theo is very smug when he thinks he has $200 left a month to spare when his dad asks if he plans on having a girlfriend, suddenly the $200 disappears and Theo is left to reconsider things. Cliff tells his wife that Theo wants to be "regular people" when really he is "lazy people" and if the "regular people" find out he's trying to pass off as one of them, they will find him and kick his bottom! Although Theo's character seemed to get a lot of air-time in this season I wasn't particularly enamoured of his character or his acting prowess.

Vanessa is the next one down to Theo age-wise. She is 11 years old. She's always picking on Rudy, the youngest, who's 5 years old. Vanessa wants a dog and is always bringing this up in some way or other. She is really scared of horror films yet begs her parents to let her watch them. This is a cause for much amusement as she ends up in her parents' bed every time they cave to her wishes and allow her to watch a scary movie. One of the funniest episodes focussed around Vanessa is when she has to do a clarinet solo at a school recital and she doesn't want to do it as she's bored of playing but her parents insist that she goes through with it as they paid $245 for the clarinet, which isn't cheap now so you can imagine how much more that was back in 1985!

Rudy is the baby of the family and quite cute. In an episode where her goldfish Lamont dies, it's highly amusing watching Cliff trying to explain that Lamont is no more. Then he tries to organise a funeral for the goldfish and makes everyone dress us for the occasion and stands in the bathroom saying how much Lamont will be missed. It's hilarious when Rudy gets bored of the funeral and insists that she wants to go watch TV. We have some interesting and hilarious episodes with this 5 year old cutie especially when 7 other 5 year olds come around for a sleepover and Cliff has to deal with them all without his wife who is busy at work. I found this young actress to be quite impressive in her role as she was roughly the same age in real life as the character she was playing.

Clair is portrayed as a successful lawyer who comes home from work often feeling quite harassed by the day's events at work. She makes it seem quite easy to bring up 4 children, sorting out the whole families breakfasts every day, packed lunches for the kids and manage to have a successful career. It's not very realistic is it? Her husband seems to be more of a kid than the actual kids and is always joking around. They are portrayed to have a perfect marriage with barely any arguments and when they do argue, it's really not credible. You see romantic moments between them, with hugs, cuddles and kisses and often they make jokes about when the kids will grow up and leave home so they can have some peace and then a comment just before the romance goes any further "That's how we got the kids!" No really? You don't say! Phylicia Rashad and Bill Cosby had a lovely chemistry on screen and it was entertaining to watch them together making decisions about the kids with her character always being the more reasonable one who seems to make the real decisions. I was rather bemused by a scene where she was having an interview with a senior partner in her firm whereby she's about to be made a partner herself and she spends the whole interview looking at her watch as her youngest daughter is home with a cold and her husband (erm a DOCTOR) is at home looking after her. How realistic is it that someone who's brought up 4 kids already would be so concerned about her youngest child having a cold when she's potentially having the meeting of her life which could make her career.

Sondra is the daughter who's away at college. She pops in a few times during this season, her character is probably about 19 and she comes home during summer wanting to go and spend the rest of summer in Paris with her female friends and experience the culture of the city and visit museum and galleries. Her character is quite credible as a young woman away at college and wanting to experience new things in life. Interestingly Sabrina LeBeauf is only 10 years younger than her on screen mother in the show and Whitney Houston was originally considered for her part.


WHAT HAPPENED TO CONTINUITY AND CREDIBILITY?

In season 1 Cliff and Clair have supposedly been married for over 20 years. In the very first few episodes we specifically hear that they have 4 children but then suddenly a few episodes later we hear that they have 5. Sondra is now the oldest daughter and she's at college. It's really not very credible that an educated couple who are so well set up and advanced in their careers would have 5 children. I assume they (the scriptwriters) must have felt they needed it to be such a big family for all the jokes to be spread out amongst the different viewing age groups but it also caused some continuity issues which were quite jarring for me.

Theo (whose full name is Theodore) gets called Teddy a couple of times during the early episodes but thereafter he's always referred to as Theo. The fact that the couple have 4 children ONLY is clearly mentioned several times in the first few episodes is turned upside down when suddenly they have 5 children.

The family is seen mostly eating at the dining table in the large kitchen but then we also see the kids seated at a formal dinner table in a separate room for no apparent reason in one episode. One would assume that this formal dining room is used when they have visitors but we just see the kids eating there and throwing food at each other during this meal. Later in the series we see them using the formal dining room a couple of time when they have guests but the layout of the room seems to change! I also found it odd during the episode where the kids are eating in the dining room without any guests; shortly after they are throwing food at each other, Clair comes in and scolds them and sends them off to get showered and go to bed and tells Denise to clean up the table. Odd that we're expected to believe that this vain teenager would just do all this housework with no complaints when she has a date to get ready for and also odd that a mother would send her children up to get ready for bed before they've even finished their food.

With regards to the different dining areas used, I can only surmise that the producers had a sudden change of heart with regards to which rooms could be used for the regular show. I also found it rather strange that Theo has twin beds in his very messy bedroom but no one to share with and it's a rather large room. Vanessa and Rudy share a bedroom which always seems very tidy which I felt was rather unnatural for girls of that age and very girly which is natural. I don't recall seeing Denise's bedroom so I can't comment on that.

Oh and one of the weirdest things for me which was extremely glaring an error was that in the earlier episodes the plaque on the wall downstairs leading to Cliff's surgery says "Clifford Huxtable M.D." this is shown in more than half of the first season. Several episodes into the first season Cliff refers to himself as being called "Heathcliff" when he was a child. I continued to see the plaque reading "Clifford" for quite a few more episodes, then suddenly just towards the end of the season the plaque reads "Heathcliff Huxtable, M.D." This was really baffling and try as I might I couldn't find anything to explain this change of name and lack of continuity.

Some famous guest stars who appeared in Season 1 include Iman, Alicia Keys (as a 4 year old at Rudy's sleepover), Dizzy Gillespie, Clarence Williams III and Lena Horne.


BEHIND THE SCENES

Having watched many popular shows in the 80s I would have to agree with the consensus that The Cosby Show took over as the best American imported TV show after Dallas. Whilst Dallas might have appealed to an adult audience mostly, The Cosby Show catered for all age groups so it's no wonder it became such a hit. The idea for having a family with 5 kids was Bill Cosby's as he had 5 children of his own with also just one son.

I would mention here that I found the soundtrack for the first season rather annoying but I do recall from memory that it improved with later seasons.

The show was created by Bill Cosby, Michael Leeson and Ed Weinberger and directed by Jay Sandrich. Most of the series was written by Bil Cosby himself. Season 1 was produced by Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner.

Season 1 had 24 episodes of about 22 minutes each. My DVD just consisted of the 24 episodes over 4 disks with no DVD extras at all and not even subtitles available. I picked my boxed set up from Play.com for £5.99 - it's also available from Amazon for £11.38. The show has a U certification as it's suitable for viewers of all ages and it was filmed before a live studio audience. I'd add here that the audience laughter sometimes drowned out some of the characters lines which meant having to go back a few moments on the DVD to catch what was said...


OVERALL

I really loved The Cosby Show when it was first aired which is why I purchased the DVD boxed set of Season 1. If I had given the show a rating before re-watching it as a 41 year old I might have given it a full 5 out of 5. As it is, having watched the whole of Season 1 from start to finish, I'm happy to keep this in my permanent collection but would only rate it as 4 out of 5. The show's "perfectness" is not as credible to me when seen through my "grown up" eyes as opposed to having watched and absolutely adored it in my teens. Regardless of what I have said above and in this closing section; I WILL be purchasing other seasons of this classic sitcom.



ONE OF THE MEMORABLE SCENES

Cliff to Theo after he was asked to load the dishwasher before he went out to play basketball with his pals:

Cliff: Did you turn it on?
Theo: You didn't tell me to.
Cliff (on opening the dishwasher, looking inside and stepping back rather quickly): And I didn't tell you to take the bones and the food off the plates before you put 'em in the dishwasher?
Theo: No!?
Cliff: What were you planning to do? Wash the food so we could eat it again tomorrow?
Theo: No problem Dad, they'll go down the drain.
Cliff: Would you like to see me put YOU inside the dishwasher so you can see them not go down the drain? If you turn the machine on now, it blows up.
Theo: Then it's a good thing that I didn't turn it on!

Summary: Recommended but only really if you enjoyed the show when it was first aired