Pop Culture Junkie

Have you ever wondered why Tori Spelling played such a pure and celibate girl on Beverly Hills 90210, but in every Lifetime movie was like a complete slut? Naturally my thought is that it had to do with the fact her dad created 90210 and I'm sure the idea of his daughter looking all hoed out just didn't work for him. Then I'm led to wonder what was the reason behind Tiffani Amber Theissen's split-show personality? Her daddy isn't a show creator. Kelly Kapowski always annoyed me- the whole typical high school stereotype that the cheerleader is the most desired and the most popular girl in school. I do, however, have to applaud them for trying to humanize her by making her poor, working at The Max and a brunette instead of a blond. At any case she was always little miss goody two shoes on the show, but once again in every Lifetime movie she was skanked out. Am I to be led to believe Lifetime was a kind of early Playboy for TV... in a sense the person knows what they're getting into but once they actually sign on for the project, the freak comes out. In the end Lifetime has to take the credit for breaking Tiffani out of that Saved By The Bell image, because every since then she's played nothing but skanks, even being brought onto shows just for that purpose- hence 90210 (Tori/Donna connection). Perhaps that's the way it's supposed to work out in the cycle of television shows. Another example with an opposing parallel is the transformation of Kelly Bundy on Married with Children. Christina Applegate played an utter moronic slut with absolutely no misconceptions on that to now the witty, fashionable, amnesia woman Samantha on Samantha Who. It's an intriguing thought isn't it? If you start out as a slut on TV then you end up a well rounded person later and vise versa...ummm, interesting. Although with that said I have to at least appreciate the moderate progression into hootchiehood by Kelly and Donna as opposed to the jump off the cliff action made by Elizabeth Berkley (Jessie Spano). All and all I think I just had a strong love/hate relationship with Saved By The Bell. It was so entertaining in its time that I couldn't not watch it, but it just had those flaws that bothered me. I didn't understand why Lisa only had a boyfriend for one episode and had to settle with the fact that her only real relationship was with a dork that no one would date until Violet came along- another Tori/Tiffani connection. And I'm going to completely dismiss the episode when she and Zack kissed just as the show did when it aired. Again, however, I had to appreciate the fact that the creator at least made the one black girl on the show the fashion forward, rich girl of the group- nods to Sam Bobrick for that one. She honestly was the first not poor black girl I had seen on television outside of the beloved Cosby kids.
Ahhhh, the Cosby Show. I remember watching the Cosby Show and thinking five kids was too many kids, but I also dismissed that thought since Claire was a lawyer and Cliff was a doctor, so clearly they had enough money for a house in Brooklyn and five kids. But with that said, how the hell did Al Bundy support his family in a two story house in presumably a nice area in Chicago on a shoe salesman's salary? Granted I have heard of their commissions being pretty good, but I don't know about it being that good. At least with the Simpsons, they lived in Springfield, not as expensive as Chicago, and he worked for a chemical plan, which I would imagine doesn't pay too shabby. Not to mention they never had to pay for clothes either, a paradox that was occasionally pointed out. I can't recall Kelly, Bud or Peg not having money to buy something and Kelly didn't wear nice clothes or hardly any clothes by choice. Since really for the majority of the show, Al was the only one with a job they had to get the money from him. I suppose I wouldn't have thought this to be a stretch if Al worked at a better shoe store instead of a store small enough that it only employed him and Griff. No one can tell me they were raking in the dough in that spot. I do, of course, appreciate the Bundy's for being the first (if not only) show to have their characters go to the bathroom on a regular basis. In a way I almost believe Rosanne might have been the most realistic show on television in that era. I mean her and Dan went through jobs like Kelly Bundy went through guys and it wasn't at all unusual for the electricity to be turned off in their house. Frankly if you had to use a television show to formulate an image for your future, Rosanne had to be the best because if it didn't teach you about getting a good job and budgeting your money nothing else was going to. Not to add if you ever found yourself in that sticky position of mismanaged money, she gave some pretty good tips on how to prolong a payment- like not signing the check or sending the cable company the check for the water bill and the check for the water bill to the cable company. Throughout the duration of the show under no form or fashion were you put in the position to ask yourself how are they paying bills because sometimes they weren't. In a way Rosanne was in the 90s what Good Times was in the 70s, only with a change of venue and some ethnic matters.
I do realize television is purely for entertainment; therefore there's no reason why I should have questioned any of this in the first place, but isn't TV supposed to represent us, its viewers. I believe this to be true, which concerns me because that means our life now is to have LOTS of babies, get a reality show in which you either dance or extreme diet the baby fat away before divorcing your mate (if you have one) then becoming the center point of a mass dating game where you end up married or at least engaged again just to wrap it all up in a book including your battles with some sort of addiction or disorder that finds its way on the New York Times bestsellers list. Oh well now that I've gotten that all straightened out I guess I should get to work on finding that fertility doctor.