The Shows That Got Me Through
During the pandemic (remember that?), I found myself traveling backward.
Not literally. Rather, through television.
I started watching old shows: Make Room for Granddaddy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Who’s the Boss?, with a sprinkling of CHiPs and The Love Boat. Shows I had grown up with, or discovered later, became little portals into another time. Familiar theme songs. Familiar faces. Comedy. Half-hour problems that could usually be solved before the credits rolled.
What surprised me was how much of those old shows still had something to say.
Make Room for Granddaddy, which aired for just one season beginning in 1970, might be my biggest surprise. A sequel of sorts to Make Room For Daddy and The Danny Thomas Show, it aired in glorious early 70s color. Beneath its traditional family-sitcom exterior though, were stories about women’s rights, interracial relationships and assumptions, unmarried couples living together, aging and romance, generational conflict and changing ideas about family.
There’s an episode about women’s rights where a feminist advocate challenges Danny over sexist jokes. There’s one about an unmarried couple choosing to live together. One deals with whether people over 40 can still have romantic lives. Another has Danny confronting his assumptions about a Black musician he hires. And the show repeatedly puts Danny in the position of being the older generation who has to reconsider what he thinks he knows.
That was fifty-six years ago. And some of the conversations feel remarkably familiar.
And then there were the performers. Danny Thomas. Marjorie Lord. Sammy Davis Jr. Rosey Grier. Bob Hope. Frank Sinatra. Lucille Ball. Diana Ross. The guest appearances alone are a trip through American entertainment history. Do yourself a favor and watch “A Hamburger for Frank.” You will cry laughing.
I became especially curious by Marjorie Lord. She was beautiful — absolutely gorgeous — and I’ve read that she apparently preferred theater because it offered her more varied roles than television often did. I understand that. There is something confining about being known for playing one particular kind of woman.
And Mary Tyler Moore is fascinating because Mary’s professional independence is pretty simple: She goes to work. She has friends. She has a tiny apartment. She buys groceries. She dates. She deals with idiots at work. She builds a life.
Taxi may be the perfect bridge between the old-school family sitcom and the more modern workplace sitcom. It’s literally a group of working people sharing a garage, trying to make a living while dreaming about something else.
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Who’s the Boss? (my favorite show as a kid) came along and literally turned the traditional domestic arrangement upside down: the man is the housekeeper and the woman is the executive.
None of these shows dismantle the patriarchy, but they do puts the questions directly into the living room (with a vacuum cleaner).
Maybe that is why these shows resonate with me. In the worst of times, I went looking for old television because I needed comfort and somewhere safe to land. And instead of just finding nostalgia, I found something more interesting: shows made by people and depicting people wrestling with the same questions we still wrestle with — work, family, gender, aging, money, independence, roles, belonging, generational conflict, and what makes a good life.
Some of the answers haven’t aged well. Some of them surprisingly have.
And maybe that’s what I loved about going backward. These shows reminded me that we’ve always been figuring it out. We’ve always been playing roles — at work, in our families, in our relationships, in the lives we build for ourselves. Sometimes the role fits. Sometimes we outgrow it. Sometimes we realize we’ve been performing someone else’s idea of who we’re supposed to be.
During a time when so much of life felt out of our control, there was something comforting about watching people on television try to make sense of theirs.
The world has changed. The questions haven’t.
And apparently, neither has my love of a good sitcom.
I’m Chrissie. I help people play their way forward. Through coaching, facilitation, art, and culture change work, I create space for curiosity, creativity, and possibility.
I’m a visual artist, a life coach, lover of all things vintage and analog — especially the 80s! I believe that joy, imagination, and agency aren’t luxuries — they’re how we build lives, careers, and communities that actually fit. Learn more about working with me.
