'80s TV wasn't just Thundercats, Domino's Pizza commercials, and Facts of Life.
Remember the very special episodes of your favorite '80s shows?
The ones that got pretty dark and quite possibly left you with lifelong nightmares?
We're here to dig up some of your saddest TV memories.
Nothing about war is really funny.
And yet, for 11 seasons, the ongoing story of an Army hospital during the Korean War
not only managed to be full of laughs, but also deeply meaningful, which probably explains
why MASH stayed on television for more than a decade.
But it couldn't be all be doctor jokes and cross-dressing conscientous objectors, and
MASH had plenty of serious, dramatic moments.
The dark and last episode of MASH was arguably the darkest moment of the series.
Airing in February 1983, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" centers in part around leading character
Hawkeye recovering from a mental breakdown.
In the pinnacle scene of horror, Hawkeye is flashing back to the source of his mental
anguish - he's on a bus, the enemy is nearby, and the passengers have to kill the lights
and remain silent or risk discovery.
But there's a woman on the bus who has a chicken, and the chicken won't stop making noise.
Hawkeye tells her to shut the chicken up and she does, by smothering it, in order to protect
the entire bus of refugees from being found.
But we learn that it wasn't actually a chicken, like his fractured memory was trying to convince
him.
And it's horrific.
"It was a baby.
She smothered her own baby."
The '80s had no shortage of TV episodes that were ripped from the headlines.
Hill Street Blues was maybe not as guilty of this as later shows like Law & Order, but
it did have an episode or two that featured storylines that were pretty true to life.
In March 1983, an officer performing a welfare check in a darkened apartment shot a 5-year-old
boy who was playing with a toy gun.
Then in November of that same year, Hill Street Blues aired an episode entitled "Doris in
Wonderland," which included a storyline about a cop who mistakes a boy with a toy gun for
a burglar and shoots him.
In the real-life story, the boy's mom accepted a $395,000 settlement from the city, and the
officer sued the city to pay for his continuing education so he could find another job.
In the fictional version, the mother forgave her son's killer, and actress Alfre Woodard
won a Primetime Emmy.
So it was a feel-good story?
Maybe?
Sadly, a single realistic TV episode didn't really help prevent this kind of accidental
killing, and the trend continues today.
We all come about the knowledge of death in different ways.
Maybe it's the death of a goldfish, or something more impactful, like the death of a family
member or friend.
That's when parents usually decide it's time to sit down and have that conversation.
But a whole lot of kids in the '80s learned about death from a giant yellow bird nerd.
After the untimely death of Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper the grocer on
Sesame Street, producers that they should make his character die on the show, too.
After consulting with child psychologists to deliver the news in the least traumatizing
way possible, a November 1983 episode broke the bad news.
Big Bird and friends said "Farewell, Mr. Hooper" and then moms and dads everywhere had to deal
with the fallout.
"Why short change kids now?
Why not…
Death is part of life."
Yes, Sesame Street is all about teaching moments, and it may have seemed a little rough to blindside
kids and parents with this right on Thanksgiving Day, but the episode was specifically scheduled
to air when children would have lots of adults and support around.
It was effective enough to also get a childrens’ book adaptation, but it all didn't make Thanksgiving
1983 any less depressing.
Little House on the Prairie was good, wholesome television.
Each episode was a lesson in proper behavior, complete with characters you love to hate
and tragedies that can always be fixed with a little family togetherness.
But even Little House on the Prairie was guilty of sometimes taking it too far, like the episode
where Albert Ingalls moves to the city and comes home a drug addict.
Even stranger, he didn't get addicted because he needed it for pain; he got addicted so
he could fit in with the big city in-crowd.
Because, in this reality, the Wild West is full of morphine-addicted teenage cowboys.
"Now I know what’s wrong.
It’s the drug, we can both face it together, we can do something about it."
The episode featured Albert stealing drugs from Doc Baker, and going through withdrawal
symptoms because there were no rehab centers to help morphine-addicted cowboys.
Incidentally, morphine addiction was actually a thing in the late 19th century because of
doctors over prescribing the stuff, but it wasn't quite how it was depicted in the show.
It can feel pretty strange when a normally upbeat sitcom, usually dependable to provide
some comic relief at the end of a long day, drops a 'very special' episode bomb in prime
time, but the '80s were no stranger to heavy messages slipped between laugh tracks.
In March 1987, NBC aired a special one-hour episode of Family Ties so they could explain
the horrors of drunk driving to their audience, who'd probably just settled in for 30 minutes
of laughs.
In the episode, central character Alex P. Keaton has to confront the death of his best
friend in a drunk driving accident.
Incidentally, said friend was introduced for the first time ever in that episode, so the
impact wasn't exactly as deep as it could have been if it were someone like, say, Skippy.
We get to watch him confront his emotions with his family, and then we get to see him
in a black void for 30 commercial-free minutes while he talks it all over with an off-screen
therapist.
Not exactly the height of comedy.
If you're old enough, you remember former daytime talk show host Geraldo Rivera.
If you're even older, you might remember him walking around with a bandage on his nose,
because he wore that thing like a badge.
In the 1980s and early '90s, if you wanted to watch lowlife ruffians and other people
you wouldn't want in your house verbally and physically assault each other, you watched
daytime talk shows like Geraldo, because the Internet wasn't really available yet.
Geraldo loved to welcome guests who portrayed themselves as less educated, desperate, and
angry.
"The program you’re about to see features hardcore girl gang members.
Now, what makes their stories even more tragic is the fact that every one of them is also
pregnant."
"These ladies are getting on their feet by lying on their backs."
"I don't know if you’ll recall this, but he made the news recently, G.G. did, when
it was revealed that he relieved himself on stage, live."
That sometimes equalled violence, and that equalled ratings.
In November 1988, Geraldo taped a show entitled "Hate Mongers," which put young white supremicists
and a black man together on the same stage.
In theory, they could talk out their differences and solve racism.
Except, of course that's not what happened, because that's not what producers wanted to
happen.
What they got was beyond what even they expected, though.
[Sounds of people fighting]
Rivera stepped in, got a chair to the face, and was probably also punched in the face.
The jury's out on whether or not he totally deserved it, but it happened again in 1995
on an episode about domestic violence.
Starring Rowan Atkinson, Blackadder was classic British comedy - often silly, sometimes absurd,
and occasionally dark.
But the darkest episode of all of them was "Goodbyeee," which aired in November 1989
and was the last episode of the series Blackadder Goes Forth.
“I think the phrase rhymes with ‘plucking bell.’”
The series finale was a weird mix of funny and terrifying.
Blackadder and his fellow World War I soldiers are about to be sent to the front lines.
In past episodes, Blackadder usually managed to scheme his way out of danger, or at least
put in a good effort at scheming his way out of danger.
"Put your underpants on your head and stick two pencils up your nose.
They’ll think you’re crazy and send you home."
But this is the last episode, so we get to experience Blackadder's panic, some fleeting
hope as Baldrick comes up with a plan, and then his despair as the plan fails and he
realizes this is truly the end.
But then instead of slipping away at the last minute or otherwise desperately trying to
avoid his fate, Blackadder joins the others for the final push.
In the last scene we see them all running in slow motion into the explosions and general
chaos of battle.
Then as a piano taps out a few notes, the battlefield fades into a peaceful field of
poppies complete with chirping birds.
Some thought it an odd way to end a comedy, but that was the whole point - that war isn't
actually funny.
Cagney and Lacey was one of the most groundbreaking shows of the '80s because it featured female
cops who were, you know, female.
And good at their jobs!
In fact the show was almost too progressive for the '80s; one of the characters actually
got recast because producers were afraid the pair seemed too much like a same-sex couple.
That itself was a pretty dark moment, even though it happened behind the scenes, but
the producers of Cagney and Lacey weren't afraid to do dark for their audiences, too.
In 1987, the show featured a two-part story arc, 'Turn Turn Turn', in which it becomes
clear that Christine Cagney has got a serious drinking problem, and she's following her
now-deceased father into alcoholic despair, and possibly the grave.
Reviews at the time praised the show for handling sensitive themes, and even found the episodes
to be entertaining, but uplifting?
Not especially.
Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends wasn't afraid to get weird, whether it meant to or
not.
In true, authentic Grimm's Fairy Tale-style, they made an episode where a character gets
entombed forever inside a dark and foreboding tunnel as punishment for not wanting to go
outside in the rain.
Which is absolutely, totally reasonable!
The 1984 episode "The Sad Story of Henry" begins when an engine named Henry goes into
a tunnel and then refuses to come out again because it's raining, and he doesn't want
to mess up his paint job.
So instead of coaxing the train out and finishing the episode with a happy little moral lesson
about perseverance and facing your fears, the station controller just decides to brick
Henry into the tunnel.
Forever, and ever, and ever.
And just when you think, no, they won't seriously do that... they do, leaving just Henry's eyes
peeking out above the brick wall.
Also, his paint gets ruined anyway because there's dirt in the tunnel.
The episode ends with Henry still inside the tunnel.
So the moral of the story, kids, is do what your parents tell you or they will brick you
into a tunnel.
Finally, a small child suffocates and nearly dies inside a refrigerator on a sitcom with
a younger audience.
Not traumatizing in the least.
Punky Brewster was about a kid whose parents just wandered away and left her to fend for
herself, so it was already a show with a traumatizing premise.
Punky is an 8-year-old orphan whose parents don't love her, but luckily she's taken in
by an old guy who learns to love.
This particular 1986 episode brought us the story of a kid who locks herself in a refrigerator
during a terrible game of hide-and-seek and suffocates.
But it wasn't just a warning about the perils of old kid-eating refrigerators, it was also
a lesson in paying attention when someone teaches you how to do CPR.
Also there's a scene where the little girl's cries for help echo unheard into the snowy
neighborhood abyss.
"Hey can you hear me?
I need help! Punky!"
When the missing girl is found inside the refrigerator, one kid can't help because he
wasn't paying attention during CPR class, but that's okay because Punky brings her friend
back to life anyhow.
Everyone gets to live happily ever after, except for everyone who was watching because
they all suffered years of nightmares and emotional torment.
Thanks, 1980s.
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