The Cosby Show is easy to watch. The conflicts are straight forward and easily resolved in thirty minutes. The characters are kind, generous, and likable. The setting is untroubling–a well off, middle to upper-middle class town home in a city. The show seems to deliberately build bridges between majority white viewers and minority black and other viewers, reinforcing messages of responsibility and tolerance.
Our two episodes from this show demonstrate those qualities. In fact, it is interesting to compare “TV or No TV” with “Theo’s Holiday.” Both episodes are sit coms, and both feature male characters dealing with finances. Ralph does not want a television, but he uses financial responsibility as a smokescreen, as a way of hiding the fact that he wants control of the family finances without his wife’s meddling. In the episode of The Cosby Show, Theo is learning about financial realities and responsibility. The episode is a lesson in Personal Finance 101, all done in a clever and entertaining manner. The episode is also wildly unrealistic. How does the entire family have a whole Saturday so free of obligations that they can do what the show presents? That, of course, is beside the point, since what the episode really does is teach young people–black or white–about financial responsibility.
This message of personal responsibility is even stronger with “I’m in with the In Crowd.” Here boredom turns to high risk behavior with alcohol, followed by a funny recap of the lesson learned. Alcohol here leads to some physical humor, and it is physical humor not on like Lucy’s in “Lucy does a Commercial,” but this episode is also a mean to teach a lesson to the adolescent audience.
In many respects, The Cosby Show sought to build bridges between diverse audiences, but those bridges also functioned to teach shared values of financial and personal responsibility. In many respects, the show is also about learning how to be middle class.
What did you think of this show? Did you find it funny? Do you think it taught lessons effectively? Is this an instance of using humor to both entertain and educate?
7 Comments
I have seen “The Cosby Show” before and absolutely love it. These were new episodes to me and they were hilarious. I especially loved “I’m in with the In Crowd.” I thought that is was a great way to teach both Cosby’s daughter and the audience the consequences of drinking. It was all fun and games, until she was caught and forced to continue her daily life irregardless of her hangover. My favorite part was when the Cosby parents played a trick on her and pretended to play the same drinking game with her younger sister. This is definitely a good instance of educating and using humor. I laughed throughout the whole episode and it still taught a valuable lesson.
I think the Cosby show was the best way at the time to learn about issues such as teenage drinking and finances. Although it was well laid out and entertaining, a lot of the time I felt like it was just a more modern version of health class movies. I understand how this was very important at the time but the way they dealt with issues was unrealistic. It should be mentioned that I am very picky with the sitcoms I watch because I think this preachy-ness has become a trend lately. I think they definitely did a good job getting their messages across, it just was not my favorite way of doing so.
Although it is unrealistic, the Huckstable’s ways of teaching their kids lessons is what is most entertaining. I wouldn’t necessarily say that this show was all about race. It is all about getting messages about finance and humor across to the entire young adult population. I like that The Cosby Show uses humor to educate because it grabs the attention of the audience by including laughs and jokes, but at the end you really do learn something. The show has similar situations that a young adult may have, and although the family overdoes the ways they teach the lesson, the lesson is the same.
The Cosby Show teaches life lessons that are relatable to any middle class teenager growing up. Most parents struggle to teach their children how to spend money appropriately (especially when it is their parents’ money) and how to monitor drinking/ not give into peer pressure. In “Theo’s Holiday” the parents go to extreme measures to teach Theo how difficult it afford living on his own in the real world. It is funny to watch all of the family members play characters, whether they were acting as a modeling agent or bank owner, each of them seemed to be ganging up on Theo to teach him a lesson. I can’t imagine any family ever being able to take their character roles so seriously and not give in if I tried to call them by their real names. It is funny to watch Theo struggle and realize that he can’t even afford to spend twenty ‘fake’ dollars on a meal because he has to buy back his furniture and pay rent, electricity, etc. The parents also go to an extreme measure by re-enacting the drinking game with Vanessa to teach her a lesson. It’s crazy that they even pretend to make the little sister drink at such a young age. I think The Cosby parents handle teaching Vanessa a lesson in an interesting way by saying that her hangover was punishment enough. It is interesting to see how parents try to teach their children life lessons. Although these may not be the most common ways for parents get these messages across, they were definitely entertaining.
Well not to brag or anything, but I was able to meet Phylicia Rashad (Claire Huxtable)! Something she said about this sitcom that I liked was that it was obviously not real life. It’s meant to teach lessons and show a tight nit family that values relationships. I’m a big fan of this show so i’ve seen every episode. This show is so captivating because it was the first show with two professional black parents. I always admired how in the show the family didn’t come off as snobby, as if they were better than other people because they made a decent living. Both episodes were funny because they showed how adolescents can be juvenile, especially in Theo’s episode. What Theo experienced is so realistic, in that it is not as easy as it may seem to live by yourself and make a living in the real world.
I admire Bill and Claire’s teaching approach. Probably because it it so similar to that of my parent’s approach. I’ve always believed that teachable lesson is best executed by actually practicing that situation, rather than a generic lecture. In my opinion both of these episodes were both teachable and entertaining. I think the drinking episode was good because the parent’s were smart in that they did not approach Vanessa by yelling. There was no way she was going to be able to understand anything from the state she was in. In that episode I feel like there was a lot hidden lessons. Such as know your limit, and always have someone that doesn’t drink to be a designated driver.
Maybe I am just getting older, but I feel as though parents don’t have the same tendencies to dish out “punishments” as they once did. I also do not believe any parents in the modern day would ever go through the efforts to put forth such a spectacular effort as in “Theo’s Holiday”. I remember watching the Cosby Show when I was younger, and I remember most episodes involving some sort of punishment. There was a real amount of genuine care from Claire and Cliff. I am no longer part of the youngest generation around, so maybe I am out of touch, but I think parents have gone soft in terms of dishing out punishments. I do not believe Claire and Cliff would be able to find time to put on an elaborate show, as in “Theo’s Holiday”, simply due to their work intensive professions which are rarely shown as such in the show. I hope my generation can show as much concern and discipline as shown in this show. OUr children will be more responsible and prepared for the real world then I suspect many Americans, growing up today, will be.
I know before even watching the episode I’ve always thought of Bill Cosby as a man for the coming generations, focused on the kids of our future and this sitcom followed around the same guidelines that I had assumed that they would.In “I’m in the crowd” we see a situation where a younger kid is drinking, and a response is given by the parents as a consequence. Even with the title, “I’m in the crowd” we can see that fitting in sometimes has consequences, and in this show the daughter had to go about her day with the hangover that she had brought upon herself by doing so. It reminds me almost exactly of my older sister when I was younger and she went out to party in highschool. She ended up having to be picked up from a friends house hammered, and as a punishment my parents woke her up the next morning, and had her drink a beer for breakfast then go about her day, extremely hungover. Did my sister learn? Probably not haha, but was the consequence at the time awful? Yes. And it’s funny that my parents could have learned such a consequence for Bill Cosby himself. All and all I think for it’s generation this was a great insight for teenagers and parents and the communication and bonding between the two of them.