Show Me That Smile Again

The other day I was thinking about the show Night Court, and how much it sucked. I thought about how weird it was that Dan, the polymorphously perverse attorney, had a homeless-guy sidekick who did his errands for him … and how weird it was that the homeless-guy character DIED, but then they had the same actor play a regular guy who looked just like the homeless guy, and somehow Dan ends up persuading the regular guy into dressing and acting just like the homeless guy. Am I dreaming this? Did that really happen? What in God's name were those writers thinking?

The "Did I dream that?" sentiment applies to a lot of sitcoms I sort of watched as a kid. Here are a few more I thought of:

1. Fox had a show called Oops! (or maybe it was Whoops!) about the last few remaining members of humanity in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. I'm not making this up. I think it lasted maybe two or three episodes. Basically, it was a post-apocalyptic Gilligan's Island, so instead of the castaways making things with coconuts, you'd have cannibalism, ritual penile mutilation and the Antichrist emerging from a lake of fire.
2. In a very special episode of All in the Family, a burglar attempts to rape Edith. I fucking hated All in the Family so I don't know how I happened to see this particular installment of the series, but it horrified me to no end. I was living in New York at the time, and when I mentioned it to my friend Jason he expressed astonishment and revulsion, which was baffling because Jason had seen every episode of every sitcom ever produced. To this day I wonder if I'd imagined it.
3. There's an episode of The Hogan Family where Jason Bateman's best friend dies of AIDS. Right? When the episode begins the best friend has just rolled back into town (perhaps he was living abroad in Bangkok). While Dave is happy to see his old buddy, he notices his friend sure is acting funny. By the end of the show the friend is dead and Dave is delivering the eulogy at the funeral. Surreal.
4. There's this Golden Girls I saw where Blanche tries double penetration for the first time, and she discovers she loves being airtight. No, wait, I did dream that one.
5. This one is so disturbing I don't even like mentioning it, and I wouldn't believe it ever happened if so many people I've talked to haven't already confirmed its existence. It's the episode of Diff'rent Strokes where Dudley is molested by Mr. Carlson. Oh, God. Let's move on.
6. The episode of Growing Pains where Brad Pitt plays … I think a popular rock musician … and Kirk Cameron undergoes a Nabokovian epiphany when he discovers that Brad Pitt isn't a cool guy but in fact a big, selfish jerk. This one maybe doesn’t fit in with the others, but I mention it just because it totally colored my perception of Brad Pitt for years.
7. Perfect Strangers. It's stupefying how the people responsible for the show managed to create the same level of exquisitely crafted entertainment week in and week out.