soo much hate

The whole happy days universe sucks. It started out as a nice show about the 1950s and turned into this quasi 70s world that revolved around fonzie. It had aliens, Laverne and Shirley, and Chachi, who looked absolutely nothing like someone living in 1950s Milwaukee. They were all given spin-offs and Fonzie was built up as an infallible demigod in the eyes of the producers. Henry Winkler rode that gravy train every possible mile it would go.

38yr old and grew up with Happy Days on Nick and Nights and things like that. I was big into 50s and 60s culture as a Teen. The Monkees being my favorite band and show, even to this day. So Happy Days was great and I loved Fonzie. Like Steve Urkel I understand why they made him the lead.

I was actually surprised when I came on this board and saw so many people hating on the show. Even as a teen in the 90s it was a beloved show. I just think people like to complain about things. I mean, sure I can pick this show apart due to their laziness in later seasons and stuff like that but I still get a kick out of it. and Fonzie is still the best.

I love the first two seasons when it was a show ABOUT the 50s. Once they moved to a studio audience (which requires bad jokes intended for "laughs") and made it a standard sitcom that just happened to take place in the 50s, it lost me. I watched a couple more years (I thought the Malachi Brothers were a hoot) then just stopped watching because the audience was laughing and I wasn't. It also lost all of its charm when it moved to a studio audience. All subtlety was gone.

In a very similar way, The Simpsons hit a point where it stopped being funny. I watch every Simpsons on TV up to the tenth season and many/most up to season 13, then that's it.

I don't hate either show's later efforts, I simply don't watch them. I do wish Happy Days could have gone another two seasons on the original format though.

I suspect most of the hate is for the later seasons. TV shows should be required to end after five seasons. They usually do everything they logically can with it in those five seasons. After five seasons, it all become soap opera and repetitive.

It got very crappy after a couple seasons and it was not that great to start with. There was a thread here that really laid it bare in terms of all the improbabilities with the show. It talked about things like Fonzie would have been marginalized due to ethnicity and kids would not be out late among other things.

I used to watch this show religiously as a kid (I was a Fonz) fan, but I can't even stomach the thought of watching it today.

Other posters talked about the various issues plaguing it (the anachronisms, especially, Fonz being over-exposed, etc.). My problem with it is that looking back, it just looks so lame, cheap and pathetic compared to American Graffiti.

Yes, I know that the show was based on an episode of Love, American Style. But the thing about American Graffiti is that it was such a strong movie precisely because it was honest about how that period in American history was sweet and romantic, but at the same time was the calm before the storm and also filled with heartache and pain.

Happy Days just went full on r3tard with the nostalgia and went, "YEAHHHHH IT WAS TOTALLY, TOTALLY AWESOME AND WONDERFUL!!!! IT WAS RAINBOWS AND SUNSHINE AND POODLE SKIRTS AND PURE INNOCENCE!!!"

And then there was this other thorny issue, that a comic joked about back in the day: "They called it Happy Days, because there were no black people." Keep in mind that my complaint isn't that Happy Days was mostly white, but the whiteness it represented. Remember that starting in the 1960s, TV shows were big on representation. We had sitcoms based around blacks, latinos, Jews, ethnic working class whites, etc. We also had a lot of multi-ethnic ensembles. Just when we had all of these "ethnic" shows, along came this show called "Happy Days" that was exactly like the "squeaky clean white shows" of the 1950s that network television was trying to counter.

So, today, the show almost feels kind of reactionary, like it was pandering to a segment of Middle America that was offended by all of these hip ethnic modern TV shows trying to counter the stereotypical 1950s all white sitcom. What's so ironic, of course, is that the biggest breakout star wasn't a "squeaky clean, All American WASP" but a scruffy Italian-American greaser played by a dark-haired Jew, no less!

I was a pre-teen when the third season started and really hated the show. I thought it was stupid. I liked the first two seasons though. Even as I young kid I knew quality.