Thursdays and Fridays are not productive times around the office, owing to the fact that it’s the end of the week and we’re all punchy and going out of our way to distract each other. This is how we end up watching SNL’s “Lazy Sunday” several times in a row, looking up our students on Facebook, and just generally being loud and immature.

But this trend reached new heights one Friday a couple weeks ago, when I sat down at my desk and, not for any particularly good reason, began singing the theme song to “Growing Pains”. Before I knew it, Emily had begun singing the female vocal accompaniment on cue, and we began developing plans to perform the song at next year’s English Department talent show.

That led to about two hours of reminiscence about our various 1980s sitcoms, aided by Wikipedia and IMDB. Once I started downloading their theme songs, all bets were off.

Because Emily is exactly my age, our points of reference to these various shows were more or less identical. As often happens, shows were recalled and discussed through free association more than anything: talking about “Different Strokes” led to “The Facts Of Life”; “The Cosby Show” to “A Different World”; “Full House” to “Family Matters” (aka “Full House With Black People”).

It’s times like this that nostalgia bangs up against empirical document, as our often fuzzy (but occasionally, frighteningly accurate) memories of these shows are corroborated, supplemented, or invalidated by the Internet to degrees of specificity not possible ten, or even five, years ago. (Although when Emily was pretty sure that Arsenio Hall played Dwayne Wayne on “A Different World”, I didn’t need IMDB to tell her she was, perhaps, mistaken.)

So, in the spirit of marrying pop-culture nostalgia to historical triviata, I present a few of our (and when I say “our,” I’m employing the universal “we,” or as close to universal as the subset of Americans born during the years 1970-1980 can rightfully be considered) favorite shows here, along with thematic breakdowns, fun facts, and links to mp3s of their theme songs (you’re welcome).

Growing Pains (IMDB) (Wiki)

I’ll start with this one since its theme song was the catalyst for this whole exercise, and because I saw the newly-release Season 1 DVD at Target the other night and just about peed myself. As Emily and I discussed these shows, we realized that most of them incorporate a few key themes common to the 1980s sitcom universe: Affluent but Grounded Families, Class Stratification, Non-Nuclear and/or Otherwise Fragmented Family Configurations, Race Relations, Zany Type-B Personalities Clashing with Uptight Type-A Personalities, Immigration and the Ensuing Culture Clash, and Good-Natured Servitude. Curiously, “Growing Pains” only presents the first of those themes: it’s just a show about a couple of awesome parents who are kind of rich but aren’t dicks about it, and their children Ben (who, along with Chip from “Kate & Allie”, Rudy from “The Cosby Show”, and countless others, suffered the surreal and dreaded fate of entering adolescence on national television), Carol (who, along with the daughters on “Kate & Allie”, Samantha on “Who’s The Boss?”, and countless others, started merely cute and got totally hot), and Mike (who, along with exactly no one else, started as a Nielsen-boosting heartthrob whose portrayer became a scary Christian evangelical who alienated the rest of the cast toward the end of the show’s run with his proselytizing and currently has a website that tells you, based on a short quiz, whether you’re going to Hell [the answer is Yes]).

CENTRAL 80s SITCOM THEMES EXPLORED: Affluent but Grounded Families.

THEME SONG SUBGENRE: Strident Groove Propelled by Searing Guitar Licks and Simmons Electronic Drums, with Lyrics Offering Insanely Optimistic Platitudes. Sample lyric: “As long as we’ve got each other, we’ve got the world spinning right in our hands / baby, you and me, we gotta be / the luckiest dreamers who never quit dreamin’!” (The SGPbSGL&SEDw/LOIOP theme song subgenre recurred throughout the decade; it was pretty much the bread and butter of 80s-sitcom theme songs.)

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FUN TRIVIA FACTS: Aside from Kirk Cameron’s aforementioned slide into bellicose doomsday fundamentalism (whose repercussions alone make the show’s Wikipedia entry fascinating reading), a young Leonardo DiCaprio’s recurring role, and the fact that there were two reunion movies, it’s well worth noting that Alan Thicke composed the theme songs to “Wheel Of Fortune”, “Diff’rent Strokes”, and “The Facts Of Life”. Which segues neatly into …

Diff’rent Strokes (IMDB) (Wiki)

There’s so much to be said about this show, but one thing I didn’t notice until just now is the lame attempt to incorporate Ebonics into the title. I wonder if they could get away with that these days. Anyway, this show was probably my first favorite sitcom of my early formative years. It was ostensibly goofy, a showcase for Gary Coleman’s wisecracking, pituitarily-inhibited charisma. But as a noted pioneer of the Very Special Episode, it had undeniably dark overtones in several VSEs, including The One Where Kimberly Is Bulimic, The One Where Arnold Gets Molested By The Creepy Photographer Guy In His Basement, or The One Where Willis’ Friend Dies In A Drunk-Driving Accident. (Though the scariest one for me, personally, was the one where Arnold, trying to perform a disappearing act as part of a magic show, ends up outside on the building’s ledge. This episode helped instill in me a fear of heights and/or magic shows.) Add to that the real-life tragedies of Todd Bridges’ drug addiction and subsequent recovery, Dana Plato’s drug addiction and subsequent death, and Gary Coleman’s desire to know more about that which people were talkin’, and subsequent gubernatorial campaign.

CENTRAL 80s SITCOM THEMES EXPLORED: A veritable smorgasbord: AbGF (“A man is born, he’s a man of means”) CS (“then along come two, the got nothin’ but their jeans” [delicious pun, that]), N-Na/oOFFC (obviously), RR (also obviously), G-NS (remember Mrs. Garrett?).

THEME SONG SUBGENRE: Relatively Synoptic and Literal Lyrics, as illustrated in the first line, with a Patina of Insanely Optimistic Lyrical Platitudes—consider the song’s bridge: “Everybody’s got a special kind of story / everybody finds a way to shine / it don’t matter what you got, not a lot, so what?” A stirring celebration of diversity indeed. Well done, Mr. Thicke.

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FUN TRIVIA FACTS: Kimberly Drummond was written out of the show when Dana Plato became pregnant; the rent on Mr. Drummond’s Park Ave was $3500/month; Mr. Drummond was played by Conrad Bain, whose name is so hilariously awesome that several of my friends and I still occasionally refer to each other as “Old Gay Conrad Bain” (which isn’t really a comment on anyone’s sexuality—it’s just that any name sounds funnier with the “Old Gay” antecedent). What’s more, Conrad Bain has a twin brother named Bonar Bain. I shit you not.

Family Ties (IMDB) (Wiki)

I feel like this one, along with “Full House” and “The Cosby Show”, hardly seems worth talking about, since it’s so canonical, and since current pop-culture mavens from “The Family Guy” to “I Love The 80s” have riffed that triad to death. But, perhaps its place in the canon is precisely the reason we should take a moment to pay our respects. Plus, Tina Yothers and Meredith Baxter-Birney are both great-sounding names. This one had its share of Very Special Episodes; I remember an especially disturbing one where Alex was haunted by a dead friend. Also worth noting is the show’s setting in suburban Columbus OH, which made it one of the era’s few sitcoms not set in a major coastal metropolis.

CENTRAL 80s SITCOM THEMES EXPLORED: The Keatons were not overtly affluent, but extremely well-grounded, so much so that the only way Alex could rebel was by being a Republican. This show is similar to “Growing Pains” in that its creators were reasonably certain they could generate enough storylines from a ridiculously healthy nuclear family without playing the Race, Nanny, Divorce, or Class Stratification cards. Though it says something about Reagan-era popular culture that it was a bold departure from convention for a television family to be liberal and firmly seated in the middle- and not upper-class. (In a rare instance of sitcom realism, most of the show’s scenes were set in the family’s kitchen. I didn’t fail to notice this as a young viewer: I remember wanting my family to spend more time in our living room instead of the kitchen because that’s where people on TV did and said such hilarious things.)

THEME SONG SUBGENRE: Alarmingly Starry-Eyed and Tender Ballad About Our Enduring Love for Each Other and Our Family.

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FUN TRIVIA FACTS: Courtney Cox and Tom Hanks both appeared on the show, as did Michael J. Fox’s future Back To The Future co-star Crispin Glover.

Who’s The Boss? (IMDB) (Wiki)

This wasn’t necessarily one of my favorites at the time, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s so prototypical and embodies many of the themes I’ve discussed here. Plus, Alyssa Milano was probably single-handedly responsible for more premature onsets of male puberty than any other actress of the era. This show was built around the extremely realistic premise of a former major-league Italian-American baseball player getting a job as a live-in housekeeper for an extremely uptight WASP and her elderly nymphomaniac mother. Hijinks inevitably Ensued; most memorable for me was the time when Tony barged in on Angela as she was getting out of the shower. And hey, remember that one time that Tony pronounced Angela’s name with an r at the end because of his Brooklyn accent?

CENTRAL 80s SITCOM THEMES EXPLORED: CS, N-N&/oOFFC, ZT-BPCw/UT-AP (A great deal of Tony’s narrative agency rested with his repeated attempts to get Angela to “loosen up”), G-NS. (This is as apt a moment as any to ask how so many of these ostensibly middle-class television families were able to afford live-in housekeepers. Also, they all worked at home, since if they had to leave the house for work like normal people, they wouldn’t be around for when Hijinks inevitably Ensued.)

THEME SONG SUBGENRE: A veritable hybrid between Family Ties’ soft-focus romanticism and “Growing Pains” optimistic generalities. There are also some soulful guitar licks and synthesized woodwinds mixed way to the front. The lyric that always bothered me the most was the first one: “There’s a time for love and a time for livin’,” as if the two were mutually exclusive.

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FUN TRIVIA FACTS: Aside from the usual factoids about season finales and spin-offs, there’s not a whole much to report. This is made up for by the fact that the show was syndicated in Germany as “Ein Job fürs Leben” (“A life-time job,” presumably because the phrase “Who’s The Boss?” has historical and political connotations that were a bit too unsettling for most Germans).

Mr. Belvedere (IMDB) (Wiki)

In terms of Theme Songs You Can’t Believe Anyone Actually Went Into a Studio to Record, Much Less Compose, this one’s the Holy Grail, and it never fails to have me on the floor howling with mirth by the end. Especially if Mark does his dead-on impression of Leon Redbone singing, “Streaks on the china … ” But I’m getting ahead of myself. This show, of course, asked real-life sportscaster Bob Eubanks Uecker to attempt a formidable acting stretch by casting him as a sportswriter. Also, the only characters I have any recollection of are Mr. Belvedere and Wesley. I don’t remember a single goddamn thing about the other two kids. I mean, look at them. Who are those guys, anyway?

CENTRAL 80s SITCOM THEMES EXPLORED: Whew! Just about all of them. CS, N-N&/oOFFC, RR (but only if you consider the British a different race, which would make you a moron), I&tECC, ZT-BPCw/UT-AP (since Hilarity inevitably Ensued when mischievous Wesley crossed paths with the fastidious Mr. Belvedere), G-N(but tinged with British sardonicism)S.

THEME SONG SUBGENRE: There is no acronym long or unwieldy enough to encompass the sheer brilliance and/or inanity of this 58-second tour de force. So I’ll let the song speak for itself. I will say that this song was the first place I heard the term “status quo.” And that the song’s final orchestral stab is perhaps one of the most obnoxious things to happen in all of music, ever.

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FUN TRIVIA FACTS: This isn’t so much a piece of trivia as a mildly amusing anecdote. I remember watching this show once with my brother and one of his friends, who would have been about eight years old at the time. At one point this friend of my brother’s conjectured that Mr. Belvedere was gay. “Do you know what that means, Joe?” he asked. “It means he loves a man.” Well, he was British and his first name was Lynn … you do the math.

Perfect Strangers (IMDB) (Wiki)

This was one of my favorite shows as a child, in part because I felt like it was aimed precisely at my demographic. (Most 80s sitcoms, for that matter, certainly seemed designed for, and possibly by, ten-year-olds.) I perfected an impression of Balki saying “Don’t be riDICulous, Cousin Larry!” that I’m sure my parents found infinitely charming. There was also a certain gritty verisimilitude in having the show take place in Chicago, which I was dimly aware was located closer to Iowa than Mr. Drummond’s swank Park Ave penthouse.

CENTRAL 80s SITCOM THEMES EXPLORED: N-N&/oOFFC (if there’s any doubt in our minds that this show had its share of homoerotic overtones, that photo up there pretty much erases it), I&tECC (the thematic basket in which the show’s creators were putting all but a few of their eggs), and of course ZT-BPCw/UT-AP (it’s worth mentioning that the show’s primary creator, Dale McRaven, also created “The Odd Couple,” so he wasn’t about to try and fix his ain’t-broke formula).

THEME SONG SUBGENRE: A veritable tsunami of SGPbSGL&SEDw/LOIOP attended by a Class-3 squall of synth harmonica. The lyrics don’t get much more platitudinous than “Standing tall, on the wings of my dream!” and “It’s my life, my dream / nothing’s gonna stop me now!”, and raise the question of just where ambition ends and delusion begins. But then, Balki was an immigrant attempting to become an American citizen.

“Perfect Strangers” Theme (mp3)

FUN TRIVIA FACTS: Larry Appleton is so named because he is from Wisconsin. I went to Lawrence University, in Appleton, and so I like to think that his first name is derived from the school’s name.

With such a wealth of great 80s sitcoms to blog about, I could conceivably go on forever, but my carpal tunnel’s threatening to make a comeback. So I’ll wrap it up. Maybe I’ll do another round in a little while. After all, there’s still “The Cosby Show”, “A Different World”, “Rosanne”, “Valerie”, “ALF”, “Facts Of Life”, “Full House”, “Family Matters”, “Charles In Charge”, “Newhart” … Holy crap, television has ruined me.

Update And “Kate & Allie”, “Blossom”, “The Fresh Prince”, “Saved By The Bell”, “Silver Spoons”, “Benson”, “Night Court” …