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Backyard mishaps, wedding disasters, and cats falling off furniture — network primetime built entirely from viewers' camcorder tapes, with a $10,000 prize on the line. America's Funniest Home Videos captured the moment when every family owned a camcorder and one shot at fame.
Cory Matthews' suburban coming-of-age journey was guided by the constant, unexpected presence of Mr. Feeny—the teacher who somehow followed him through every school. Boy Meets World captured adolescence, first love, and the unshakeable found family of Friday nights.
The ballroom show that made Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli household names. ABC's Dancing with the Stars premiered June 1, 2005, as a six-celebrity summer experiment, and within a year its finales were pulling 27 million viewers.
Wisteria Lane looked perfect — the lawns, the casseroles, the cul-de-sac waves — and every bit of it was a cover story. Narrated by a neighbor who takes her own life in the show's first minutes, ABC's suburban satire-soap made Sunday night appointment television again and turned four housewives into the biggest stars on TV.
The Henson sitcom in full-body animatronic dinosaur suits — and quietly one of the darkest shows ABC ever aired. Baby Sinclair's "Not the mama!" and "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" were everywhere in the early 90s, right up until the finale ended the series with an actual ice-age extinction.
A family facing hardship gets sent on vacation while a crew of designers completely rebuilds their house into a dream home — then comes the reveal, a crowd gathers, and the chant erupts: "Bus driver, move that bus!" This was comfort-food television at its warmest, the feel-good juggernaut of the 2000s.
A Chicago cop's family became Friday-night must-watch TV: the Winslows, anchored by Reginald VelJohnson fresh off Die Hard — and the nerdy next-door neighbor who was only supposed to appear once. Steve Urkel's snorting laugh, suspender-snapping chaos, and "Did I do that?" turned a guest spot into the gravitational center of eight seasons on ABC.
![Video thumbnail — Full House - Intro [HQ]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2EL65KLdEHE/hqdefault.jpg)
The Tanner family's San Francisco home was always full of hugs, life lessons, and sappy catchphrases. Bob Saget, John Stamos, and Dave Coulier anchored this audience-beloved sitcom that critics despised, while the Olsen twins charmed viewers as Michelle.
A comedian playing himself, a factory job, a meddling mom, and War's "Low Rider" kicking off every episode. Championed by Sandra Bullock and built from George Lopez's real San Fernando Valley childhood, the show became one of the rare network comedies with a Latino lead — then ran nearly thirteen more years on Nick at Nite after ABC was done with it.
Brett Butler's Grace Kelly worked the oil refinery in Victory, Missouri, raised three kids alone and stayed sober — the biggest new sitcom of 1993 and a top-five show for two years. Behind the scenes it was a harder story, and ABC ended it in 1998.
The medical drama that owned the mid-2000s, built on a textbook pun, powered by "McDreamy," and anchored by a romance storyline so devastating it wrecked living rooms nationwide. Shonda Rhimes' midseason gamble became appointment television — and it still hasn't stopped.
Mark Curry as an ex-NBA player turned substitute teacher in Oakland, first as a roommate comedy and then, on TGIF, as a family show with Nell Carter running the school and a young Raven-Symoné in the house. The Friday-night sitcom that was a love letter to its star's hometown.
Tim Allen's 'Tool Man' ruled the suburban garage with more power and less wisdom than any homeowner should wield. Home Improvement was a blue-collar sitcom about mishaps, masculinity, and the perpetual mystery behind Wilson's always-hidden fence.
The face of the mid-90s: Randy Taylor, the wisecracking middle son on ABC's Home Improvement, whose image covered a million bedroom walls. "JTT" was the defining teen-magazine heartthrob of the decade—three initials that meant the same thing to one generation that Elvis meant to another. At the absolute peak of his fame, he walked away to go to college.
The ABC serial drama that turned network TV into a mystery box for six seasons. When Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a mysterious island, survivors discovered that their new home held impossible secrets—a smoke monster, a hidden hatch, a shadowy group called "the Others"—and a mythology so complex that fans spent years theorizing about every detail.
Nineteen episodes of Angela Chase's unsparing inner monologue — and of Jordan Catalano leaning against things. One season, canceled, and mourned so hard the internet invented the save-our-show campaign for it.
Steven Bochco and David Milch's 15th Precinct brought handheld cameras, raw language and bare backsides to network television in 1993 — and dozens of ABC affiliates refused to air it. The ratings won the argument, Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz became the squad room's battered conscience, and the show ran twelve seasons.
Saturday morning TV with its own zip code. Disney's One Saturday Morning was a two-hour kingdom of cartoons, weird interstitials, and a virtual set that made Saturday feel like a show inside a show. For five years it was the place to be before the rest of the house woke up.
Cousin Larry, Balki from the island of Mypos, and the Dance of Joy. It started in 1986, but for a generation of kids it was the show that anchored the original TGIF lineup on Friday nights, and the one Family Matters spun out of.
The elementary-school playground reimagined as its own nation — with a king, its own laws, and six kids just trying to survive until the bell. Recess made recess itself the whole point.
The loudest kitchen table on television. Roseanne Barr and John Goodman as Dan and Roseanne Conner, working double shifts in Lanford, Illinois and trading wisecracks about bills, kids, and each other — the sitcom that made a struggling blue-collar family the biggest thing in prime time.
Michael J. Fox ran a fictional New York City Hall as Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty, covering for a clueless mayor and a staff of lovable disasters. His 2000 farewell, after going public with Parkinson's, drew nearly 33 million viewers; Charlie Sheen took the desk for two more seasons.
ABC's TGIF sitcom about a blended family: Patrick Duffy's contractor and Suzanne Somers's salon owner marry on a Jamaica vacation after a whirlwind courtship, then have to blend six kids who resent one another. Critics called it a Brady Bunch knockoff. It ran seven seasons anyway.
Jo Frost stepping out of a black London cab in a tailored suit, ready to fix your family. Supernanny made the "naughty step" a household phrase, turned toddler meltdowns into primetime television, and gave every 2000s kid the ambient fear that one bad tantrum could summon her.
ABC's Friday-night family sitcom block was appointment television on the one night networks usually wrote off. From Full House to Family Matters to Boy Meets World, TGIF owned Friday-night ratings throughout the 1990s — officially "Thank God It's Friday," though its squeaky-clean stars pitched it as "Thank Goodness It's Funny."
In April 1990, a logging town in the Pacific Northwest became the mystery the whole country was trying to solve. An FBI agent, a damn fine cup of coffee, and one question — "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Twin Peaks proved network television could be genuinely strange, elegantly cinematic, and popular all at once — at least until the answer came, and the spell broke.
"Is that your final answer?" For a couple of years around the millennium, Regis Philbin, a tiered ladder to a million dollars, three lifelines, and a set that dimmed to a heartbeat pulse made this the biggest show on television — running multiple nights a week and minting the country's first game-show millionaires.
"Everything's made up and the points don't matter." Drew Carey's ABC version of the British improv show premiered August 5, 1998, as summer filler and became a hit, giving Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, and Wayne Brady a weekly stage for Scenes from a Hat, Greatest Hits, and the Hoedown that Stiles hated.
Two families — usually polar opposites — traded moms for two weeks, with a rules-change ceremony in the middle and an excruciating reunion table at the end. The appeal was simple and irresistible: watch how other people live, then decide whether your own house was really so bad.
Four giant red balls over a muddy pond, the Sucker Punch, the Sweeper, and two announcers mocking every contestant who got flattened. ABC's summer obstacle course, billed as the world's largest, premiered in June 2008 and became the thing the whole family watched in a heap on the couch, the champion walking away with $50,000 from the floodlit Wipeout Zone.
Kevin Arnold's suburban adolescence in the late sixties feels like your own childhood no matter when you grew up — that's the magic. A coming-of-age dramedy narrated by the grown-up version of the kid you're rooting for, it proved a teenager's small heartbreaks and friendships could carry network television.