when i was a kid there were only two shows my mom gave me a hard time watching, SNL and Soap
i was only 9 when SNL debuted and even though she told me she didn’t like me watching it, i could never make it too long into it before id fall asleep.
a few years later Soap premiered and it had a parental warning. she’d hear it and shout, turn the channel.
i was like Awwww Ma!
and she would say you’re 11. you are precisely what that warning is about. i am the parent and it is warning me.
somehow i got the idea of watching it With her and even the intro and summaries at the beginning of each episode were hilarious. but yes, they did have adult themes: death, homosexuality, divorce, aliens.
i need to rewatch that show.
here’s Robert Guilliaume talking about navigating the idea of playing a butler when youre a proud black man in the late 1970s