The Ultimate TGIF Lineup

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TGIF could never happen today. It's hard enough to get anyone to watch one network television show in 2022, much less having young people sit down for a two hour block of various shows. But when it debuted, TGIF was enormously successful for ABC. Not only did it outlast every show that was on the initial TGIF schedule, it outlasted the entire 1990's.

I'll play program director and assemble my ideal TGIF lineup. One rule is that a show must have spent at least one full season on TGIF when it was branded as such. There were shows geared to the whole family like Mr. Belvedere and Webster on Friday nights in the 1980's but it wasn't called TGIF formally until 1989. So those earlier shows won't count. When picking what time to air a show, they would have had to appear at that time slot at least once to qualify.

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8:00 PM

Full House

On TGIF from 1989-91

The Brady Bunch for younger Gen Xers and older Millennials, Full House was not a good show at all. But like the Brady's, there was something comforting about hanging out with the Tanners. The show was junk food for kids in the 80's and 90's yet it was also incredibly effective. It was one of only two shows (Family Matters is the other) to crack the Top 20 for the year while it was on TGIF and the first year it moved to Tuesdays, it finished in 8th overall for the 1991-92 season.

TGIF might not even have existed if it wasn't for Full House. It was already on Fridays and driving large amounts of younger audiences that they wanted to build around to the network. Parents knew the show as well by that point because it had been on for a couple seasons and it gave a level of comfort to parents knowing that this was probably a pretty tame two hour block of shows if Full House was part of it. ABC even used Dave Coulier, John Stamos and Mary Kate & Ashley Olson early on to film interstitials between episodes to keep the synergy of the night going.

Some younger readers might think Sabrina, The Teenage Witch deserves this spot especially considering Full House was only on TGIF for two seasons. But Sabrina wasn't nearly as popular as Full House nor has it had the same cultural relevancy.

8:30 PM

Family Matters

On TGIF from 1989-97

No show appeared on TGIF more often. It also made major changes to what the show was to better appeal to the younger viewers watching it. When Family Matters came out, it was initially supposed to focus more on the parents Harriette (who was played by Jo Marie Payton who was the same character on the successful Perfect Strangers) and Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson who was just coming off Die Hard). Instead by the end of the first season, all anyone cared about was Steve Urkel.

Jaleel White later said that the adults on the cast weren't "very welcoming" to him initially but by the fifth season, they had become a family. I will say that shows typically enter syndication after the fifth season which can be a huge payday for the cast. Maybe they realized being part of a long running show was more valuable than having more lines each week. But whether the cast wanted Jaleel White around or not, the fact that the producers were willing to alter the focus of the show that early on shows how seriously they took that young audience. 

Family Matters wound up going to CBS for a final season in 1997-98 after being cancelled by ABC. It wound up being the last live action comedy from the 1980's producing new episodes on television. It's not my favorite TGIF show but no show embodied that block of television more.

9:00 PM

Perfect Strangers

On TGIF from 1989-91

Perfect Strangers was the rare TGIF show that succeeded that didn't have child actors. It was about a yuppie named Larry who lived in Chicago and is forced to become roommates with his foreign cousin Balki who doesn't understand American cultures but is a very kind person. It was a pretty simple fish out of water concept but the strength of the show was the great performances by Mark-Linn Baker (as Larry) and Bronson Pinchot (as Balki). 

Out of all the shows in TGIF history, this is the best. The chalk pick here is Step By Step but that always felt too much of a Brady Bunch retread even when I was a kid watching it. It was a likeable enough show but Perfect Strangers was legitimately good and has some real laughs even when I catch it now and then as an adult.

Pinchot was in Risky Business and Beverly Hills Cop before he was in Perfect Strangers but no one knew quite what to do with him after that. He was entertaining in True Romance and bizarre in the made-for-TV Stephen King movie The Langoliers but his most notable role after Perfect Strangers was Jean-Luc in Step By Step. I'd like to think Pinchot should have had a bigger career because he's so unusual and talented but he's very challenging to cast for those same reasons.

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9:30 PM

Boy Meets World

On TGIF from 1993-2000

Boy Meets World spent the entirety of its seven season run on Fridays on ABC. As Full House was there for the start of TGIF, Boy Meets World was there to close it out. Never a massive hit, it was a steady performer for most of it's run. Unlike most TGIF shows, it was fairly well regarded by critics and for what it was, it was a very good show.

The show's greatest strength was the casting. It did a great job with the child actors (Ben Savage, Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong) and added an adult actor with some gravitas in William Daniels who had appeared in The Graduate and 1776. The show likely would have kept running for another season but ABC wanted to move away from family comedies on Friday nights and Ben Savage wanted to attend college.

The final shows that aired on TGIF was Boy Meets World, The Hughley's, Sabrina and Making The Band.  The following season, ABC called the Friday night lineup "ABC Working Comedy" and featured traditional adult sitcoms but having a themed night was short lived because ABC had Who Wants To Be A Millionaire waiting in the wings and would soon be playing it five nights a week. 

The days of network TV utilizing nightly blocks like TGIF or Must See TV are mostly gone with one exception. NBC has the Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago PD on Wednesday nights even in this upcoming fall. Those shows all share the same universe but it's different with dramas and so many fewer people watch them than would ever watch the blocked schedules in the 80's and 90's. I do miss the simplicity of nights like this and how, because there were fewer options, we'd watch them together as a country. That common bond has been eroded with more choices than ever. I can say this really bothers me but it's not like I'm sitting down anytime soon to watch those Chicago shows.