Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. Consciously, I know this to be true. I avoided therapy for years after that. Because she was right. My most distinct memory of Andre is arriving at a family gathering β his side β on the other end of town. I was usually taken by my paternal grandfather, Henry, who we all refer to as Papaw.
My graduate school writing class was a lightbulb moment for me: I realized that your relationship with your parents does influence your art β not just the art you create, but the art you consume and how you interpret it.
Working dads rarely knew what the hell was going on in their homes during the day, and advertisers realized that women might want to see other women on TV solving problems like they had to in their everyday lives. It cracks me up whenever parents today are worried about how much time their kids spend looking at screens, because from middle school to high school, millennials woke up and watched syndicated TV in the morning: usually cartoons on Disney, Charmed, or Saved by the Bell and USA High, a two-season show that aired on USA Network about American kids in a Parisian boarding school that inexplicably has ninety-five episodes.
AOL Instant Messenger was the de facto chat room for all high school students. Then, back home, millennials were once again glued to their TV sets until dinner and then again after dinner and then once more after they were sure their parents were asleep.
This is how we watched the sexy MTV soap opera Undressed that aired after ten p. But back to sitcoms. Not to be a BuzzFeed personality quiz, but the sitcoms you watched in your formative years tended to mirror the family unit you wished you had. Families stuck together no matter what β except for the characters who were written off shows like they never existed β and always hugged it out at the end of the episode.
