GenXElle: Raised on Reruns

Designing Women could make me laugh until I cried, and then turn around and say something I’d remember for nearly forty years. In this episode, I’m going back to Sugarbaker & Associates: Julia’s legendary speeches, Suzanne’s bravado and vulnerability, Mary Jo’s quiet courage, Charlene’s wide-open heart, and the wonderfully strange family that formed around them, including Anthony and, of cours...

The Facts of Life isn't a show I rediscovered. I never really left it. For nine seasons, Blair, Jo, Natalie and Tootie grew up in front of us, arguing, laughing, screwing up, forgiving each other and somehow becoming family along the way. And for a lot of Gen X girls, they showed us something television hadn't really given us before: girls our own age whose friendships mattered as much as...

I started rewatching Kate & Allie for this episode and somehow...I never stopped. Four seasons later, I'm still watching. As a kid, I connected with the kids. My parents were separated and getting divorced, and there was something about that crowded New York brownstone that felt safe. The adults showed up. The kids got to be kids. Problems happened, but somehow you knew everything was goin...

When I rewatched Cagney & Lacey, I expected to make an episode about two women breaking barriers in a man's profession. Instead, I found myself thinking about partnership. Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey couldn't have been more different. One was single. One was married with children. One trusted instinct. One trusted procedure. Television usually asks us to decide who's right...

I was seven, sitting too close to the TV, when I first watched Maude argue with someone and not back down. I didn't know what feminism was. I didn't know why my parents exchanged a look when she said what she said. I just knew she was someone I wasn't going to forget Rewatching Maude more than fifty years later, I rediscovered a show about the people who shape us before we're old e...

Wonder Woman wasn't just another television character. She became a symbol. Rewatching the 1975 series in 2026, I expected to find a groundbreaking superhero who had already claimed her place in the world. Instead, I found a show full of contradictions, a woman raised to lead who often found herself working within a world that barely recognized her. So why do so many Gen X women still remember...

There are television characters we wanted to become. Alice Hyatt probably wasn't one of them. She was overworked, underpaid, raising a son on her own, and trying to hold her life together one shift at a time. In this episode of Raised on Reruns, I revisit Alice and discover that the show's real magic wasn't the diner or even Alice herself. It was the friendships. Flo, Vera, Mel, Tommy,...

Everyone remembers Mary Richards throwing her hat into the Minneapolis sky. But rewatching The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 2026, I kept thinking about the women standing next to her. Rhoda, who survived by being the funny one. Sue Ann, who weaponized femininity like a professional. Phyllis, who performed superiority to hide how fragile her world really was. Georgette, who everyone underestimated. And...

When That Girl premiered in 1966, the premise was almost radical: a young single woman moves to New York, lives alone, and pursues a career because she wants one. Watching it as a Gen X kid, I didn't see a political statement. I saw possibility. Watching it again now, I see a woman who gets the apartment and the career but never quite escapes the need for male approval. That gap, between what...

Saturday night television had a rhythm. First came the romance and optimism of The Love Boat , where strangers boarded a cruise ship carrying emotional baggage and usually left with misunderstandings resolved and hearts a little lighter. And then the tone shifted. A small plane descended over the ocean. “Da plane! Da plane!” On Fantasy Island , guests arrived chasing their deepest wishes only to d...

Before streaming. Before DVR. Before educational apps. There were three-minute cartoon songs tucked between Saturday morning cartoons that somehow managed to teach an entire generation how the world worked. Schoolhouse Rock wasn’t supposed to be a classroom. It was supposed to be entertainment. But through jazz musicians, Broadway lyricists, catchy melodies, and wonderfully strange animation, it q...

Little House on the Prairie looked like one of the most wholesome shows on television. Wide open land. A close-knit family. A small town built on faith and community. But beneath that peaceful surface was a very different story. Life on the frontier was unstable. Families faced poverty, illness, loss,and the constant struggle to build something out of almost nothing. For many Gen X kids, Little Ho...

Good Times and The Jeffersons were both part of Norman Lear’s television universe. Both centered on Black families. Both comedies. But emotionally, they were telling very different stories. One family was fighting to survive inside poverty. The other had climbed into financial success and was discovering that success didn’t erase history, pressure, or insecurity. As kids, many of us watched these...

One Day at a Time looked like a traditional sitcom. A laugh track. An apartment set. A neighbor who walked in whenever he wanted. But underneath that familiar structure, the show was doing something quietly radical. Instead of starting with a happy family, it started after the happy ending had already fallen apart. A newly divorced mother rebuilding her life. Two teenage daughters trying to unders...

M*A*S*H wasn’t just a comedy. It was a show about pressure, contradiction, and what it takes to stay human in the middle of chaos. Week after week, we watched people laugh, drink, argue, and operate, not because things were okay, but because they weren’t. Beneath the humor was something else entirely. Exhaustion. Moral tension. And the quiet understanding that some things don’t make sense and neve...

Most of us don’t remember specific episodes of Emergency! . But we remember the sound. The radio tone. The steady voices. “Rampart, this is Squad 51.” In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , we revisit the 1970s series that introduced America to modern emergency response and explore the partnership between Roy and Johnny, the hierarchy inside Rampart Hospital, and the quiet authority of he...

Before women were expected to be funny, Carol Burnett ran one of the most successful comedy shows in television history. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , I revisit The Carol Burnett Show not just as a legendary sketch comedy program, but as a masterclass in authority, ensemble trust, and emotional elasticity. From the unpredictable audience Q&A that opened every episode, to icon...

Before we had language for chaos, authority, or emotional safety, we were watching them play out on Saturday mornings. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , I revisit the surreal universe of Sid and Marty Krofft; from H.R. Pufnstuf and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters to The Bugaloos and the broader Krofft Supershow era, not as psychedelic oddities, but as emotional ecosystems. The sets were...

Before we had language for grief, step-parenting, or emotional overload, we were watching it unfold in prime time. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , I revisit Eight Is Enough , not just as a big-family drama from the late 70s, but as one of the first times many of us saw loss, remarriage, and complicated love handled without a laugh track. This wasn’t a perfectly blended staircase fa...

Before we had language for emotional intelligence, repair, or blended families, we were watching them play out on television. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , I revisit The Brady Bunch , not as a simple sitcom about six kids and a floating staircase, but as a cultural blueprint for harmony, fairness, and emotional safety. The Brady house promised something powerful: problems could b...

Before we had language for emotional safety, nervous systems, or chosen family, we were watching them play out on television. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , I revisit the Garry Marshall universe: Happy Days , Laverne & Shirley , and Mork & Mindy , not as nostalgic sitcoms, but as emotional training grounds for Gen X. These shows weren’t about realism. They were about regul...

Before we had language for power, gender, or boundaries, we were watching them play out on television. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , I revisit Bewitched, not as a cute sitcom, but as a cultural lesson about what happens when a woman has power… and is asked not to use it. Samantha Stevens wasn’t dangerous or dark. Her “magic” was competence. Intelligence. Speed. Intuition. And yet...

Before emotional literacy was a phrase. Before nervous systems entered the conversation. Before adults asked children how they felt instead of telling them how to behave. A generation of Gen X kids learned how to sit with big feelings from a cardigan, a brownstone stoop, and a crowded city block full of monsters, neighbors, and messy humanity. In this episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , Elle r...

Before trigger warnings, before emotional vocabulary, before we had language for nervous systems, boundaries, or invisible labor, a soft-spoken woman in a house dress quietly held the moral center of one of the most volatile living rooms in television history. In this first episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , Elle revisits All in the Family , not through Archie’s outrage or the culture wars it...

Before influencers, before branding, before “authenticity” became a performance, holiday magic came wrapped in sequins, stage lights, and perfectly choreographed illusion. In this second holiday episode of GenXElle: Raised on Reruns , Elle moves beyond stop-motion and cartoons and intothe glitter-soaked world of 1970s live-action holiday specials; the variety shows and musical events that promised...