There was a time when jeans were just jeans. You bought them to wear to work on the construction site or to just lay around the house in on the weekend. That all ended in the 80s with the introduction of "designer" jeans. No brand was more successful out of the gate than Calvin Klein and undoubtedly no one was more singularly responsible for the success of CK jeans than the product's public face, Brooke Shields.

In the most infamous of a series of racy (for their time) tv commercials the then 15 year old Ms. Shields stared into the camera and breathlessly declared "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Oh my.

Here is that scandalous ad from 1980 which wound up getting banned in many parts of the country but would go on to nonetheless create the basic template for nearly every other designer jeans ad that followed. (Somebody needs to tell that young lady that good girls don't sit like that!)

The entire Korean War lasted a little over 3 years. The most well-known tv show to use it as a subject, M*A*S*H, lasted 11. Nobody seemed to care though and it's likely that if the creators of the show had decided to bring it back for a 12th season it would have remained a ratings monster. But they didn't. Instead what we got was the mother of all finales. A 2 1/2 hour tv movie entitely "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", (the title itself seeming to exhibit a certain degree uncertainty if viewed through the Shakespearean prism: "(thou) doth protest too much, methinks").

The show was directed by Alan Alda and, like much of the series itself, was heavy on the melodrama and light on the comedy. A 30 second advertisement broadcast during the show cost $450,000 (nearly a million in 2011 dollars) and the show wound up being the most watched television broadcast in American history drawing a reported 121 million viewers (even surpassing the "Who Shot JR?" episode of "Dallas").

If it weren't for cable tv's insatiable need for content it never would have seen the light of day. But content is king and because of that on May 2, 1982 The Weather Channel made its debut in homes all over the country much to the underwhelmation (I made a new word!) of the general populace. Like nose hairs growing in the dark though this idea of showing blue screen weather maps 24/7/365 with people standing in front of them saying such hair raising things as "a small low pressure center over Des Moines shouldn't bring any significant precipitation to eastern Iowa over the weekend" gradually took root. Before you knew it TWC was on in the background in nearly every house or apartment you'd visit. People whose connection to the real world was already tenuous due to tv addiction began to meld with their furniture and mark out the passage of their lives to the beat of "local on the 8s".

Every once in a while an actual weather event would occur and TWC would go into full-fledged "release the horses and get everyone into the shelter" mode. It was never clear to me what was more pathetic; TWC's tendency to turn tropical breezes into the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know it or the public's (and I include myself here) willingness to tune into saturation coverage of end-of-the-world storms that never seemed to arrive.

But be that as it may it doesn't seem like TWC is going anywhere anytime soon. Though NBC bought it in 2008 and promptly canned all the original weather jockeys and started showing movies on Friday nights (they've subsequently stopped after enduring a perfect storm of protest from the multitude of blue screen weather map junkies) The Weather Channel enters its 4th decade firmly ensconced atop the meteorological tv pyramid.

Here's the first ever minute of programming from The Weather Channel back in 1982. Listen to the breathless enthusiasm in those voices!

J.R. slumps to the floor after being shot.

"Dallas" was a pioneering prime time big budget TV series that ruled the airwaves in the late 70s and 80s. At the end of the '79-'80 season J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) was shot by an unseen assailant and CBS spent the summer playing up the mystery of who could have shot down the head of the powerful Ewing clan. The suspense was only heightened by the fact that the start of the '80-'81 season was delayed by two months due to an actors strike in Hollywood. Bookies all over the world were taking bets on who did it. "Who shot JR?" became the catch phrase of the year. Jimmy Carter joked that if he knew who shot JR he'd have had no problem raising money for his presidential re-election campaign.

The suspense finally ended on November 21, 1980 when it was revealed J.R.'s black-hearted mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby) was the one who pulled the trigger, driven to her crime of passion during a fit of rage. The show became the highest rated TV episode in history to that time drawing an estimated 83,000,000 viewers in the US alone.

"Late Night with David Letterman" debuted on NBC February 1, 1982 and represented a kind of blood transfusion into the moldering carcass of after hours television. Created by Johnny Carson's production company at the urging of then NBC boss Fred Silverman, Late Night's mandate was to give young men who had little or no interest in Carson's parade of old-school superstars something to watch in the wee hours. Carson, through his production company, made it clear that Letterman's new show had to break new ground; he didn't want it to be seen as simply the second hour of "The Tonight Show". To that end a representative of Carson's production company was a given the task of keeping an eye on the new show to make sure there wasn't any conceptual overlap. There wasn't.

Offbeat, irreverent, unpredictable and occasionally (though not intentionally) confrontational Late Night soon became must see viewing for young adults (especially college students) and grabbed itself a much larger audience share for NBC than they had had with its predecessor; "Tom Snyder Coast to Coast".

Though in his first monologue Letterman was obviously nervous and played down his prospects in time he'd become a fixture in the moonlit television landscape nearly rivaling his mentor Carson.

Here's the opening of the very first "Late Night with David Letterman Show" from February 1, 1982.

Jerry Seinfeld was a successful standup comedian who worked most of the major comedy clubs in the U.S. and was a regular on late night talk shows like "The Tonight Show". He had a manager who was in the habit of sending notes to the head of NBC at the time, Brandon Tartikoff, extolling Jerry's virtues and this habit eventually led to a meeting with the NBC brass where they asked Jerry if he'd like to do his own show for the network. He said "sure" but he didn't have any particular ideas about what it would be. The meeting ended with nothing concrete being decided. Some time later Seinfeld ran into Larry David at a comedy club and told him of NBC's interest. The two brainstormed and came up with the idea for a show about "making fun of stuff". Miraculously, NBC bought the idea and the first episode named "The Seinfeld Chronicles" aired on July 5, 1989.

"The Seinfeld Chronicles" was only a marginal success that didn't really impress much of the NBC brass and as a result the show was offered to Fox who, to their eternal regret, turned it down. Seinfeld did have one believer at NBC though, Rick Ludwin, who raided the budgets of other shows to produce four more episodes. These were slotted to follow the mega-hit Cheers and, aided by that lead-in, garnered impressive ratings. Based on that success NBC decided to pick up the show for the remainder of the season, though they insisted on a name change to the simpler "Seinfeld".

The four main characters had few, if any, redeeming social values. Jerry was vain and prone to dumping girlfriends for no particular reason, George was a lying, cheating, underachieving coward who would knock old ladies and children out of his way to save his own hide, Elaine was an often ill-tempered slut and Kramer faked his way through life always looking for (but never finding) that big idea that would make him rich.

Seinfeld would go on to become a cultural phenomenon like no other TV show before it. It was brash, it was crude, it was often borderline lewd and it made no apologies. The producers insisted that there should be no emotional or psychological growth in the characters and actually had something they called the "no hugging, no learning" rule which they applied to all scripts to ensure Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer remained emotionally stunted. And boy did they ever.

After nine seasons Jerry Seinfeld pulled the plug on his sitcom at a time when it was the highest rated show on TV. It could have concievably gone on for many more years (NBC offered him $5 million per episode to come back for a 10th season, which he declined) but he was intent on the idea of going out on top.

Here's my personal favorite Seinfeld scene. Sweet fancy Moses!

Michael Long (wink wink) was a Las Vegas police detective. Then he was shot in the face and nearly killed. Lucky for him billionaire Wilton Knight heard of his case and put up the money to save him and give him a new face via plastic surgery. The reborn crimefighter was christened Michael Knight, given a tripped-out, artificially intelligent Trans Am named KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) as a sidekick and sent forth to do battle with the forces of evil for the elder Knight's vigilante group FLAG (Foundation for Law And Government).

Knight Rider starring David Hasselhoff was launched on September 26, 1982 and became an immediate hit. The chicks liked that Hasselhoff dude and teen nerds all over the country got all pimply over KITT. The story lines were ridiculous, the acting hammy and KITT sounded like he'd swallowed C3P0 but nobody seemed to care. It was classic American escapist TV and was a ratings monster for the first couple of seasons. But after four seasons it was cancelled when those ratings began to decline and several attempts to resuscitate it have proven largely unsuccessful. Hasselhoff himself though went on to become quite a pop music sensation in several northern European countries and had a second hit series a few years later when silicone and sand were combined to create the even more ridiculous (and so of course more successful) Baywatch.

David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight with KITT. Isn't he dreamy? The guy isn't bad looking either.

The Simpsons have been around since Reagan was president. They debuted on an April 19, 1987 episode of The Tracey Ullman Show and have been running non-stop ever since. After three years with Ullman they were given their own half-hour TV show which debuted on December 17, 1989 and since then they've had 486 episodes (a world record for a TV show) and are still going strong.

Among Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie's accomplishments: 27 Emmys, a Peabody Award, A star on the Hollywood walk of fame, and a declaration by Time magazine in 1999 that The Simpson's was the 20th century's best TV show. It's also the longest-running American sitcom and the longest running primetime series (surpassing "Gunsmoke"). As if that weren't enough, The Simpsons Movie, released in 2007, grossed $527 million worldwide. The voice actors who began at a salary of $30,000 per episode currently receive something in the neighborhood of $400,000 per episode. Not a bad neighborhood.

(left) The Simpsons 1987 and (right) today

He was the quintessential 80s movie star. His resume included such 80s classics as "Stripes", "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Beverly Hills Cop". Edward Ernest Reinhold Jr was born in Wilmington Delaware in 1957 and later moved with his family to Florida. After attending the North Carolina School of the Arts he made his first forays into the entertainment business, working in regional repertory productions. He began to appear in minor TV roles in the late 70s once appearing in an episode of Wonder Woman.

After Stripes in 1981 his career took off. Besides Fast Times and Beverly Hills Cop (I,II and III) he appeared in "Gremlins", "Pandemonium" and "Ruthless People" among other films. By the 90s his acting career was on the wane though he did make a memorable appearance on Seinfeld as the "close talker" who can't do enough for Jerry's parents.

These days Judge reportedly spends most of his time in Arkansas, his wife's home state, and has taken on the cause of troubled veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also involved in bringing film production to his adopted state and plans to produce work there that focuses on the lives of people "overlooked by New York and Los Angeles."

As for the origin of his famous nickname Judge had this to say for an Arkansas newspaper story:
“My father graduated top of his class from Harvard Law School. At that time he had a practice in Washington, D.C.,” Reinhold said. “It cracked him up whenever I would frown because I looked just like an old Judge who presided over a case of his, so at two weeks old, he nicknamed me Judge.”

Judge Reinhold in the 80s (left) and in 2011 (right)

The original series lasted a scant 3 years on TV during the 60s. Who, at the time it was cancelled, could have realistically believed that that cancelled show would take on a life of its own in syndication during the 70s, would inspire the Star Trek convention business and would persuade Paramount Pictures a decade after it's cancelling to fund 'Star Trek - The Motion Picture'. Well it did. And after the (relative) success of TMP Paramount decided to fund a slew of sequels and finally in 1987 to bring the brand back to the small screen with Star Trek The Next Generation.

Maybe the worst title in the history of bad titles had a lot of people in the fan base on edge wondering whether Paramount had a any idea what it was doing. If the series was going to be as dull and unimaginative as its name suggested, why bother? Just let TOS rest in peace and continue to pump out movies. Paramount would have been happy to do so except that the original cast was ten days older than water and if they were going to keep the brand alive they needed an infusion of fresh blood.

And so, with many people predicting bomb Star Trek The Next Generation premiered on Sept 28th 1987 with a two hour episode called "Encounter At Farpoint". Most episodes during the first season-plus had issues while the producers and cast were finding their way but the show was a success mostly (I believe) due to it's sky high production values and the brilliance of casting a first rate yet largely unknown actor (Patrick Stewart) to be the captain/central figure. The show was also broadcast in first-run syndication, meaning it was shown at different times on different stations and often on different days in different parts of the country. The strategy was risky but Paramount believed that enough independent stations existed and were in need of quality content by the late 80s to warrant the gamble. It paid off to say the least. Star Trek TNG won 18 Emmy Awards and routinely posted better numbers than many big network hits.

Paramount cancelled TNG after 7 seasons and 178 episodes for greedy, bottom line reasons. The show was still an enormous hit but was becoming less profitable to produce as the actors salaries increased. Not unprofitable mind you, not marginally profitable, just less profitable and Paramount had cheaper Star Trek product lined up that they hoped viewers would switch to once TNG was off air. They also thought they'd get bigger bang for their buck by using the TNG crew to make new movies. The success of the TV show, however, never translated to the big screen. In the end the details of its demise do nothing to detract from the fact that the show had a remarkable run and is still a massive syndicated hit some 17 years after it faded to black.

Front to back: Captain Picard, intergalactic floozies, various mutants