S-Tier or Cultural Crime? The 80s Sitcom Ranking

This week, we did something a little different — we built our own tier list website just so we could rank 80s sitcoms without fighting pop-ups and autoplay ads. Totally normal behavior.

But here’s the twist: we’re not ranking them based on how “important” they were at the time. We’re asking a much more dangerous question:

Would we actually rewatch this in 2026?

That framework leads to some very strong opinions.

🏆 The S-Tier Is Earned

A handful of shows prove they’re more than nostalgia. The writing still lands. The characters still feel alive. The cultural relevance hasn’t completely evaporated.

We talk about why certain series:

• Hold up surprisingly well
• Feel sharper now than they did then
• Or still manage to feel relevant without being preachy

There’s one in particular that we both immediately elevate without debate.

🚫 The Hall of Shame

There’s one show we don’t even rank.

We talk about:

• When “separating the art from the artist” stops being possible
• How cultural legacy changes over time
• And why historical importance doesn’t automatically equal rewatchability

It’s a sobering but necessary conversation.

🤔 The Middle Tier Dilemmas

This is where things get interesting.

We wrestle with:

• Working-class representation vs. caricature
• “Very Special Episode” overload
• Sitcom dads getting infinite second chances while sitcom moms don’t
• When a breakout character slowly destroys their own show

We also revisit the strange cultural phenomenon of:

• Every sitcom family in the 80s somehow living in a house they absolutely could not afford.

🔻 The Ones That Don’t Survive Rewatch

Some shows are huge in memory… and rough in reality.

We talk about:

• Nostalgia for actors vs. nostalgia for writing
• How certain catchphrases aged like milk
• Boomer sentimentality as a genre
• And why some “beloved” shows just don’t work outside their original era

🎧 What Else We’ve Been Into

Before the tier list chaos:

• Eden talks about a wildly violent light novel series featuring a sociopathic child adventurer who refuses to follow the script of her own destiny.
• Peter shares recent music discoveries, a disappointing Tool take, and why The Dark Forest might require an emotional recovery period.
• There’s also a brief detour into why everyone in Cheers looks 20 years older than we do right now.

🖥️ Bonus: DIY Internet Energy

Peter casually mentions:

• Taking a screenshot of a tier list site
• Feeding it to Claude
• Coding a cleaner version
• And deploying it live via GitHub Pages

Because apparently that’s what we do now.