Mike Lookinland Quotes

Growing up, I remember my parents feeling a little wary of 'The Simpsons.' This was the late eighties, and there was a wave of articles about TV shows that were bad for America. Then we all started watching it and loved it.

As I was finishing high school, 'Fresh Prince' was, by far, out front. The generation before me, it may have been the Huxtables, but for me and my homies, Fresh Prince.

I grew up with 'Roseanne'; I kind of adore her and stuff like' Home Improvement', really traditional American stuff.

When reality television really hit, I just had a backlash towards reality. It seemed like a cheap way to make a product. And then when music reality and 'Idol hit,' I just didn't watch it, it seemed novelty. And of course the story of 'Idol,' this is one of the greatest stories in television history.

I was a massive fan of 'Twin Peaks.' Massive. I don't know how any of us grew up in this age of television and weren't astounded, and saying that, I'm still shocked that that was on network television.

I was raised on 'Get Smart' and 'All in the Family' and 'M.A.S.H.,' and certainly when 'Cheers' came along, that was a big one.

You know as well as I do that the family sitcom was the stalwart of TV for God knows how many decades.

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.

In 1970, television ate my family. The Andy Warhol prophecy of 15 minutes of fame for any and everyone blew up on our doorstep.

I do think there was an age of television back in the '90s that was a little bit more wholesome.

I was the King of Twinkie-Vision one day, the King of Jiggle TV the next, thanks to Farrah Fawcett and 'Three's Company.'

I must say, I was a very filmy kid. I used to watch a lot of TV and get very influenced by Bollywood.

I don't know if you can tell, but I grew up watching a lot of television.

Growing up, I remember the 'Cheers' finale and 'M*A*S*H' and all these amazing finales, and I remember them being very, very important.

I'd been brought up on... American TV: 'Lou Grant,' 'Starsky & Hutch;' 'Gilligan's Island.'

Growing up, I used to watch 'Happy Days,' 'Laverne & Shirley,' 'All in the Family.' Those were the shows I watched growing up with my family. And, believe it or not, 'McMillan and Wife' and 'Columbo.'

No, the seventies was a totally different sensibility and that allowed us to break new ground as a cop show.

I remember the dark days when, thanks to 1966's 'Batman' with Adam West, comics were considered the ugly stepchild of popular culture.

You know, when it was done originally, they always had to fight to keep it going at the end of each season. Now, The Odd Couple has become part of our language and culture.

To me, it wasn't 'Star Wars' that shaped me; it was more 'Mary Tyler Moore' and, nowadays, 'Louie' and 'Girls.'

'Star Trek' put sci-fi on the map and changed television, and 'Battlestar' has changed it in another direction by making it a little more mainstream and acceptable to people who wouldn't normally watch sci-fi.

In 1986, human nature in America started to change. That year, 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,' based in Chicago, became nationally syndicated, and the country entered the beginning stages of a quiet cultural revolution.

People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There's nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing.

First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society. Parents can no longer control the atmosphere of the home and have lost even the will to do so.

When we did 'Thirtysomething,' television was either about doctors, lawyers, or cops.