We’re celebrating the best of ’80s TV all week here at Paste. Big hair, loud colors and very special episodes ruled the day, as TV dared to talk about issues that had always been taboo. Nostalgia for bygone eras gave me a connection to the ’50s with Happy Days and the ’60s with Wonder Years, but mostly shows captured the 1980s in all of its neon glory. It was a golden age for sitcoms and for big, silly action-adventures where the good guys always won-plenty to distract us from the last vestiges of the Cold War and a pair of nuclear arsenals that could do a decent imitation of the Death Star. This was the decade of the VCR, but you still didn’t make plans on Thursday nights. To say that I was raised by 1980s TV is unfair to my wonderful parents, but I certainly spent as much time with the Keatons, the Huxtables, the Seavers, the 4077th and the Cheers gang as I did around my own kitchen table.
