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  Show Name The Cosby Show
  Caption Photo of the entire cast of ''The Cosby Show'' in 1989
  Format Sitcom
  Runtime About 24 minutes (per episode)
  Creator Bill Cosby <br> Ed Weinberger <br> Michael Leeson
  Starring Bill Cosby <br> Phylicia Rashad <br> Sabrina Le Beauf <br> Lisa Bonet <br> Malcolm-Jamal Warner <br> Tempestt Bledsoe <br> Keshia Knight Pulliam <br> Geoffrey Owens <br> Joseph C Phillips <br> Raven-Symone <br> Erika Alexander
  Country USA
  Network NBC
  First Aired September 20 , 1984
  Last Aired April 30 , 1992
  Num Episodes 201
  Imdb Id 0086687


''The Cosby Show'', starring Bill Cosby , is an American Sitcom that was first broadcast in 1984 . The show ran for eight seasons on the NBC Television network, until the spring of 1992 .

Bill Cosby had a great deal of creative control over the show, which was unusual for a star at that time but has become commonplace now. Cosby wanted the program to be educational as well as entertaining, reflecting Cosby's own background in education: he was credited as "William H. Cosby, Jr., Ed.D" at the beginning of each program. He also insisted that the program be filmed in New York , where he lived, rather than Los Angeles , where most television programs were filmed. Also, despite the fact that the program was still popular when it went off the air in 1992, Cosby chose to end it rather than allow it to go on too long and become stale.


OVERVIEW

The show focused on the Huxtable family, an upper-middle class family living in Brooklyn , New York . Patriarch Heathcliff "Cliff" Huxtable (an Obstetrician / Gynecologist ) and his wife Clair (an Attorney ) presided over a raucous yet loving household. In every way, they were an utterly typical traditional American sitcom family, with the notable exception that they were African-American . The topics of the show were the usual difficulties of children growing up, an example being son Theo's experiences of dealing with Dyslexia , based on Cosby's real-life child Ennis who was dyslexic.

The show was extremely well-regarded, winning six Emmys , as well as three Golden Globe s, five NAACP Image Award s, and a Peabody Award . It was also notable as being highly popular with white viewers and around the world, unlike many other television shows featuring mainly African-American characters. The show has been praised for its portrayal of positive child rearing methods. For instance, in the first episode, Heathcliff confronts his son about his poor grades and Theo responds that he should accept his son's weaknesses and love him unconditionally because they are father and son—a typical sentimental idiom in family sitcoms of that time, and one which generated the typical applause from the studio audience. Heathcliff, however, to the audience's surprised and amused approval, immediately and angrily calls this sentiment "the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life," completely rejecting the notion that loving his son means he must quietly and willingly accept it when the boy does not give his best effort in school, and famously threatened him with the often quoted line, "I brought you in this world, and I'll take you out."

At the time of the show's original broadcast, some people criticized the series for presenting an unrealistic portrayal of an African-American family as wealthy (though such families did and still do exist in real life) and for its lack of addressing black-white relations, and other contemporary issues such as Poverty and the AIDS - HIV epidemic. Others felt that the show was simply a portrayal of what African-Americans could potentially become. They also felt that portraying an African-American family as a normal family with normal, and largely wholesome, family issues was generally a positive contribution to issues of race in the United States.

The sitcom had numerous guest star appearances, including Stevie Wonder , Plácido Domingo , Patricia Richardson and Danny Kaye . Additionally, many actors had the show as their launching pad to success. Examples include Angela Bassett and Adam Sandler .

The sitcom aired its series finale within a week of the April 1992 Los Angeles Riots . The show's silence on this issue was consistent with the general style of the show during its run.


CAST



RATINGS


''The Cosby Show'' is one of two television shows, '' All In The Family '' being the other, that have been number 1 in the Nielsen Ratings for 5 consecutive TV seasons.

The ratings for each season, at the end of the season, were:


SPINOFF

The success of the show spawned a Spin-off series called '' A Different World '', which initally dealt with the life of Denise, the second eldest Huxtable daughter, at Hillman College, a fictional Historically Black College . Denise was written out the series after its inaugural season and the following season was revamped with the addition of director Debbie Allen and new characters.


TRIVIA


and Phylicia Rashad on the cover of TV Guide magazine.]]
  • There was always some ambiguity about the ages of the characters on the show. It was pretty much assumed (and mentioned through the series) that Dr. Huxtable was the same age as Bill Cosby . However, the age gap between he and Claire varied through the series, complicated by the real-life age of Phylicia Rashad being 11 years younger than Cosby. In 1987, however, there was an episode which centered around Dr. Huxtable's 50th birthday.




  • Whitney Houston was considered for the role of Sondra, but was thought to lack acting experience and was passed.


  • The show was initially pitched to ABC, but they decided to pass on it. NBC took the offer and the show became a huge success, helping the network become profitable and number one for over ten years.


  • In one episode, Raven Symone 's character Olivia went to a fair with Cliff's father. After she returned, she showed Cliff that she could read palms. Raven Symone would go on to play Raven Baxter, a psychic teenager in That's So Raven .


  • There has only been one swear word used on this show. In the pilot, Cliff asks Theo how he can get into college with poor grades. Theo says that he is not going to go to college, to which Cliff responds with: "Damn right." The scene where Cliff says damn is also in a flashback scene in a later episode in the series.


  • Joseph C. Phillips , who played Denise's husband, appeared in an earlier episode as one of Sondra's boyfriends.


  • In the fourth episode, the only son, Theodore, is referred to as "Teddy," a nickname that is never used again - "Theo" is what everyone calls him thereafter. In fact, he is even called Theo through the rest of the episode.


  • In some countries, the show was known as "The Robinsons" with the Huxtable last name being Robinson. So Bill Cosby was Cliff Robinson in some of the foreign versions of the show.


  • At the start of the show, Cliff's name was Clifford. In later episodes, he is referred to as Heathcliff. Finally, in the first episode of the last season, Claire calls him Heathclifford.


  • In the pilot episode, Cliff and Clair say that they only have four children because they did not want to have a fifth. However, later when Sondra is introduced, that makes five, more closely resembling Cosby's real-life family. This tactic has been referred to as reverse Chuck Cunningham Syndrome .


  • Carl Anthony Payne II , who played Cockroach, was cut from the Cosby Show when he refused to get a haircut.


  • The initial plot of the series was to make the Huxtables a blue-collar family and have Cliff be a chauffeur, with most of the humor coming from Cliff's interactions with the people he escorted. However, Cosby rewrote the plot to make the Huxtables instead a white-collar family that was upper-middle class. He did this because he felt there was an overabundance of blue-collar African-American shows, and no one yet had made a show about a well-off African-American family.


  • Originally the Huxtable family wasn't the mirror image of Cosby's actual family. Initially there were to be four children, two girls and two boys. However, a suitable youngest boy wasn't found, so the part of Rudy was rewritten for a girl. Then Cosby wanted to highlight the rewards of a child having a solid educational upbringing, adding the Sondra character. By the beginning of the second season, there were five children, four girls and one boy, like Cosby's family, with the boy being the middle child.


  • The pilot set was much different from the set regularly used in the show. Also, Cliff's office sign says Clifford, when his full name for the rest of the series is Heathcliff.


  • Rumor has it that filming took long hours and multiple takes because of how the co-stars would start laughing when Bill Cosby would do his lines. Many times, Cosby would improvise or change the lines in the script on a whim, surprising the actors and catching them off guard. Also, Cosby's facial expressions made the cast laugh many times during takes.


  • After three seasons of helping NBC turn their fortunes around, ''The Cosby Show'' created a spin-off called '' A Different World ''. The show was about Lisa Bonet going off to college and it appealed to more of a college-aged crowd than ''The Cosby Show'' did. Cosby insisted that the show be placed after ''The Cosby Show'' because of the lack of quality primetime programming that promoted African-Americans in a positive light. '' Family Ties '' was the longtime occupant of the time slot and was bringing in high ratings and numbers at that time. However, with ''Cosby'' ruling primetime, NBC listened to his request and moved the show and placed ''A Different World'' in the time slot. Two things happened: ''The Cosby Show'' audience decreased by 1/5 for ''A Different World'' compared to when ''Family Ties'' followed it, hindering the powerful grip NBC had for the 8PM Thursday night hour. Also, ''Family Ties'' never got the ratings it once received in its new Sunday time slot, and was canceled two years later, illustrating how influential ''The Cosby Show'' was to the show's success.


  • Many fans point to the introductions of Olivia and Cousin Pam as the moments when the show "jumped the shark."


  • The Cosby Show originated the word 'ZRBTT', now usually spelled ' Zerbert ', which is a neologism for a belly blaster or a blowfart.



AWARDS & NOMINATIONS



Awards Won

Emmy Awards
  • Outstanding Comedy Series (1985)


Golden Globe Awards
  • Best TV Series-Comedy (1985)

  • Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series-Comedy Bill Cosby (1985-86) 2 wins



Awards Nominated

Emmy Awards
  • Outstanding Comedy Series (1986-87) 2 nominations

  • Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Phylicia Rashad (1985-86) 2 nominations

  • Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Lisa Bonet (1986)

  • Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Keshia Knight Pulliam (1986)

  • Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Malcolm-Jamal Warner (1986)


Golden Globe Awards
  • Best TV Series-Comedy (1986-87) 2 nominations

  • Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series-Comedy Bill Cosby (1987)



CRITICISMS OF THE COSBY SHOW

There has been criticism concerning the portrayal of African Americans in The Cosby Show. Critics argue that the lack of discussion on race issues and lack of racial problems facing the Huxtables is an inaccurate portrayal of the typical African American family. The trouble free success of the Huxtable family has also been noted as a problem because it seems to put the blame on racial problems as coming from within a group instead of racial problems resulting from institutional racism.

Other critics, however, have noted that such objections are inherently racist themselves, including the premise that a prosperous black family is unrealistic or the premise that black families are overly obsessed with racial issues and thus typical household discussions revolve around such issues. Theo's dyslexia is a perfect example, as it shows that the Huxtables were not trouble free as the above critics claim. However, the writers did not want the characters obsessing over whether it would have been discovered if they weren't black; instead, they show Theo learning to triumph over it.


SEE ALSO




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