It's time to bring back the Very Special Episode

Los Angeles Magazine

The cheesy Very Special Episodes that were a staple of 1980s and 1990s sitcoms are desperately needed these days, a time of too little empathy, says Liz Ohanesian. She was thinking of the Very Special Episode while reading about Megyn Kelly's blackface controversy. "I think about these shows because, right now, American adults seem to need the sort of guidance that American kids once got from Very Special Episodes," says Ohansensian. "Megyn Kelly’s defense of blackface made me wonder if she ever saw the episode of Gimme a Break when Nell explained why it’s not OK. I didn’t even know what blackface was when I first saw that episode, but I understood that if you did something to upset the loving, maternal figure of a TV show that much, it must be terrible. Very Special Episodes were commonplace in the ’80s, and even into the ’90s, touching on everything from national news to issues like sexual abuse and racism. But times change, and so do TV audiences. The term 'very special episode,' once used as a marketing tag, became a catchall phrase to denote comedies that clunkily attempted to delve into the socially relevant topics of the day. It’s true that a lot of those Very Special Episodes were terrible. Even some that weren’t have moments that would be cringey by today’s standards." Ohanesian adds: "Maybe, it’s time for a Very Special Comeback. From America’s mass shooting epidemic to racist Halloween costumes, there are a lot of things that people either don’t understand or don’t want to understand—and it seems like social media often helps them remain willfully ignorant. Sometimes you need to sit in front of a bigger screen and take in the message without the option of rage-responding to the character who is speaking."