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It’s not too hard to push the nostalgia button for someone who grew up in the ‘90s. All you need to do is mention the Power Rangers or Pearl Jam, and their eyes will light up. The same goes for these four little letters: T-g-i-f. No matter how many mozzarella sticks they scarf down from the other TGIFs, for them, those letters in that order will immediately trigger the sound of Steve. Urkel’s distinct laugh or Michelle Tanner’s “You got it, dude!”

On September 22, 1989, ABC launched a Friday primetime block of shows aimed at revitalizing one of TV’s most difficult nights to program by consolidating two hours of family-oriented comedies. It was called Tgif to trade on the familiarity of the phrase “Thank God it’s Friday,” although officially it stood for “Thank goodness it’s funny” to avoid legal issues with the Tgi Fridays restaurant chain.

ABC’s Tgif programming block had viewers hoping for Friday nights to watch their favorite sitcom.

Over the years, many people believed the acronym stood for “Thank God It’s Friday.” However, in a new interview, Jim Janicek, who help create the programming block, clarified that the letters stood for “Thank Goodness It’s Funny.”

“We were talking about things like the ‘Friday Fun Club,'” Janicek said on Pod Meets World about the names they considered before Tgif. “There’s a whole list somewhere I probably could dig up, but I remember that one. You know, ‘It’s Friday Night.’ Lots of little short-isms.”

Janicek recalled that the network’s executives were initially worried that using Tgif would cause problems with a chain of restaurants.

“We did our first animation, which kinda was more childlike, with a little mouse called Friday the Mouse. We were animating that with a guy...

Quick Links What Was Aliens in the Family? Why Aliens in the Family Never Lived Up to Dinosaurs Why Shows Like Aliens in the Family are Worth Revisiting

Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs may have been a groundbreaking '90s sitcom, but what came next was downright bizarre. The 1990s were a golden age for sitcoms, delivering unforgettable hits like Seinfeld, Friends, and Family Guy. At the same time, it was an era of experimentation, where studios aimed to push creative boundaries or build on past successes, sometimes with mixed results. One of the strangest attempts to recapture lightning in a bottle came from the Jim Henson Company. Their odd follow-up to Dinosaurs couldn’t have been more forgettable unless it included a visit from the Men in Black. Yet, as strange as it was, this short-lived sitcom offers a fascinating look at the evolving climate of '90s television and...

Friends. South Park. Frasier. Family Guy. Some of TV’s longest-running sitcoms premiered in the 1990s, and remain relevant and beloved if not still producing new episodes today. But a decade is a long time, executives try a lot of ideas to fill their schedules, and since broadcast TV programming is kind of a zero-sum game, far more sitcoms premiered than ever found an audience. The question is: which ones deserved better?

A word on methodology here: I took the term “forgotten” very literally. That means I didn’t consider any ‘90s sitcom that’s streaming on a legitimate pay or subscription platform; any ‘90s sitcom that lasted more than one season; and any of which only the pilot is available to watch — illegitimately, since pilots have to jam in so much exposition that judging a show’s quality by that episode alone doesn’t offer an accurate picture of where it aspires to go.

Stephen Herek is an American film director, producer and screenwriter who has been active in the movie industry since the 1980s. He is best known for directing films such as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), The Mighty Ducks (1992), and Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995).

He was born in 1957 in Princeton, New Jersey and grew up in Catonsville, Maryland. After high school he attended Towson University where he graduated with a Bfa degree in theater arts. He then went on to study filmmaking at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he graduated with honors.

Herek first made his mark on Hollywood with his debut film, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – a comedy starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter which became a major hit. Since then he has directed several other successful films such as The Rocketeer (1991) starring Billy Campbell, Donnie Darko (2001) starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Critters 4 (1992), 101 Dalmatians (1996) starring Glenn Close and Steve Martin,...

As sitcom premises go, Bonnie and Terry Turner's ultra-popular sci-fi sitcom "3rd Rock from the Sun" is first rate. The show follows a quartet of nonhumanoid space aliens from a distant galaxy -- played by John Lithgow, Kristen Johnson, French Stewart, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- who have disguised themselves as a human family in order to study our species up close. The show's comedy is derived from their utter cluelessness about the way the people in Ohio behave. "3rd Rock from the Sun" came in a long tradition of silly sci-fi sitcoms that included "Out of the World," "Alf," "Aliens in the Family," and "They Came from Outer Space." These were shows that took familiar American sitcom tropes, and skewered them by putting aliens in place of traditionally human characters.

The central aliens on the program would regularly report back to an ineffable, off-screen supreme alien lord that was...