YMMV / The Cosby Show

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • There are times when Clair comes across like control freak or outright tyrant. While it's most often Played for Laughs that she doesn't let Cliff to do some things he wants, it really isn't appropriate for her to, for example, call a store where Cliff is a regular customer and tell the owner not to sell him anything; it hurts the guy's business and she has no right to make that kind of demand as it's not her property. The punchline of this every time it comes up is the fact that Clair is a lawyer and she'd find some way to get back at them.
  • One episode in season 3 supports this as we learn just who Rudy got her incredibly bossy attitude from.
  • Theo also brings this up in one episode when he flat out tells Cliff, "Your wife won't let you do anything." That degree of control may also be why Theo himself views marriage as the place where the romance goes to die.
  • "Day Of The Locusts" - While Clair was overbearing and out of line to decide that she knew what was best for Sondra's children, some would say Sondra was pretty out of line herself. She agreed to let Clair and Francine take the babies so that she could rest. For her to let Elvin get her riled up to the point of acting as though they had kidnapped them—including yelling at her father and brother, who had nothing to do with it—was ridiculous and overdone.
  • Cliff and Clair unfairly set Rudy up to fail when she complains about all of the rules she has to follow. There's no reason they couldn't have said something like, "Okay, we'll extend your bedtime for half an hour for one week, and if you can't handle it, it's back to what it was.", etc. It's especially bad when you consider that she actually presents her arguments very calmly and maturely. The overall message is a rather patronizing, "Your parents are always right and you should never disagree with them."
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Lewis Erlicht, president of ABC Entertainment, said in 1984 that TV comedy was "dead. Forever. Bury it." He also considered an educated, middle class, happy African-American family "unrealistic". As such, he rejected a Bill Cosby's pitch for a domestic sitcom. The show was eventually greenlit by Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, where it became a ratings giant (one of three shows ever to rank #1 in the Neilsen ratings for five consecutive seasons), as well as setting the bar for both African-American roles on television and intelligent family-friendly comedy. In fact, as a result of the show's mega-popularity, many other NBC shows, a lot of them heretofore struggling to win viewership, became hugely popular in the Nielsen ratings as well. All of this gave NBC much needed revenue to avoid going bankrupt. ABC, for their part, saw many of their once mega-successful programs take a tremendous nosedive in the ratings, which in turn, led to a huge decline in revenue, causing the network to be bought out by a company only a tenth of their size, Capital Cities Communications. As a result of the missed opportunity for ABC caused by his poor judgment, Erlicht was abruptly and humiliatingly demoted to a position of senior vice president and head of the network's in-house production company, ABC Circle Films, and replaced by Brandon Stoddard, president of the network's former theatrical films division, ABC Motion Pictures.
• Award Snub:
  • Bill Cosby himself stated that Phylicia Rashad deserved an Emmy for her performance on the show numerous times, but she was only nominated twice, and never won.
  • In the "Lookback Special," Cosby again mentioned this, but then said (paraphrasing), "When you look at the kinds of things she'd be up against today, she doesn't need it."
  • Cosby has never been nominated for an award, but that is because he purposefully never submitted a reel to be nominated. He disliked encouraging competition among actors — which eventually saved the Academy the would-be task of trying to revoke awards that were never pursued in the first place.
• Base-Breaking Character: Cousin Pam. Is she a boring Scrappy, or a refreshing Breakout Character for bringing in an alternative point of view? Despite how the show always was set in New York, it wasn't until Pam showed up in the 7th season, that we got a regular view of what it was like to live in a ghetto neighborhood. She had obviously had a rougher life than Cliff's and Clair's own kids, and she could be seen as much more down to Earth than her cousins.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Clair, what are you doing behind a giant teddy bear in the living room? Yes, it was used for Season 3's Hide Your Pregnancy but it had absolutely no connection with anything in the episode nor is it ever brought up again.
  • One episode in Season 6 has Clair going away for a weekend retreat due to stress. As she leaves, the girls chant "Go, Mom!" repeatedly. It's a moment that doesn't match up with parting scenes from previous episodes, contributes nothing to the greater plot, nor is anything like it done again for the rest of the series.
  • Honestly the show is kind of full of these because of its unconventional format. Some episodes follow a standard sitcom A-plot B-plot thing, but some episodes don't have a B-plot, and sometimes the focus isn't on plot at all so much as it is an excuse for stand-up routines to play out in front of the audience. There's plenty of moments that have nothing to do with anything and are more just like seeing the life of a real family play out on screen, completely sans climax.
• Bizarro Episode: "The Day The Spores Landed" and "Cliff's Nightmare", crossing over with Dream Episode.
• Broken Base:
  • The angriest we ever see Clair is "Off to see the Wretched" where Vanessa lies to Clair and Cliff and goes off to have misadventures in Baltimore. The parents bring her home and Clair promptly reads her the riot act. Some consider this scene Clair's Moment of Awesome for putting her daughter in her place. Others see Vanessa running upstairs in tears and think Clair was way too harsh. Still others think Vanessa got off easy for the stunt she pulled.
  • Similarly, was the punishment that they inflict on Rudy and her friends after they sneak out to a club appropriate or over-the-top? Some feel its a fair punishment, and being young they do need to be taught the hard way. Others think while it was a stupid stunt, it was arguably much less worse than anything Vanessa ever pulled, yet they're told that they will be spending the next six months volunteering at a retirement home every Saturday. This is after Vanessa got grounded for one for sneaking out to meet her boyfriend. And unless they discussed it with the other girls parents, they are completely out of line to discipline them as well.
  • The show's very reputation itself ever since the rape allegations against Cosby have surfaced. Is it still a timeless classic show despite the misdeeds of its main star, or has it become unwatchable because of those? Some critics have proposed a middle ground on the issue, stating that the show should not be in syndication now but can be brought back after Cosby dies.
• Creator's Pet: Olivia was blatantly added because Rudy had grown up so much that the earlier "Cosby with Cute Kids" antics were missing, meaning scene after scene of him and Olivia being cute together.
• Crosses the Line Twice: So a taxi carrying a pregnant lady crashes into Dr. Huxtable's car and he has to deliver her baby right there. Despite the adrenaline rush of an emergency situation for the characters and it meant to be a tense situation, it's made hilarious for the audience.
• Designated Villain: Elvin was this when he was first introduced as a Straw Misogynist. Sure, he did and said a few stupid things (like forgetting he had a date with Sondra, or claiming that baking and cooking was a "women's job"). But really, the guy was a harmless doofus, who never would have hurt Sondra on purpose. And yet, her parents treated him as if he was the biggest scum on Earth. It got better, though, and Elvin married Sondra and had twins with her.
• Genre Turning Point: This show was able to not only bring about a more ideal image for the African-American family, one with a middle-class background and having the same problems and aspirations as their white counterparts, and without much in the way of lower class stereotypes, therefore popularizing the Black Sitcom, but also helped to revive the Dom Com format to a new generation, subverting gender roles like having the mother be a breadwinner, while the father is a stay at home dad, while also embracing a lot of tropes from 50s sitcoms.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The pilot episode, where Cliff calls Theo out for continued poor academic performance at school:
    • When college dropout Cosby was invited in 1989 to the University of Notre Dame to speak to a group of black athletes who were graduating. During the course of the speech, he addressed Dean Brown, an all-American tackle for the Irish, what his GPA was, to which Brown replied 2.5; Cosby, according to news reports, then proceeded to humiliate him in front of the other students and parents ("2.5 is OK if you have a mental disorder"), suggesting that Brown did not put forth any effort and berating his effort to tears, and cutting him off every time Brown or someone else tried to defend him. Brown, who died in 2012, said he felt like a failure for years after this.
    • Ennis Cosby, who was the basis of Theo, eventually discovered that he was dyslexic, which contributed to his poor academic performance. It's a little awkward to see Cosby accusing his learning-disabled son of slacking off by proxy. Ennis's dyslexia was eventually written into Theo's character, so this even works in-universe. Vanessa even points out the obvious Unfortunate Implications to a guilty Cliff.
  • The Cosby allegations cast a new light on "Last Barbecue" from Season 7, in which a "secret barbecue sauce" Cliff makes that gets partygoers sedated and aroused plays a key role in that episode's plot.
  • "The Day the Spores Landed" has Cliff dreaming he, Theo, Elvin, Martin, and 11,000,000 other men are pregnant. Among those men is basketball player Magic Johnson. Shortly before the series ended, Johnson announced he was HIV positive. Unsurprisingly, this reference was deleted in syndication. ^note The only way to see the episode now is with the reference intact on Amazon prime, which offers the entire series in their first-run formats. The edited version is no longer included in the show's syndication package due to sensitivity following the rape scandal against Cosby
  • In a 1987 episode, Robert Culp (Cosby's old co-star in I Spy) guest-starred as Scott Kelly, an old Navy chum of Cliff's who was visiting the Huxtables, along with his wife, played by Ann Reinking. Scott and Cliff reminisce about old times, and Scott gets the bright idea to put potato chips on pizza like they did in the Navy. His wife puts the kibosh on that idea, as Scott has a heart condition and she doesn't want him to have a heart attack. It's all Played for Laughs, but 23 years later, Culp died of a heart attack in real life.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Late in Season 2, Rudy does extra chores to buy a "Mega Woman" action figure, who is married to "Mega Man." The video game world would see the release of Mega Man a few years later.
• Humor Dissonance:
  • "Theo's Gift," the episode where Theo finds out that he's dyslexic. While the episode finally did explain why Theo struggled so much in school, his diagnosis is mostly played for laughs.
  • Bill Cosby himself said this happened as early as the third season when, after Phylicia Rashad had her Hide Your Pregnancy time, Cliff and Clair's onscreen romance moments become much less frequent.
• Memetic Mutation: "Biiiig fun with the Wretched!"
• Once Original, Now Common: The many, many imitators that have come since make even the best of Cosby episodes seem stale and dated. The lead star's modern reputation certainly doesn't help appeal to newcomers.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Even Malcolm Jamal-Warner has admitted that the legacy of the show has been "tainted" now that its leading man has been convicted of sexual assault.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Adam Sandler plays Smitty, one of Theo's high school buddies.
  • Iman and Angela Bassett can be spotted as patients of Cliff.
  • Raven-Symoné plays Olivia.
  • Apparently in one of Jadzia Dax's former lives she was blonde and dating a friend of Cliff and Clair's.
  • In addition to co-creating The Cosby Show, Ed. Weinberger also served as creator and executive producer of Amen.
  • Carmen Finestra wrote 56 episodes. Finestra is best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of Home Improvement.
  • Matt Williams wrote 17 episodes. Williams is best known as creator and executive producer of Roseanne and also served as co-creator and co-executive producer of Home Improvement.
  • Earl Pomerantz wrote three episodes. Pomerantz is best known as developer and executive producer of Major Dad.
  • Winifred Hervey wrote an episode. Hervey is best known as creator and executive producer of The Steve Harvey Show.
  • Bill Prady co-wrote an episode. Prady is best known for co-creating The Big Bang Theory.
  • An unrecognizable Alicia Keys played one of Rudy's friends at a sleepover party. All of five years old, she has no individual lines, has short hair and is never addressed by name, unlike all the other children. She is credited by her real name, Alicia Cook.
  • Amanda Waller appears as one of Clair's friends from high school in Clair's Reunion.
  • Yes, that is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo as one of Theo's college roommates/classmates.^note  Michael Weatherly's very first acting role, in fact.
  • A pre-Home Improvement Patricia Richardson plays one of Cliff's patients in "Calling Dr. Huxtable."
  • A pre-Star Trek: The Next Generation Gates McFadden appears in the episode "Cliff's 50th Birthday". She's billed by her real name, Cheryl McFadden.
• The Scrappy:
  • Olivia was introduced in the 6th season, just so they could have a new "cute child". But she was very close to becoming a Creator's Pet, and she often acted as if she was much older than she was.
  • Cousin Pam, who was introduced in the 7th season, has many haters, as she too came in from nowhere to be a regular.
• Signature Scene:
  • Cliff calling out Theo for telling him he should accept him as his son even if he's unsuccessful in school.
  • Clair chewing out Vanessa for lying and sneaking out with her friends to an out-of-state concert (and a string of other stupid decisions that night).
  • The family lip-syncing to Ray Charles “Night Time is the Right Time” for Russell and Anna’s anniversary.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • During Theo's brief Took a Level in Jerkass in "Dance Mania," he trips on one of Rudy's toys that she left on the stairs, then rightfully points out that doing so is a leading cause of household injuries. His bad mood leading him to throw said toy out into the street doesn't negate that point.
  • In "The Day Of The Locusts", while she handled things in a very overbearing manner, Clair was right in that the ill Sondra shouldn't be around the babies and risk getting them sick.
  • In one episode, Cliff is planning to buy new furniture for his office, and calculating the sizes he will need. Vanessa suggests that he make his calculations using Base 12 instead of the more familiar Base 10, but Cliff finds the idea confusing and silly. The episode portrays Cliff as wrong and Vanessa as right, but in reality, the practical value of Vanessa's suggestion was extremely dubious, for several reasons :
    • First, Vanessa claims that, since there are 12 inches in a foot, using Base 12 would be faster, because you wouldn't need to divide by 12 to convert inches to feet. However, eliminating that division step would only save a person a few seconds, which in most cases would be insignificant.
    • Second, whatever time that you would save by not having to divide by 12 at the end would likely be eaten up by the time you would spend mentally converting figures into Base 12 in the first place. This is borne out in the episode itself, when Cliff and Vanessa test out her theory by each adding up a series of numbers. Vanessa does reach the answer faster than Cliff, and the episode presents this as proof that Vanessa is right. But the episode ignores the fact that Vanessa only reached the answer a few seconds faster than Cliff did, meaning that the savings in time was trivially small.
    • Third, and most important ... In most situations, it is far more important to complete mathematical calculations accurately than to complete them quickly. Even if it is true that using Base 12 is faster, this episode ignored the fact that using an unfamiliar system like Base 12 also greatly increases the risk of making an error. In this case, Cliff was calculating sizes of furniture for his office. If he followed Vanessa's suggestion of using Base 12, Cliff might shave a few seconds off his calculation time ... but if he wound up buying the wrong size furniture because he had made a mistake (due to using an unfamiliar mathematical system), it would cost him far, far more than a few seconds to correct the error.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Maria from "Slumber Party" was believed by many to initially be a boy, given her short hair and wearing red, black and grey pajamas.

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