Sitcoms and Superheroes – Escapism and TV in 1987  

Sitcoms and Superheroes – Escapism and TV in 1987  

Sitcoms and Superheroes – Escapism and TV in 1987  

If the 1980s were a mirror ball, then 1987 was the year television finally learned how to dance with the light. It was an era of greed and glamour, of Cold War tension and mall-bought dreams. The Berlin Wall still stood, Wall Street was cracking under its own ego, and families were tuning in to a box that seemed to promise both escape and identity. 

Television had always been a distraction, but by 1987 it had become an art form of avoidance. It knew how to make people laugh through their worries and believe in something bigger than the headlines. The news was full of nuclear anxiety, AIDS awareness, and political fatigue. TV, in contrast, offered cosmic voyages, wisecracking aliens, talking puppets, and soap-opera royalty in shoulder pads. The more the real world frayed, the brighter the screen became. 

A Galaxy Away, but Right on Time 

When Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in September 1987, even longtime fans didn’t know what to expect. The original Star Trek had been canceled nearly two decades earlier, and science fiction on television was often treated as kitsch or cult. Yet there it was: a polished, philosophical, big-budget continuation airing in first-run syndication — outside the control of the big three networks. 

It was a gamble that paid off. Within weeks, The Next Generation became a phenomenon. Captain Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t just a new hero; he was a symbol of a calmer, more intelligent future. The Enterprise-D gleamed like corporate perfection, yet the show’s stories pulsed with humanity. They asked questions about morality, technology, and identity that no one else on television dared to explore. 

In a decade obsessed with greed and status, Star Trek: TNG was the opposite of cynicism. It believed in diplomacy over domination, logic over hysteria, cooperation over chaos. In an age defined by “greed is good,” it quietly said, “knowledge is better.” For viewers overwhelmed by stock-market crashes and political spin, that message felt revolutionary. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn’t just entertainment, it was therapy disguised as science fiction. Its success opened the door for the modern genre explosion, proving that audiences were ready for world-building that fed the mind as well as the imagination. 

The Alien Next Door 

While Picard was exploring galaxies, another alien was raiding the fridge in suburbia. ALF was one of the strangest and most lovable sitcoms of the 1980s… a puppet from the planet Melmac who crash-lands in a middle-class family’s garage and becomes their sarcastic, fur-covered roommate. 

Premiering a year earlier but hitting its stride in 1987, ALF was pure comfort food for an anxious culture. The Tanner family’s world was ordinary, but ALF’s wisecracks, appetite, and outsider charm turned it into a space where absurdity felt normal. Beneath the canned laughter was something oddly tender — the idea that chaos could be contained with love, or at least with a good punchline. 

In a time of global paranoia, ALF was the kind of alien Americans wanted to believe in. Not a threat, but a houseguest. Not an invasion, but an invitation to laugh at life’s weirdness. The show mirrored the decade’s contradictions perfectly: high concept meets low comedy, cynicism softened by sincerity. 

It was also a reminder that television’s power wasn’t just in escapism but in intimacy. ALF was a member of the family. And for many viewers, tuning in every week felt exactly like that. 

Beauty and the Beast and the Year Romance Got Gothic 

If ALF represented the absurd comfort of the ’80s, Beauty and the Beast represented its yearning heart. The CBS series, which premiered in 1987, was unlike anything else on television. Set partly in New York’s dark underbelly, it told the story of Catherine Chandler, a district attorney, and Vincent, the poetic, lion-faced man who saves her life and lives in the tunnels beneath the city. 

It was part romance, part fantasy, part Shakespearean tragedy — and completely sincere. Ron Perlman’s Vincent spoke in sonnets, Linda Hamilton’s Catherine glowed with empathy, and the show’s candlelit world felt like a fairy tale written for grown-ups. 

What made Beauty and the Beast special was its refusal to wink. In a decade famous for irony, it delivered pure emotion. Love wasn’t a joke or a subplot; it was the entire story. The show’s tone was dreamlike, almost spiritual, drawing devoted fans who saw in it a metaphor for compassion in a cold, glittering world. 

The visual contrast, the gritty New York streets above, the hidden community of kindness below mirrored the decade’s duality. Greed up top, grace underneath. It wasn’t just escapism; it was moral mythology. 

And while the show would fade after three seasons, its influence would echo in later cult favorites like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files — stories where love, fear, and fantasy coexist in the shadows. 

When Cartoon Heroes Took Over the World 

By 1987, Saturday mornings had become their own cultural language. Cartoons weren’t just for kids anymore — they were miniature empires, complete with toy lines, theme songs, and cereal tie-ins. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted that year in syndication, launching a pop-culture explosion so massive it made superheroes seem downright practical. 

It was colorful, chaotic, and knowingly silly. Yet beneath the pizza jokes and karate kicks, there was something quietly radical about four mutant turtles saving the world from corporate corruption. It was anti-establishment disguised as action comedy, and it captured the restless energy of a generation raised on mall culture and Nintendo. 

Meanwhile, shows like He-Man, Transformers, and G.I. Joe still dominated, selling toys and ideals in equal measure. Critics scoffed at the commercialization, but the truth was simpler: these characters were the new folk heroes. They taught courage, teamwork, and a kind of unspoken optimism — that the world, no matter how absurd, could still be saved in 22 minutes. 

Television had created its own mythology. The superheroes and mutants of 1987 weren’t just fantasy; they were rehearsal for resilience. For a culture raised under the shadow of nuclear dread, it felt good to believe in heroes again, even if they carried swords and pizza boxes. 

Soap and Spectacle: Escaping Into Excess 

If cartoons gave kids a fantasy world, adults found theirs in the evening soaps. Dallas, Dynasty, and Knots Landing were still blazing across prime time in 1987, all shoulder pads, betrayals, and power lunches. Their glossy worlds of oil barons and billionaires were the perfect mirror for the materialism of the decade — exaggerated but aspirational.  

Viewers didn’t just watch; they indulged. These shows offered a version of the American Dream too big for reality — boardrooms as battlefields, champagne as dialogue. In a time of middle-class strain, watching the Carringtons and Ewings scheme was a form of luxury tourism. You couldn’t live like them, but you could live through them.  

Dynasty in particular had become its own brand of high camp by 1987, with Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington delivering lines that crackled like diamonds against glass. It was theater disguised as television, pure escapism made glamorous.  

The genius of those soaps was their shamelessness. They didn’t apologize for their excess; they celebrated it. And that made them the truest reflection of the decade’s mood — beautiful, brazen, and built on illusion. 

Sitcom Comfort in a Chaotic World 

Even as television grew grander and stranger, sitcoms remained the cultural hearth. Cheers, The Cosby Show, and The Golden Girls were still commanding huge audiences in 1987, offering laughter that felt like ritual. Each show, in its own way, created a safe space — a neighborhood bar, a Brooklyn brownstone, a Miami kitchen — where the world made sense for half an hour. 

The Golden Girls, in particular, was revolutionary in its quiet way. It proved that middle-aged women could carry a prime-time comedy without husbands, without apologies, and without being caricatures. Its humor was sharp, its friendship genuine, and its legacy enduring. 

Meanwhile, Married… with Children had just premiered, gleefully flipping the family sitcom on its head. The Bundys were dysfunctional, cynical, and proud of it. It was rebellion disguised as lowbrow humor — the anti-Cosby family for a culture already growing tired of perfection. 

Sitcoms in 1987 straddled two worlds: the nostalgic comfort of community and the emerging hunger for authenticity. Whether viewers wanted a moral lesson or a sarcastic laugh, television had both waiting at the push of a button. 

The Fantasy Beneath the Surface 

What united all these different shows — from Picard’s starship to ALF’s living room to Dynasty’s mirrored hallways — was a shared need for escape. But it wasn’t the mindless kind. These stories didn’t deny reality; they reimagined it. They offered versions of control, of connection, of meaning. 

The 1980s were loud, but 1987 was starting to hear the echoes. The optimism was still there, but it had begun to feel performative. Television, always a master of mood, adapted perfectly. It gave people something to believe in, or at least to laugh at. It was therapy through fantasy, catharsis through color. 

Audiences didn’t just want to escape the world; they wanted to understand it from a safer distance. Science fiction offered hope. Sitcoms offered belonging. Soaps offered spectacle. Even puppets offered perspective. 

Television was becoming self-aware, learning how to balance its contradictions — sincerity and irony, art and advertising, truth and illusion. And in doing so, it quietly became the soundtrack to survival. 

Legacy of an Escapist Era 

By the end of 1987, the landscape of television had changed. Cable was rising, syndication had proven its strength, and the idea of niche audiences was beginning to take hold. The seeds planted by shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Beauty and the Beast would grow into the complex serialized storytelling of the 1990s and beyond. 

Even ALF and Married… with Children paved the way for a new kind of cultural realism — one that understood that laughter and absurdity could carry truth better than speeches. 

Looking back, it’s easy to see the excess of 1987 as kitsch, but beneath the neon was sincerity. These shows may have been escapist, but they were also emotional, often brave, and sometimes profound. They reminded a divided world that imagination wasn’t frivolous — it was survival. 

Decades later, we still return to those shows. They live on in streaming menus, memes, and nostalgia marathons. But what we’re really revisiting is the feeling they gave us — that temporary safety of stepping out of reality for 22 or 44 minutes and coming back lighter. 

Television in 1987 was proof that escape doesn’t mean denial. It can be a form of resilience, a reminder that even when the world feels too loud, there’s always a place where stories still make sense.